Radio Ratings: One Man's Opinion

Wednesday, December 06, 2006 03:45 AM

Unless you had your head under your wing, those in the radio business should have taken time to read the comments from readers about the state of the business a week or so ago.

It painted a very clear picture of what is happening in the industry with respect to satellite radio, and the listeners in this region.

This weeks radio ratings released by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement tell the same story.

The figures from BBM, in which 720 ballots were sent out,and the results were for the ages 12+ Monday through Sunday 5:00 am to 1:00 am. The biggest drop in listeners occured with, "The River " it went from a market share of 16.3% to 10.4%, a one third drop in audience.

The bright spot in all the ratings was “The Wolf” (old CJCI) which went from 23.5% to 29.4 % .
Now over at the Drive. They are saying that they got a bad book. Too many old people got ballots and all of those old people like Country Music. I would suggest the powers that be go to the next BBM convention to learn how they do these calculations.

BBM goes to great lengths to ensure they do not have too many people reply in any age bracket. They also go to special pains to even out the ballots if too many from a certain age bracket are received. A lot of people rely on the results of the radio ratings across Canada and BBM does a very good job of ensuring that the results reflect the listening. If anyone in the industry has trouble understanding this, they will come away understanding that what you got, is exactly is what you had.

The comments to this paper made it quite plain when readers wrote, satellite and poor offerings, are the reason for the slips in radio, plain and simple.

CBC grabbed a 15.8 % share of the audience by offering up a talk format in the morning reaching out to wide spectrum of listeners. They are not given money to buy an audience during the ratings, Mother Corp won’t allow it. So that reflects a pretty accurate picture.

In the end when a station loses one third of its audience I wonder aloud whether they go out to their advertisers and offer to sell them ads at one third off.

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

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Posted on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 03:45 AM in Views by Ben Meisner

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Comments

Posted by: gonefishing on December 6 2006 11:24 AM

I think a good question is, will this make a difference? I Doubt it. Re-brand a radio station from bubble-gum rock to Adult Contemporary and give it a new name that in itself can put you to sleep...does nothing. The fact of the matter is, you rely on your talent to bring in the money, I've listened to plenty of radio stations over the years that played music that doesn't particularly appeal to me because the on air talent made for an enjoyable experience. Kudo's to the morning show on the Wolf...again, not my choice of music necessarily, but I can appreciate the on air talent.

Posted by: MoneKate on December 6 2006 12:05 PM

What a surprise, first they change to FM from AM, you can listen to AM for 100 mile radius, FM just outside city limits. Management from these stations should really listen to the people. I have bought 2 satellite radios for work and personal car. I don't like country, hard rock and roll, I like soft easy listening music, when Am 550 was on that was perfect music. I listen to CBC from 5:30 to 10:00 or so then satellite the rest of the day. I can stream the satellite music on my home computer, so the radio is NEVER on.

Posted by: duffer on December 6 2006 5:35 PM

As I sit here listening to my Sirius radio on the internet while typing this I think about the past few years of radio. I am a diehard country fan, and listened to C101 from the day they came on the air until they switched to the format they have now. I started listening to CJCI and would switch over to CKPG to listen to the Meisner show every day. Now there is no talk show, and the WOLF has changed to country and so-called southern rock, so the music, as far as I am concerned, is only half good. I don't know why they need two people to run the morning show either. For years you only had one person to do this. Where is Al Saville when you need him?

Posted by: Zar on December 6 2006 11:39 PM

One thing commercial radio and CBC do not do well is provide Internet access for news and talk radio for those of us who reside outside of the Northern BC region. When traveling through the area I enjoy hearing the news and talk from Prince Rupert to Prince George. CBC really falls down in terms of not providing regional Internet streaming access for regional news and commentary feeds.

CBC Whitehorse, with its small populaton is provided much better coverage of their region than CBC Northern British Columbia does.

Certainly it isn't that expensive or overly technical to stream a regional feed. CBC should be ashamed of its neglect for this important region of BC. Perhaps its is the over inflated view that the southern CBC is what everyone wants to hear. Canada has much more to offer than just urban coverage of areas hugging the southern border.

This same neglect is evident with Standard Radio in the North. No streaming coverage available, yet it is ubiquitous in the southern part of Canada. This disparity is indefensible. Prince George radio to my understanding is just as bereft of local radio streaming too. Too bad, there is a tremendous amount of important regional news that is beng kept to just the Northern BC region.