was tired of dealing with political issues such as the Constitution and also "le poisson de Terre-Neuve" ("fish from Newfoundland"; April's Fool day is known in French as "Poisson d'Avril" -- "Fish of April"). Seemingly unoriginal at first glance, the prank was made famous by the fact that it succeeded in catching provincial Liberal leader Claude Ryan off-guard, as he quickly congratulated Trudeau for his long career, this right in the middle of a provincial election campaign. CKVL converted to AM stereo on February 27, 1989, but technical difficulties resulted in it never being properly implemented. The station would revert to mono in 1995. The station implemented drastic budget cuts in 1990, which resulted in the number of unionized employees fall from 76 to 18, although CKVL did manage to recruit a new morningman by poaching Pierre Pascau from CKAC. The station's newsroom was also closed, effective in May 1991, with news being subsequently supplied by the Canadian Press NTR audio service. While these changes helped to stop financial losses, they would prove insufficient to actually get the station profitable. Post-Tietolman era CKVL and sister station CKOI-FM were sold to Metromedia CMR in 1992. That company, owned by Pierre Arcand and Pierre Béland, already owned CIQC and CFQR-FM—two stations that Jack Tietolman coincidentally tried to buy in 1963, with approval being refused by governmental authorities. One of Tietolman's last acts as owner was to sign controversial host André Arthur as midday host on CKVL. CKVL applied to move to FM on 95.1 MHz in 1996, despite the fact that the CRTC still generally forbade owners at the time to operate more than one FM station per market, in an attempt to solve its coverage problems. The application was denied on July 4, 1997, and the 95.1 MHz frequency was awarded to Société Radio-Canada, which moved CBF there from its 690 kHz clear channel frequency. Some important programming changes were implemented in 1998. André Arthur became morningman in January (he also continued to be heard during middays). In July, evening host Roger Drolet was fired, and Gaétan Bacon was hired to do an oldies music show during weekday afternoons. Later that year, CKVL applied to move to 690 kHz. CKVL changed its plans numerous times regarding the future format of the station: initially, no particular change was planned, then the station planned to move to a news-focused talk format, and the