About Radio Diali

Radio Diali

Overview

Radio Diali is a Montreal radio station broadcasting at 106.3 FM, the current brand of the licensed ethnic station CKIN-FM. Launched under the Diali name in 2024, the station is devoted primarily to Montreal's Maghrebi communities — listeners of Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian origin — with programming presented largely in the Arabic dialects of North Africa. The station explains its name on its own website: "Diali" means "mine" in several Maghrebi dialects spoken by the populations of North Africa, a possessive chosen, in the station's words, so that the frequency belongs to its listeners.

Although Diali's public face is Maghrebi, CKIN-FM remains a licensed multilingual ethnic undertaking. Alongside its Arabic service, the station carries Spanish-language programming in the evenings and hour-long blocks in other languages, including Assyrian, Berber, Cantonese, Italian, Hindi and Urdu, in keeping with its licence conditions. Its transmitter sits atop Mount Royal, and since the spring of 2026 the station has also broadcast in HD Radio, with listings showing its HD2 subchannel simulcasting CHOU (Radio Moyen-Orient) and its HD3 subchannel simulcasting CKZW.

History

The 106.3 frequency was created by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on 20 August 2009, when Canadian Hellenic Cable Radio Ltd. (CHCR) received approval (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2009-508) for a new multilingual specialty station in Montreal. CKIN-FM signed on in August 2010 as a sister station to CHCR's CKDG-FM (Mike FM). CHCR deliberately paired the two sisters by language: where CKDG carried English-language mainstream programming during peak periods, CKIN carried French. In its first incarnation, the station mirrored its sister's model: mainstream programming in French during the morning and afternoon drive periods, and multicultural programming — principally in Spanish, Creole, Arabic, Romanian and Armenian — through the rest of the day.

The station changed direction in 2015. CHCR sold CKIN-FM to broadcaster Neeti P. Ray for $500,000, a transaction the CRTC approved in Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2015-397, and the station was rebranded as CINA Radio, joining Ray's CINA stations in Mississauga and Windsor. The frequency had been on Ray's ambitions for years: he had competed for 106.3 in the CRTC's 2007 licensing process, and in 2011 the Commission denied his application for a new ethnic station in Montreal, partly because of the harm it might do to the then year-old CKIN-FM — the station he would eventually buy instead. The schedule was rebuilt around Arabic programming, which grew to occupy the majority of the week — 68 percent, according to figures cited in a regulatory complaint — with Spanish in the evenings and shorter blocks in other languages. The shift prompted a formal complaint from rival Arabic broadcaster Radio Moyen-Orient (CHOU), which asked the CRTC to order CKIN to devote no more than 8 percent of its schedule (about ten hours a week) to Arabic and to stop marketing itself as "la nouvelle voix arabe de Montréal." The CRTC dismissed the complaint on 14 October 2016 (Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2016-409), finding that CKIN's licence required it to serve at least six cultural groups in at least eight languages other than English and French, but did not fix the share of any single language.

The licence was renewed for a full term in Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2017-244, running to 31 August 2024, and has since been administratively renewed, most recently in Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2025-136, which extended it until 31 August 2027. In 2024, under the ownership of Ray's company 9427899 Canada Inc., the station relaunched its service under the Radio Diali brand, aiming the frequency squarely at Montreal's North African communities while retaining the multilingual blocks its licence requires.

Programming and Content

Diali's weekday schedule is built around three live dayparts described on its website. The morning show, Sbahkoum maana, offers a panorama of segments covering essential news and the subjects that animate the Maghrebi community in Canada, including cultural features. The midday program mixes information, health, culture, nostalgia and family and psychology topics, carried by a musical selection designed, in the station's phrase, to make listeners travel between their roots and their lives in Canada. The afternoon program combines interviews, accessible discussion and a digest of the day's local news seen through a Maghrebi lens, set to music from "the bled" — the home country — with listener participation by text message.

Beyond the Diali-branded dayparts, the schedule fulfils the station's multilingual licence conditions: Spanish-language programming airs in the evenings, and one-hour blocks in Assyrian, Berber, Cantonese, Italian, Hindi and Urdu are carried, principally on weekend mornings. Under its conditions of licence, the station must devote at least 70 percent of each broadcast week to ethnic programming and at least 60 percent to third-language programming, serving at least six distinct cultural groups in at least eight languages.

Audience and Reach

Radio Diali addresses one of the largest Arabic-speaking markets in Canada. Montreal's Maghrebi population — drawn mainly from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia — has grown into one of the city's defining immigrant communities, and the station's dialect-based presentation distinguishes it from pan-Arab services aimed at the Levantine and Egyptian audiences. A media kit published for the station in its CINA era in 2016 cited some 277,000 Arabic speakers in Montreal, a figure the station itself used to describe the market it serves. When the Arabic-focused schedule was introduced in 2015, trade coverage noted that its Arabic programming was aimed at a younger audience than its established competitor, CHOU Radio Moyen-Orient. The station's FM signal covers the Island of Montreal and surrounding suburbs from Mount Royal, and its audience is extended by online streaming and, since 2026, HD Radio.

Digital Presence

The station's website, fmdiali.ca, first appeared in May 2024 alongside the Diali relaunch. Built on WordPress, it presents the station's programs and team, promotes its newsletter, and links to its YouTube presence and live listening options. Streaming is not new to the frequency: in its CINA era the station promoted live listening through its website and the TuneIn app, along with on-demand access to its programs. Under the Diali brand, contact and audience participation run through the studio line and SMS/WhatsApp channels published on the site, reflecting a listener relationship conducted as much through messaging apps as through the traditional request line.

Ownership and Organisation

CKIN-FM is owned by 9427899 Canada Inc., the company of Toronto-based broadcaster Neeti P. Ray, who acquired the station in 2015. Ray's group also operates the multilingual CINA stations — CINA AM 1650 in Mississauga and CINA-FM 102.3 in Windsor — as well as Toronto's CKFG-FM, making the Montreal station part of a small national network of ethnic broadcasters. Radio Diali operates from offices the station lists at 11876 Rue De Meulles in Montreal, with a local team that includes sales representative Mohammed Ezzemmouri, profiled on the station's website.

Contact and Availability

Radio Diali broadcasts at 106.3 FM in Montreal and streams online through fmdiali.ca. The station publishes a studio line at +1 (514) 333-1063, an SMS/WhatsApp line at +1 (514) 649-1063, an office line at +1 (438) 381-8123 and a sales line at +1 (514) 995-6789, and lists its office at 11876 Rue De Meulles, Montréal, Québec, H4J 2E6. Its published general email address is info@1063fm.ca. The station's contact page invites listeners to come in person — to collect a prize, sit for an interview, or raise a question or comment — underscoring the walk-in, neighbourhood character of the operation.