Montreal's next indie names, plus ska and blast beats.
CISM went on air on 7 October 1985 as a closed-circuit station on the Université de Montréal campus, its call letters short for Communication Information Sur la Montagne, and moved to 89.3 FM at noon on 14 March 1991. Students pay for most of it through a levy each session, and its double mandate is a springboard for artists the big media ignore and a school for the next broadcasters. It calls itself La Marge, and it won ADISQ's award for best campus station five times between 2019 and 2025.
Its weekly charts lean on Quebec's French-language indie pop and rock alongside English-language picks, and the specialist shows run from punk, ska and extreme metal to electronic, coldwave, hip hop, jazz, Jamaican music and country. Session live à CISM brings emerging artists into the studio for an hour, and talk shows on science, law, language and student life sit between them.
Built by students, heard by labels.
