About Telile

Telile

Overview

Telile is the community television station of Isle Madame, a small Acadian island off the southeastern coast of Cape Breton in Richmond County, Nova Scotia. Broadcasting as CIMC-TV from Arichat, the island's largest community, the station is owned and operated by a non-profit community association, the Telile: Isle Madame Community Television Association (Association télévision communautaire de l'Île Madame), rather than by a cable company — an arrangement the Canadian Communications Foundation singles out as unusual among Canadian community channels. It is one of the country's few independently licensed, community-owned television stations, holding its own CRTC broadcasting licence as a low-power, community-based television undertaking.

The station broadcasts in English and French for a bilingual island whose residents are largely of Acadian descent. Isle Madame itself is home to about 3,100 people (3,136 in the 2021 census), concentrated in Arichat, D'Escousse and Petit-de-Grat, and Telile's programming — local news, municipal affairs, candidate debates, community events, Acadian culture and televised bingo — is built entirely around that small audience and the wider Strait of Canso area.

History

The Telile association was formed in 1994. According to the Canadian Communications Foundation's station history, it began with a full-time program of training in television production and then became an operating non-profit company, broadcasting its signal on the local cable system as a community-owned organization rather than as a service of the cable operator. The decisive step came on 17 February 2000, when the CRTC, in Decision 2000-46, approved the association's application for a broadcasting licence for a new English- and French-language low-power television station at Isle Madame, on channel 10 with a transmitter power of 50 watts. The Commission's decision recorded the association's initial plan to broadcast about 15 hours per week — five hours of original programming, repeated twice — consisting of a 50-minute original feature presentation, TV bingo, community meetings and sporting events, along with some programming obtained from other communities and alphanumeric advertising with background audio in both languages. Programming was to be 85 per cent English and 15 per cent French at the outset, with the French share to rise to 25 to 30 per cent over time to meet the needs of the Acadian population.

A further CRTC approval followed in October 2002, for the community-based service at an effective radiated power of 450 watts, and the Foundation's history records CIMC-TV signing on over the air on channel 10 in June; the station operated from Arichat, on the southeast coast of Cape Breton, with studios and offices noted at 705 Lower Road in Arichat in 2006. The station's licence has been renewed in successive CRTC proceedings since, most recently in Broadcasting Decision 2020-231, which renewed CIMC-TV's licence from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2025 and, noting the small size and limited means of the station, kept in place its exemption from the usual program-log retention requirements; the same decision required it to implement the National Public Alerting System by 1 September 2021.

Programming and Content

Telile's schedule remains what its founders proposed: locally made programming for Isle Madame and the Strait area. A 2018 community profile of Isle Madame published by the Conseil de développement économique de la Nouvelle-Écosse described the service as providing general information and local programming — arts and crafts, music, painting, plays, shows and festivals — as well as Acadian and francophone programs from other Acadian regions of the province, such as Chéticamp, whose own community station, CHNE-TV, is Telile's closest counterpart.

News and civic journalism have become the station's signature work. Its news programs include TELILE 24/7, a current-affairs show and podcast; Roundtable; Strait Talk, an interview program hosted by station manager Becky Bourinot and produced by civic journalist Jake Boudrot; and The Record, a local news magazine whose episodes cover Richmond County municipal council and community events. The station's election coverage is extensive for its size: for the November 2024 Nova Scotia provincial election it hosted a four-candidate debate for the Richmond riding in Arichat and produced pre-election specials with candidate interviews. Strait Talk's episode numbering documents a long-running, continuing production — episode 41, an interview with interim provincial Liberal leader Derek Mombourquette about the party's January 2025 critic appointments, was followed in the Community Media Portal's listings by episodes in the high 50s, including an episode built around the Atlantic hurricane season forecast, while The Record had likewise passed its fifty-fifth episode. TV bingo, part of the station's original 2000 program plan, is a traditional staple of the schedule.

That journalism has been supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, the federal program administered for community television by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS): LJI journalist Adam Cooke hosted TELILE 24/7 during his tenure at the station, Jake Boudrot has worked as its civic journalist, and the station added French-language civic coverage through LJI journalist Gabrielle Samson, an Isle Madame native. The station's news work has drawn notice from the area's elected officials; the Community Media Portal has carried an account of Cape Breton-Canso MP Mike Kelloway praising the Telile news team's standards during a studio visit, telling Bourinot, "You build a sense of community here, and that's what we need to do more of."

Audience and Reach

Telile's home audience is Isle Madame's roughly 3,100 residents and the surrounding Strait of Canso communities. The 2018 community profile records how the station could be watched at that time: on Eastlink cable channel 4 on Isle Madame, over the air on channel 10, on Seaside Communications' cable network on channel 63 as far as the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, and elsewhere in Canada on Bell Satellite channel 536 and Bell Fibe channel 17 — a national satellite footprint unusual for a station of its size, though the profile is dated and channel positions may have changed since. No audience ratings are published for the station, and none are claimed here; its significance is civic rather than commercial, as the only locally produced television service for its island.

Digital Presence

The station's website is telile.tv. Much of its journalism also reaches viewers through the national Community Media Portal operated by CACTUS, which streams Telile productions — TELILE 24/7, Strait Talk and The Record among them — on demand alongside the output of other Canadian community media organizations, and TELILE 24/7 is also distributed in podcast form. That portal presence means the station's council coverage, interviews and election programming remain publicly viewable well beyond its cable and broadcast footprint.

Ownership and Organisation

The licensee is the Telile: Isle Madame Community Television Association, a non-profit, community-owned organization controlled by its members and board — the model the CRTC's community television framework reserves for independent community services. The operation is small: the 2018 community profile listed a full-time business manager, a production and sales administrator and a production officer, plus a student hired for the summer, with Jason David named as the association's president in that profile. In more recent coverage, Becky Bourinot appears as the station's general manager — she also hosts Strait Talk — working with a small team that has included the Local Journalism Initiative journalists named above. Volunteers and community participation have been part of the model since the association's 1994 start as a production-training organization.

Contact and Availability

Telile broadcasts over the air on channel 10 from Arichat and is carried on cable and satellite systems serving Isle Madame and the Strait area, with programming also streamed through its website, telile.tv, and the Community Media Portal. The station's published contact details, as listed in the 2018 Isle Madame community profile, are Telile Community Television, 17 Conney's Lane, P.O. Box 87, Arichat, Nova Scotia B0E 1A0, telephone 902-226-1928, with email at telile@telile.tv; those details are reproduced from that published profile and may have changed since it appeared.