Pssst.. Want To Learn A Little Bit About Radio?

By Ben Meisner

If you have been listening to the radio lately and you are finding that there is an extraordinary number of contests, all designed to get you tune into a particular station, you are right.

The ratings are on and commercial radio is hoping that you get a ballot from the BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement) and you will fill it out in their favour. The rating period by the way will be over around the end of October just before all of winning will take place.

It does of course produce a misleading  result in that it doesn’t reflect the true audience on a normal day to day basis.  But, the BBM numbers of who is listening to whom when,  is the "Bible" when it comes to National advertising.  For example, companies like Kellogg’s, Kraft, Wendy’s and a host of others,  buy advertising  on what is referred to as  a "point". If you have a good rating you get paid more for the ad, then say if your number four in a four station market. By the way, if your number four in the market they may pass on placing any business with you.

So in the large markets they give away cars, homes, holidays, cash, whatever they can get their hands on , in PG (which is referred to as a middle market) holidays and other treats are the means of getting you to listen. Getting you to listen no matter how, means more money in the front door of the radio station.

Given that they are using these tactics are the results accurate?  You be the judge.  The CBC, which has a strong rating here, can’t get involved in buying up an audience so they are at your mercy. They have to play it straight.

In the old days of radio if you ran a contest during the rating period that looked like it had been tailored to,”make the book hot” ( i.e. garner lots of  numbers) BBM simply put an asterisk near your ratings saying that you had fudged the numbers by using a contest. That doesn’t happen in this day and age and everyone uses this ploy.

You may have noticed  recently that a couple of the stations (94-x and the Wolf) who had good rating periods in the last few books were running ads saying just how good they really are in listenership . For example the Drive and the River were at the bottom of the pack in the last rating period (known as the book) so they weren’t out peddling their rating numbers. They have some very good contests going  in an effort to get you on board for the fall "book".

When I first got into the radio business your job depended on having a decent rating without a contest to help. If you didn’t get a good rating, you would be out of work, and waiting for the ratings to come in was scary as hell. One day you were a hero, the next an unemployed bum if the people didn’t listen.

Today because of the low numbers a lot of stations simply go out and try and sell advertising, they don’t talk about the ratings. As a matter of fact, most of the staff never ever even get to look at a BBM rating , that sits in the hands of the upper crust, who are either fearful that the word will get out , or fearful  of what the results hold.

Did I ever say that the media were squeaky clean?

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.   

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