From the North Country earthly in decline

Radio Ratings: One Man's Opinion

Ben Meisner
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 that was heard earlier from readers.

CKKN (now, the River) lost more than half of its audience going from 22.2 % of the listeners aged 12 and over, down to 10.4 %.

CKDV (the Old CKPG), Drive went from 23.1 % to 15.3%, a drop of 34%.
94-X went from 22.7% to 13.1 % nearly a 40% drop The bright spot in all the ratings was “The Wolf” (old CJCI) they remained number one at 29.4% down from 32% this past spring.

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 half of its audience I wonder aloud whether they go out to their advertisers and offer to sell them ads at half price?

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.
Posted on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 03:45 AM in Views by Ben Meisner