Radio Challenges: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

        
On Dec 5th, the latest radio ratings for this region will be released.

The survey was taken back in October, when all of the contests were on as a means of trying to get you to listen to a particular station. It is an age old practice in the business in which the radio station is attempting to be able to top up its audience therefore adding to its sales ability.

Last year I celebrated 50 years in the news business, the majority of it in Radio and TV.  With that, comes (if nothing else) an ability to say that you have seen it come and go.

Unless my reasoning is completely amiss, all of the radio stations in PG, save perhaps the CBC, can look for a decline in audience.

Oh they still will be trying to be number one, two, or three, but they all have been on a slippery slope due, in at least some measure, to some bad calculations by themselves.

While FM radio was the buzz of the day, no consideration was given to the fact that when switching to all FM in this region,  once you get out of town oh say  35 kilometers, you’re without a signal .

There was an opportunity for CKPG to pick up a 50,000 watt AM transmitter sitting idle in Red Deer, but the brains of the day decided Stereo radio was the way to go.

Satellite radio was just coming on the scene but it was quite happy to fill that void and today in the central and northern part of the province it is growing like the Beetle epidemic.  If you add to that MP3 players, IPODs, cell phones with downloadable tunes, and of course a generation that is tuned out of news,  and it has all the ingredients for bad news for traditional broadcasting.

To make matter worse, the local radio businesses decided they wanted to attract that younger demographic so at least three of the stations were trying to out do one another as to who supplied the product the best.

In their efforts, they have decided to get rid of that information section, the section that put them where they are in the first place.

So there has been a reduction in news and public affairs but more music, in many cases, "canned" meaning there actually isn’t any announcer there, it is just an automatic tape running with a voice saying "that was, this is".  

Trying to find a warm body in the evening and weekend at any station is a bit of an effort.  It saves money for staff, it is easy to look after without the problems of trying to cover the news and it plain and simply makes you more money, and money in the end is what it’s all about.

Meantime the listeners who have supported you, those in their middle age who by the way are beginning to make up a major slice of Canada’s population, are left to look elsewhere.

Radio you see according to the heavies is supposed to reach the 25 to 54. I guess those over that age don’t have any money with which to buy or support advertising.
It also spills over to TV while stations don’t like to admit it, with a choice of  over 300 channels on one bird and 250 on the other, there are many times of the day when a small local TV outlet comes very close to having a couple of goose eggs for viewers.

A couple of weeks ago The Drive gave its evening sports talk program with Dan Russell the boot in favour of more music to appeal to a younger demographic, problem is with a couple of hundred stereo stations on either of the satellite birds  (without any commercials) and reception anywhere, are they going to increase that audience?  Not likely.

When I first entered this business, the 8.00p.m. nightly news was the most listened to news cast of the day.

You may remember when Walt Disney came on at 6, Ed Sullivan at 8 and Bonanza at 9, everyone sat in front of the tube, those days are long gone and the audience and viewers went with them.

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

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