Numeris released its fall metered radio ratings last week, and as usual you can play around with the numbers all you want, but it’s clear there has been am impact on the ratings, particularly for The Beat 92.5 but also for Virgin Radio 95.9, that started around the time we went into lockdown. Both stations lost about a third of their audience since the spring.
Average minute audience, anglophone Montrealers 12+, Aug. 31 to Nov. 29:
- CJAD 800: 12,200
- The Beat 92.5: 7,000
- CHOM 977: 5,500
- Virgin 95.9: 3,500
- CBC Radio One: 3,300
- CBC Music: 1,500
- TSN 690: 1,400
- 98,5fm: 1,000
- Rythme 105,7: 800
- ICI Radio-Canada Première: 600
CHOM and CJAD have slightly negative trendlines but have managed to hold their own during the pandemic. CHOM remains rated better than Virgin, while CJAD is still the highest-rated English-language station among anglophones, with a stronger share but fewer listeners on average than it had in 2016-18.
Also of note is that CBC Music, formerly Radio Two, has been improving its numbers in Montreal, and had edged out TSN 690 in overall audience. That doesn’t mean TSN is doing horribly, though. The Canadiens’ playoff run this summer prevented it from hitting a summer low as deep as it saw in 2018, and even though the team hasn’t played this fall, it remains on par with ratings in fall 2018 and 2017.
Among francophones, 98,5fm remains unsurprisingly the top-rated station. The average minute audience (12+) ranks as such:
- 98,5fm: 32,600
- ICI Radio-Canada Première 95,1: 23,000
- 105,7 Rythme FM: 20,400
- CKOI 96,9: 13,800
- 107,3 Rouge: 12,700
- Énergie 94,3: 11,700
- CHOM 97.7: 8,100
- ICI Musique 100,7: 6,700
- The Beat 92.5: 5,900
- Virgin Radio 95.9: 4,900
- WKND 99,5: 2,600
- 91,9 Sports: 1,200
- CBC Music: 1,000
- TSN 690: 600
- CJAD 800: 400
Of course, that didn’t stop Bell from declaring victory, saying Énergie was the top-rated station in Montreal, based on counting only those ages 25-54 (the money demo for advertisers). Rythme FM countered that it was the highest-rated music station (using the “big number”), listing all the time periods it is #1 and conveniently ignoring that time period before 8:30am.
The newest kid on the block, WKND 99.5, started slow out of the gate, and still hasn’t built up an audience to match what it saw as Radio Classique. That’s to be expected, as a new radio station takes a while, and the pandemic isn’t helping. It almost doubled its audience from the summer, and we can probably expect those numbers to slowly improve over the coming year.
Numeris cancelled its fall ratings for diary markets (Quebec City, Saguenay, Sherbrooke, Ottawa-Gatineau, etc.), so we’ll have to wait for next spring to find out how those stations are doing.