About CMR (CJSA-HD4)

CMR (CJSA-HD4)

Overview

CMR is Canadian Multicultural Radio, the broadcaster behind CJSA-FM, the multilingual FM station on 101.3 MHz in Toronto, Ontario. On air the station calls itself CMR Diversity FM 101.3, and it serves the Greater Toronto Area with programming aimed mainly at South Asian audiences, in more than 24 languages for over 20 ethnic groups. The HD4 designation in this profile refers to one of the station's digital subchannels: when CJSA-FM adopted HD Radio, it used the technology to run separate full-time language services alongside the main channel, and the service carried on HD4 is its Punjabi programming, complementing a Tamil service on HD2 and a Hindi and Urdu service on HD3.

That structure makes CJSA unusual among Canadian ethnic stations. A conventional ethnic station divides one schedule among many communities, giving each group a block of hours. CMR does that on its main 101.3 channel, but its HD subchannels allow three of its largest language communities — Tamil, Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi — to be served continuously on their own channels by anyone with an HD Radio receiver in the coverage area. The main station is a small signal by Toronto standards, a Class B1 FM with an average effective radiated power of only 373 watts, transmitted from the top of First Canadian Place in the downtown core. Its studios are in Etobicoke, in the city's west end. The licensee is 3885275 Canada Inc., operating as Canadian Multicultural Radio, as the company identifies itself in its January 2026 accessibility plan — a current regulatory document that also confirms the station is still serving the Greater Toronto Area at 101.3 MHz.

History

Canadian Multicultural Radio came out of Toronto's Tamil media scene. Contemporary reporting on the licence contest noted that the people behind CMR had been active in the city's Tamil community for years, running a 24-hour SCMO radio service and a Tamil television channel, Tamil Vision, carried on the Rogers digital network. In a crowded competition — about a dozen applicants sought the Toronto ethnic FM opportunity, including established names such as CHIN Radio — the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission awarded the licence to Canadian Multicultural Radio on 17 April 2003, in Decision CRTC 2003-115. CMR's president at the time, Mohan Nadarajah, publicly thanked more than 20,000 individuals and groups who had supported the application, along with federal, provincial and municipal politicians from across the Greater Toronto Area.

The licence authorized a new ethnic FM station at 101.3 MHz with an effective radiated power of 440 watts. The station was to serve the area's South Asian communities first, while providing programming to at least 16 cultural groups in at least 22 languages each broadcast week, with at least 48 percent of ethnic programming in the Tamil, Hindi and Filipino languages. The 101.3 frequency itself had recently been vacated by CHIN, which had used it for an FM rebroadcaster filling gaps in its AM 1540 night-time signal and moved that service to 91.9 MHz in July 2003. On 30 June 2004 the regulator approved a technical change for the new station — power reduced from 440 to 373 watts, with an increase in antenna height — and CJSA-FM began on-air testing in mid-July 2004. Regular broadcasting started on 20 August 2004 from a facility in Scarborough, in Toronto's east end, and the station moved to its Etobicoke facility later the same year.

The station's licence history includes a compliance episode: in 2010 the CRTC gave CJSA-FM a short-term renewal, to 31 August 2013, saying an earlier review was warranted because the licensee may have failed to file annual returns for the 2005 through 2008 broadcast years as the Radio Regulations require. The more celebrated chapter of the station's history is technological. CJSA signed on HD Radio operations in December 2013, only the second Canadian station to use the technology, after CING-FM in Hamilton. In a letter to the regulator the station had described plans for as many as five HD subchannels, each in a different language for a different community. On 14 January 2014, at an event marking its tenth year of broadcasting, CMR launched a 24-hour Tamil service on HD2, described in its own announcement as Canada's first HD Radio programming launch, with the Hindi and Urdu service to follow on HD3 and the Punjabi service on HD4. The CRTC had approved the experiment in the summer of 2013, and its commissioner remarked at the launch that the trial would help the regulator assess how Canadians took to the technology.

Programming and Content

The main CJSA-FM channel is a shared schedule in the classic Toronto ethnic-radio pattern. Station program references list shows in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Macedonian — the program Voice of Macedonia — Malayalam, with Madhurageetham, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Somali, Tamil, Tagalog, with FilTown Radio, Telugu, with Morning Raaga, Tibetan, Twi and Urdu, with Radio Pakistan Toronto. Music carries much of the schedule, but the station's own description of its role emphasizes spoken word as well: a forum for debate and discussion, and an exchange of community, local, national and international news, events and culture. That combination — homeland music and news, Canadian civic information, religious and cultural programming, and community announcements — is what its listeners cannot get from mainstream Toronto radio.

Layered on top of that shared schedule are the HD services, and they change what the station can offer its biggest audiences. A Punjabi-speaking listener with an HD receiver is not limited to the Punjabi hours on the main channel: the HD4 subchannel carries Punjabi programming as a dedicated service, in the same way that HD2 carries Tamil around the clock and HD3 carries Hindi and Urdu. For the Punjabi community of the Greater Toronto Area — concentrated in cities such as Brampton and in Toronto's own neighbourhoods — HD4 is effectively a station within the station, with the main channel's community role delivered in one language, full-time.

The station's published profile also describes two community initiatives built around the broadcast schedule. Its annual event, CMR's Star Fest, is presented as a cross-cultural music festival showcasing Canadian performers from the communities the station serves, and as the platform for the CMR Star Search competition, whose winners were brought together to record an album produced and marketed by the station. The same station description says CMR donated $7,000 a year in awards and scholarships to the Humber College School of Media Studies to encourage interest in journalism, and spent over $45,000 a year promoting Canadian music talent through Star Fest. Those figures are the station's own published account of its community work, and they underline the dual role of an ethnic broadcaster in Toronto: a commercial radio service, and an institution inside the communities it broadcasts to.

Audience and Reach

Geographically, CJSA-FM is a Toronto signal with a Greater Toronto Area brief. Its transmitter sits atop First Canadian Place, the bank tower in the financial district, at an antenna height of 283 metres, which compensates in part for its low power: 373 watts average, 850 watts peak. The audience it was licensed to serve is the GTA's South Asian population first of all, and then the much wider circle of ethnic communities that share its schedule — Filipino listeners for Tagalog programming, Somali and Macedonian and Tibetan communities, and many others among the more than 20 groups the station says it serves in more than 24 languages.

For the HD4 service specifically, the relevant audience is the Punjabi-speaking population of the Greater Toronto Area within reach of the 101.3 signal and equipped with an HD Radio receiver, a qualification that has always limited HD subchannel listening in Canada, where the technology was adopted by very few stations. CMR's own station description has claimed a reach of well over a million listeners for the station as a whole; that is the broadcaster's own estimate, not an independently published ratings figure, and no verified audience measurement for CJSA-HD4 itself is published in the sources used for this profile, so none is asserted as fact here. What the regulatory and station record does establish is longevity and breadth: a licence won in a competitive process in 2003, continuous operation since August 2004, a schedule spanning dozens of languages, and a 2026 accessibility plan that describes the same multicultural service to the GTA at 101.3 MHz, in Tamil, Hindi and Filipino as well as many other ethnic languages.

Digital Presence

CMR's web presence is centred on its station sites, given in this directory as cmr24.net, which hosts current station documents including its January 2026 accessibility plan, while station listings also reference the cmr.fm address long associated with the station. Online listening to the main service is available through streaming directories such as Zeno.FM, which carry Canadian Multicultural Radio as a live stream, and the HD language services surface separately in radio apps and directories: Toronto radio app listings include distinct entries for CMR Diversity FM in Tamil, in Hindi and Urdu, and in Punjabi, matching the HD2, HD3 and HD4 split of the broadcast signal.

The station has also distributed a mobile app under the CMR Diversity FM 101.3 name, extending its own description of the service to phone listening. For an HD pioneer, this digital layer has a particular importance. HD Radio receivers never became common in Canadian homes and cars, so streaming and app availability are what make a service such as the Punjabi HD4 channel findable for listeners who do not own HD hardware but know the CMR name and the language they want. The pattern across the station's digital presence is consistent with its broadcast offer: one brand, CMR, holding several language services at once, with the Punjabi service identified by name rather than hidden inside a general stream.

Ownership and Organisation

The licensee of CJSA-FM is 3885275 Canada Inc., operating as Canadian Multicultural Radio — the corporate name the company itself uses in its January 2026 accessibility plan, where it describes CMR as a multicultural FM station serving the Greater Toronto Area at 101.3 MHz. Public references name Stanislaus Antony in connection with the station's ownership, and he was the station's chairman and chief executive when it launched its HD Radio services in January 2014, speaking at that launch about the company's decision to mark its tenth broadcast year with the HD experiment. The station's earlier public face was its president, Mohan Nadarajah, who led the successful 2003 licence application that grew out of the team's Tamil radio and television work in Scarborough.

Operationally, the station has been based in Etobicoke since late 2004, after its first months in Scarborough. Its 2014 HD announcement gave its address as 306 Rexdale Boulevard, and station references continue to place its studios on Rexdale Boulevard in Etobicoke, with the transmitter across the city on First Canadian Place. Its January 2026 accessibility plan gives a current mailing address of 2184 Kipling Avenue, Etobicoke, Ontario, M9W 4K9 — also in the city's west end, close to the Rexdale area — which is the address the company publishes for accessibility feedback, alongside the email swati@cmr.fm and the telephone number 647-830-5042. The organisation behind the HD4 Punjabi service is therefore the same small, independent Toronto licensee that runs the main channel: CMR is not a network repeater, but a single-city broadcaster that used HD technology to multiply the services one licence could offer.

Contact and Availability

CMR broadcasts on 101.3 FM in Toronto, and the Punjabi service profiled here is available on the CJSA-HD4 digital subchannel to listeners with HD Radio receivers within the station's Greater Toronto Area coverage. The main service can also be heard through the live streams carried by online radio directories, and through the station's web presence at cmr24.net. For accessibility requests and feedback, the station's January 2026 accessibility plan names its contact as swati@cmr.fm by email, 647-830-5042 by telephone, and 2184 Kipling Avenue, Etobicoke, Ontario, M9W 4K9 by mail; those details are published for accessibility purposes and are the most current contact information the station itself has posted. General program times change as community producers rotate through the shared main-channel schedule, so listeners seeking a specific language or program on 101.3 should check the station's current program listings, while HD4 listeners can expect the dedicated Punjabi service whenever they tune in with an HD receiver.