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Digital Radio festival in Outaouais returns for 7th edition

Sophie Demers

The 7th edition of the Festival de la Radio Numérique (FRN) organized by local business and podcast producers Transistor Media will take place April 28 to 30. The event will gather an estimated 2000 to 3000 festival goers to enjoy and discover live podcast recordings, round tables, digital artists and new this year there will be more children and family shows and entertainment.

The shows and events throughout the weekend will take place at Cabaret de la Basoche, Centre Aydelu, and Microbrasserie 5e Baron all in the heart of Aylmer.

“On Saturday April 29, we are having a family and children’s day with various activities and shows for kids and their families,” said Julien Morissette, artistic director and co-founder of Transistor Media. “More and more we felt that young people want to discover and listen to kids podcasts and audio entertainment and we wanted to offer a dedicated day for families to participate in the festival.”

Some of these activities include Passe-Partout: les rigolades, Lotus et Cali, and El Kapoutchi along with many more.

This year's festival is presented by Amazon Music. “We noticed that more platforms where podcasts are listened to are interested in what we’re doing here in Aylmer and throughout Quebec,” said Morissette. “This partnership allows us to have an even bigger festival and present our projects on the Amazon music platform.”

Some of the events throughout the weekend include Sans Filtre Podcast and Couple Ouvert will be having live recordings on the Friday. Tout le monde s’haït is back this year, the podcast was awarded the 2022 Olivier Award for comedy podcast without script. There are many more events to discover the complete programing can be found on the website https://www.festivalradionumerique.com/programmation

The majority of the events are free. The events that do have paid tickets are $25 or under. “We make the majority of our projects in Aylmer and we enjoy working with the community and partnering with local businesses. The festival is also a way to give back to our community by creating accessible and free activities,” said Morissette.

Transistor Media was founded in 2017 and is an organization that develops both documentary and fiction podcasts on a national and international scale. Aylmer residents may remember their past projects such as the Old Aylmer haunted walk and “Hauntées” a podcast series that was loosely based on reports from the Aylmer History Society archived and testimonies from local residents.

Photo 1: Poster for the Festival de la Radio Numérique (FRN)

Photo 2 credit: Courtesy of Festival de la Radio Numérique.

Photo 2 caption: Live event from previous edition of the Festival de la Radio Numérique