Despite widespread opposition against that deal, the known existence of at least four other serious and much less controversial contenders to buy the Radiomédia stations, and numerous allegations to the effect that Corus Entertainment's offer was actually part of a larger plan to prevent any meaningful competition to its new FM talk format (as Corus seemed to try to weaken and steal listeners from CKAC and not from the increasingly popular CBF-FM, and its sales representatives claimed to clients that they would be better advised to buy advertising at CHMP-FM and not CKAC as they pretended the latter was going to close shortly no matter what would happen), the deal was approved in January 2005 by the CRTC in the midst of strong rumours that Astral Media would close CKAC if the deal was not approved. The deal took effect a few months later after a failed attempt by CKAC employees to appeal the decision to the Federal Cabinet.