She was one of the rising stars of public broadcasting, but it wasn't until 98.5 that she was able to shine as a presenter. Starting next fall, Marie-Ève Tremblay will take the 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. slot currently occupied by Nathalie Normandeau during the week. The latter, as we learned before the holidays, will form a tandem with Luc Ferrandez in another time slot.
Published at 10:00 am.
“I have done many exciting things throughout my career, but I admit that this proposal satisfies me to the highest degree,” Marie-Ève Tremblay told me during an interview I conducted with her at the Cogeco offices led.
Marie-Ève Tremblay has been part of the 98.5 team since fall 2022. After ten years in digital service and Radio-Canada radio, she decided to take the plunge by agreeing to become a staff member for Bernard Drainville.
However, the day after this announcement, she learned that the presenter would be leaving the airwaves to return to politics. She finally teamed up with Luc Ferrandez, who was taking his first steps as a host at the time.
Last summer, 98.5 bosses asked him to host the show, which follows the daily morning show. This led to Radio Textos, an event whose same colors were to be found next August. “The show I will host will allow me to have one foot in current events and the other in social issues. That's what interests me the most. »
Anyone who has followed Marie-Ève Tremblay for years knows that her approach is based on field experience. She often uses suggestions made to her by “ordinary people”. An example ? A truck driver recently asked him to drive into the city with him to observe the behavior of drivers from his vehicle's perspective.
“I saw a woman driving with a cigarette in one hand, a coffee in the other and her cell phone on her thigh. I couldn’t believe it,” she told me.
This presenter and journalist, trained at the Jonquière School of Media Art and Technology and UQAM, quickly understood that the best reporting topics must come directly from the person reporting on them. Above all, they must be inspired by the reality of citizens.
After an internship at the show Enquêtes, where she covered current issues in local politics, she became one of the regular columnists on the morning shows of Ici Première (she worked with Marie-France Bazzo, Alain Gravel and Patrick Masbourian). She is often in contact with listeners. She listens to their concerns.
When people began saying that work on the old Champlain Bridge would disrupt citizens' lives, she decided to create an interactive map based on the experiences of workers downtown and on the Rive. -South.
This preference for reports that are based on the reality of the listener led him to have a variety of “social experiences” that formed the basis of the web show Cordessensibles. “I looked for apartments using my name and an Arabic-sounding name,” she explains.
Another time, she pasted fake posters with a nationalistic flavor and others conveying woke values on the walls of UQAM to test freedom of expression in the university environment. “I asked a teacher every day what treatment we planned for the posters. A Palestinian advocacy group condemned the nationalist posters and called on social media for the cancellation of my (fictional) conference because they considered it racist. »
Afterwards, Marie-Ève Tremblay became one of the standard bearers for podcasts on public radio. This gave rise to Radical, a series about people who took extremist positions and made a 180-degree turn, Secrets, in which men and women reveal things they had always kept to themselves, Worst Idea of My Life: Sugar Baby, about the phenomenon of websites that connect young women with sugar daddies but are actually disguised prostitution networks, and “The Village: Murders, Brawls, Pride in the Gay Village of Montreal.”
“I’d like to know what I’m talking about,” she says. I have to check, I have to meet people. »
After ten years in public radio, Marie-Ève Tremblay received an offer to join the Cogeco family. The separation from Radio-Canada was amicable. “They tried to hold me back, but my idea was made up. »
Seven months before the start of this new show, I sensed that the young host was already feverish. Multiple wires need to be connected. Will there be cooperation partners? If yes, which? How will we engage listeners? All of this still remains to be done.
Meanwhile, the one who comes from Chicoutimi is enjoying this moment. She is visibly floating on a cloud. “Think about it, it is a niche that has been occupied on various airwaves by extraordinary women such as Christiane Charette, Catherine Perrin, Marie-France Bazzo, Isabelle Marechal and Nathalie Normandeau. And that's what they offer me. »