Numeris released its quarterly PPM ratings last week, and I’m not completely sure how to headline this because there hasn’t been much change.

Here’s how it works out for English-language stations:

We see long-term declines continuing for CJAD and The Beat, the latter of which seems to have been hit hardest by the pandemic (probably because it’s long been a 9-to-5 at-work station), and we see that Virgin Radio remains not only behind CHOM among anglophones, but once again behind CBC Radio One as well.

TSN 690 had its best summer book in years, which may have something to do with the Canadiens playing in the Stanley Cup Final in July.

Continue reading →

Numeris released top-line data for its spring ratings period last week. There isn’t much new (CJAD still leads among all listeners, The Beat is still the top-rated music station), but a few things of note:

• CJAD 800 saw a third straight gain, and remains top-rated in the Montreal English-language market, but the overall trend remains downward as fewer people listen to radio.
• The Beat 92.5 tied for its worst performance in average minute audience in the past five years, and lost ground against Virgin, but still has almost twice the audience of Virgin among anglophones.
• CHOM 97.7 has been remarkably consistent over the past few years, retaining its audience as other stations lost theirs. We’ll see in the coming months whether the loss of Terry DiMonte will have an impact overall.
• Virgin 95.9 is still fighting it out with CBC Radio One for market share. You have to wonder how long Bell will let that go on before something dramatic happens. (Replacing its morning team clearly didn’t work.)
• The Canadiens’ good fortunes once again had a positive impact on TSN 690. (Six of the seven playoff games against the Leafs are included here.) In total average minute audience (anglo and franco combined) it had its best book since 2018.

• 98.5fm remains top-rated among francophones, and once again claims to be the most listened-to station in Canada. As the francophone rights holder for Canadiens games, the team’s performance had to help a bit.
• ICI Radio-Canada Première remains mostly stable, though lost some ground against 98.5
• 91.9 Sports continues to slowly build its audience but remains well below what it was in 2019. With the Canadiens playing late into the spring and maybe early summer, this station’s acquisition of rights to Montreal’s MLS team hasn’t captured peoples’ imagination.

• Rythme FM remains top-rated among francophone music stations, and appears to have slowed a long-term decline and held up against Rouge, CKOI and others.
• Rouge and CKOI had their lowest audience in at least five years, but continue to fight for second place with Énergie, which has remained pretty stable.
• Virgin 95.9 continues to do slightly better than The Beat 92.5 among francophones
• WKND 99.5 is still building its audience, but more slowly, and is still below what Radio Classique was in 2017 when it last subscribed to Numeris ratings.

• The overall audience for all measured stations is still low compared to pre-pandemic numbers.

Meanwhile, Numeris also released diary ratings recently, the first in a year after last fall’s report was cancelled due to pandemic complications.

Quebec City

Market share, central market 12+, spring 2021:

• ICI Radio-Canada Première 106,3: 22.8%
• CHOI Radio X 98.1: 18.8%
• FM93: 14.2%
• WKND 91.9: 11.7%
• M 102.9: 7.6%
• Rouge 107,5: 5.7%
• ICI Musique 95,3: 5.6%
• blvd 102,1: 2.0%
• Énergie 98,9: 1.7%
• Vibe 100,9: 1.5%
• CBC Radio One 104.7: 0.2%

Both Radio-Canada and CHOI saw a significant jump in share. Other stations went up or down a few points, but the biggest change was at Énergie, which dropped its talk format last summer and went back to rock to join the rest of the network. That decision was devastating to its ratings as it went from a 6.0% share to a 1.7% share in a year, losing that audience to CHOI and FM93.

Saguenay

Market share, central market 12+, spring 2021:

• KYK FM 95.7: 26.5%
• Rouge 96.9: 22.2%
• ICI Radio-Canada Première 93.7: 12.6%
• Énergie 94.5: 11.8%
• CKAJ-FM 92.5: 10.1%
• ICI Musique 100.9: 5.2%

In Saguenay, KYK climbed above Rouge to take the #1 spot among all audiences 12+. Community station CKAJ signed up for Numeris ratings, and found itself with a 10% share. ICI Musique saw its share almost double from 2.8% last year.

Sherbrooke

Market share, central market 12+, spring 2021:

• ICI Radio-Canada Première: 19.1%
• Énergie 106.1: 16.5%
• Rouge FM 102.7: 16.4%
• 107,7fm: 10.9%
• Rythme: 7.1%
• ICI Musique: 5.9%

In Sherbrooke, ICI Première took top spot over both Bell stations Énergie and Rouge, which are statistically tied. Meanwhile Rythme FM Estrie saw its share drop by almost half.

Trois-Rivières

Market share, central market 12+, spring 2021:

• Rythme 100,1: 14.2%
• ICI Première: 13.5%
• Rouge 94,7: 12.6%
• Énergie 102,3: 12.3%
• 106,9fm: 9.1%
• ICI Musique: 8.2%
• CKBN 90,5: 7.2%

In Trois-Rivières, less than two points separate the top four stations a year after Rouge led handily. Both Radio-Canada stations picked up a couple of points.

Ottawa-Gatineau franco

Market share, central market 12+, spring 2021:

• ICI Première: 21.7%
• Rouge 94,9: 14.4%
• 104,7fm: 9.7%
• WOW 97,1: 7.1%
• Énergie 104,1: 6.9%
• ICI Musique: 5.5%
• 106.1 CHEZ: 3.3%
• Move 100.3: 3.0%
• Hot 89.9: 2.5%
• Pure Country 94: 2.5%
• Lite 98.5: 2.0%
• Boom 99.7: 1.7%
• CBC Radio One: 1.7%
• CBC Music: 1.6%
• Kiss 105.3: 1.5%
• Pop 96.5: 1.2%
• Jump! 106.9: 1.2%

Among francophones in the national capital, the public broadcaster is back on top by a wide margin, followed by Bell’s Rouge, Cogeco’s talk station 104,7 and RNC Media’s Wow 97.1. RNC’s other station, Pop 96.5, remains in the chaff with the English-language music stations and below even CBC Radio One among francophones. Its 1,750-watt signal limits its upward mobility.

Ottawa-Gatineau anglo

Market share, central market 12+, spring 2021:

• CBC Radio One: 23.1%
• Move 100.3: 7.6%
• Hot 89.9: 7.5%
• CFRA 580: 7.1%
• CBC Music: 5.6%
• Boom 99.7: 5.3%
• 106.1 CHEZ: 5.2%
• Live 88.5: 3.7%
• Pure Country 94: 3.6%
• TSN 1200: 3.5%
• CityNews 1310/101.1: 3.2%*
• Kiss 105.3: 3.1%
• Lite 98.5: 3.1%
• Jump! 106.9: 1.9%
• Rebel 101.7: 1.6%
• Country 92.3: 1.3%
• ICI Musique: 1.0%

No surprise that CBC does best by a lot in Ottawa. CFRA slipped a couple of spots from last year, and Bell’s killing of the Majic 100 brand doesn’t seem to have hurt the station now called Move. Boom had a good book, going from 4.0% to 5.3% share, but otherwise most of the music stations stayed within a point of where they normally land in this very crowded market.

Meanwhile, Rogers’ shuffle is not a ratings winner so far. It went from a 9.1 share overall to a 7.6 share. CityNews gained one share point with its new FM simulcast, but the country station went from 3.5 points at 101.1 to 1.3 points on the much lower power 92.3, whose Smiths Falls signal doesn’t get into the city as well.

*The original version of this post had a typo in CityNews’s AM frequency.

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:

1. 98,5fm: 32,600
2. ICI Radio-Canada Première 95,1: 23,000
3. 105,7 Rythme FM: 20,400
4. CKOI 96,9: 13,800
5. 107,3 Rouge: 12,700
6. Énergie 94,3: 11,700
7. CHOM 97.7: 8,100
8. ICI Musique 100,7: 6,700
9. The Beat 92.5: 5,900
10. Virgin Radio 95.9: 4,900
11. WKND 99,5: 2,600
12. 91,9 Sports: 1,200
13. CBC Music: 1,000
14. TSN 690: 600
15. 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.

I had an idea for a blog post with a cool analysis showing the changes in radio listening because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It would show, through a bunch of number-crunching, that Canadians turned away from music radio stations as they stopped going to work, but kept in touch with news-talk stations.

Unfortunately, the data didn’t have my back here. I compared average minute audience measured by Numeris from this spring (March to May) versus last spring, and looked at the relative change in audience. While some news-talkers did well (98.5 and CJAD in Montreal), others did badly (CBC Radio One here and in some other cities).

There were some undeniable trends, though, and they aren’t terribly surprising:

Sports radio: Without sports, there’s much less interest in hearing it or talking about it. Every sports-talk station in Canada’s five largest markets lost audience, between 50% to 72%. Hardest hit was Montreal’s 91,9 Sports.

All-traffic stations were also hit, but because there are only two of them in Canada and they have very low audience, it’s hard to really quantify that.

Less listening overall: Montreal’s total average-minute audience was 202,600 a year ago, and 167,400 this spring, the lowest level since Numeris began publishing overall AMA numbers in 2015. Across Canada, the same deal, with each of the five major markets losing between 10 and 18% of its average audience.

So with that out of the way, here’s how the ratings break down by city:

Montreal

Total average minute audience, spring 2020 (vs. spring 2019):

1. 98,5fm: 38,900 (up from 32,000)
2. Rythme FM; 20,200 (down from 22,000)
3. ICI Radio-Canada Première: 18,700 (down from 21,800)
4. CJAD: 14,500 (up from 14,100)
5. CKOI: 12,300 (down from 19,000)
6. CHOM 97.7: 12,100 (down from 15,900)
7. The Beat 92.5: 11,600 (down from 17,200)
8. Rouge: 11,100 (down from 19,700)
9. Énergie 94,3: 8,300 (down from 11,700)
10. Virgin Radio 95.9: 6,700 (down from 9,700)
11. ICI Musique: 4,100 (down from 5,100)
12. CBC Radio One: 3,900 (down from 6,100)
13. CBC Music: 1,400 (down from 1,700)
14. CHRF AM 980: 1,400 (up from 500)
15. TSN Radio 690: 1,200 (down from 2,500)
16. 91,9 Sports: 900 (down from 3,300)
17. Radio Circulation 730: 100 (down from 300)

Of the 17 measured stations, only three (which I’ve bolded here) saw ratings increases from a year ago. One is CHRF, which has since shut down. The other two are commercial talk stations.

Anglo average minute audience:

1. CJAD: 13,500
2. The Beat: 6,800
3. CHOM: 5,600
4. CBC Radio One: 3,600
5. Virgin: 3,100
6. CBC Music: 1,200
7. TSN 690: 1,100
8. 98,5fm: 900
9. ICI Première: 700
10. Rythme: 600
11. Énergie: 600

Things got so bad for TSN Radio it dropped below CBC Music in terms of audience share, both among anglos and overall. Meanwhile, Virgin Radio is still behind CBC Radio One and less than half the audience of The Beat. “Montreal’s #1 Hit Music Station” is going to have to do more than replace its morning team to fix this disparity.

Self-congratulations

• 98,5fm: Top-rated station in Quebec
• Radio-Canada: 5 shows in the top 10
• Rythme FM: Top-rated music station in Montreal, #1 at work
• CKOI: Top-rated music station among adults 25-49
• Rouge: Top-rated French-language show in Canada
• Énergie: Top-rated music station among men 25-54
• 91,9 Sports: (Nothing)
• The Beat: #1 among adults 25-54, top rated shows in middays, afternoons and weekend afternoons
• Virgin: (Nothing)
• CHOM: (Nothing)
• CJAD: (Nothing)
• TSN: (Nothing)

Toronto

Biggest gains:

1. Jazz.FM91: 28%*
2. Q107: 22%
3. CHFI: 17%
4. CBC Radio One: 14%

Biggest losses:

1. TSN Radio 1050: 67%
2. Sportsnet 590: 67%
3. G98.7: 53%*
4. Virgin Radio: 48%
5. Jewel 88.5: 48%
6. Energy 95.3: 43%*
7. Zoomer AM740: 41%

*Station-specific issues probably had a bigger role in these changes: Internal turmoil at Jazz FM and G98.7, and a format change at Energy (formerly Fresh 95.3).

Calgary

Biggest gains:

1. CBC Music: 38%
2. 101.5 Today: 32%
3. Funny 1060: 25%

Biggest losses:

1. Sportsnet 960: 50%
2. 90.3 AMP: 50%
3. Virgin Radio: 36%

Edmonton

Biggest gains:

1. 840 CFCW: 39%
2. CBC Radio One: 10%

Biggest losses:

1. TSN 1260: 61%
2. Kiss 91.7: 37%
3. CISN Country: 35%
4. 95.7 Cruz FM: 34%
5. 102.3 Now!: 32%

Vancouver

Biggest gains:

1. CBC Music: 57%
2. Peak 102.7: 48%
3. JRfm: 37%
4. Global News Radio: 37%
5. BNN Bloomberg: 33%*

Biggest losses:

1. Sportsnet 650: 71%
2. AM730 (Traffic): 70%*
3. Rock 101: 34%
4. CBC Radio One: 33%
5. TSN 1040: 23%

*Stations with very low audience will see exaggerated relative changes.

Numeris has released its top-line PPM ratings data for Nov. 25 to Feb. 23.

The numbers for Montreal show little change from the previous quarter, or the past few years, really, with CJAD at the top among anglophones and CHMP-FM 98,5 ahead among francophones.

This lack of change is bad news for Virgin Radio 95.9, which spent a lot of effort promoting its new morning show hosted by Vinny Barrucco and Shannon King. We’re two full quarters into this change and The Beat still has twice the audience of Virgin. The sacking of program director Mark Bergman (who’s now at The Beat) and Freeway and Natasha haven’t moved the overall numbers.

Meanwhile, down the hall at CJAD, the long-term trend continues downward. In 2015, the average minute audience overall (averaged over 24/7) was 15,000. Now it’s around 12,000.

The Beat, CBC, CHOM and TSN 690 have kept about flat over that time, and haven’t shown any major change this winter.

Numeris PPM quarterly radio ratings are out. Montreal anglo market share (12+):
CJAD: 24.6%
The Beat 92.5: 20.8%
CHOM 97.7: 11.3%
Virgin 95.9: 9.3%
CBC Radio One: 8.2%
TSN 690: 3.9%
Rythme FM: 2.3%
Énergie: 2.1%
CBC Radio Two: 1.9%https://t.co/Lbj0ecDno3

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) March 4, 2020

On the francophone side, Rythme FM is continuing to re-establish itself as the dominant music station after facing more competition from Rouge, and 98,5fm is holding off Radio-Canada.

Horn-tooting

• CJAD: Most listened-to station in anglo market
• The Beat: #1 among anglos 25-54, more than twice Virgin’s ratings in major categories
• Virgin: (silence so far)
• CHOM: (silence so far)
• TSN 690: (silence so far)
• 98,5fm: Highest-rated radio station in Quebec
• Rythme: #1 francophone music station in terms of weekly reach, #1 music morning show, #1 noon show
• Rouge: Véronique et les Fantastiques is the most-listened-to afternoon drive show
• CKOI: 2.1 million listeners a week, better than Énergie
• Énergie: #1 among francophone men 25-54

Meanwhile, in Toronto, TSN 1050 finally beat Sportsnet’s 590 The Fan with its morning and afternoon shows (among men 25-54 anyway), which Toronto Sports Media notes has a lot to do with how unstable The Fan’s lineup has been.

Numeris released its quarterly ratings report for metered markets on Wednesday, and for Montreal the only surprising thing is how much The Beat continues to dominate over Virgin Radio. With a 21.5% share, it has more than twice the average listeners than Virgin Radio at 9.4%. And not only it it the fourth straight quarter that The Beat has been more than twice Virgin’s share, it’s the third straight where Virgin has fallen behind CHOM for third place among English music stations.

The 21.5% share is The Beat’s highest since it launched in 2011, and less than four points below perennial leader CJAD 800. Could we see a future where The Beat isn’t just the most popular music station and the most popular among that advertiser-friendly 25-54 audience, but among all ages and formats as well?

The book is more bad news for Virgin Radio, which tried to turn things around by letting go of program director Mark Bergman (he’s now at The Beat) and morning hosts Freeway Frank and Natasha Gargiulo and stealing Vinny Barrucco back from The Beat to lead its new morning show. The Beat’s morning show, headed by Vinny’s former co-host Nikki Balch, is still ahead. It’s still early — this is the first full book with Barrucco hosting the morning show with Shannon King — but they have a lot of ground to cover, and Virgin has lost a lot of ground that it has to make up.

TSN 690 is at the bottom of the anglo commercial radio pack, but it had its best share since 2017. CBC Radio One, meanwhile, which had good numbers from 2017 until this spring, has fallen back below 7% in market share.

On the francophone side, the top line hasn’t changed much, except for a rebound for CHMP-FM 98.5 (which always tends to dip in the summer with replacement hosts and less news), and a drop for CKOI 96.9.

Bragging rights

• The Beat 92.5: “Our best results ever!”
• CJAD 800: “#1 station & 7 of top 10 shows”
• 98,5fm: “L’équipe la plus écoutée à Montréal!”
• Rythme FM 105,7: Highest reach, top music station
• Rouge 107.3: #1 among adults 25-54
• Énergie 94,3: #1 music station among men 25-54
• CKOI 96,9: Top-rated music morning show among 25-54
• Radio-Canada: 3 of top 5 shows, morning show up 9%

Numeris came out with its quarterly metered market radio ratings last week. Here’s the top-line data.

I’ll start by pointing out that this is the winter period, covering the Christmas holidays, when radio listening habits are a bit out of the ordinary. But even if you do a year-over-year comparison, two changes are noteworthy.

On the anglo side, The Beat is continuing to pull away from its main competitor Virgin Radio. Among anglophone audiences, The Beat had a higher average audience this winter than Virgin and CHOM combined.

Continue reading →

Numeris released its quarterly ratings for the Montreal market last week, covering the period of Feb. 26 to May 27. There isn’t much new among the anglophone or francophone markets in terms of market share, but the numbers give us another data point to look at some longer-term trends.

Continue reading →

Market share (% of listening hours) in Quebec City’s central market (data by Numeris)

It shouldn’t come as big a surprise as some are making it, but ICI Radio-Canada Première is the top-rated station in Quebec City, both in terms of listening market share (above) and total listeners in the central market, according to data released by Numeris on Thursday.

Three talk radio stations — RadCan, Cogeco’s FM93 and RNC Media’s CHOI Radio X — have been battling for top spot for the past few years, and FM93 has come out on top recently. But in this ratings period (measured Feb. 26 to April 22), it suddenly drops to third. RadCan, meanwhile, climbs to first while CHOI remains mostly stable.

Among the music stations, another sudden shift means Leclerc Communications’ WKND jumps to top spot ahead of Bell’s Rouge FM, which seems to be in a long, slow decline. The remaining stations’ shares are mostly the same as they have been. (Note that, as in Montreal, Radio Classique stopped reporting Numeris ratings after last spring.)

Continue reading →

Numeris has released its top-line data from diary radio markets (mid-size cities that aren’t big enough to be measured by electronic meters). Here are some highlights:

Quebec City

Overall market share:

1. FM93: 14.9%
2. CHOI: 13.7%
3. ICI Première: 13.5%
4. Rouge: 9.7%
5. WKND: 7.6%
6. Énergie: 7.4%
7. M: 7.3%
8. Pop: 6.1%
9. Blvd: 5.7%
10. ICI Musique: 4.1%
11. CBC: 0.4%

By owner:

1. Cogeco: 22.2%
2. RNC Media: 19.8%
3. CBC/Radio-Canada: 18%
4. Bell: 17.1%
5. Leclerc: 13.3%

Compared to the spring, FM93 and Radio-Canada have lost some ground and CHOI has regained it to climb into second place overall. There was some shifting of the order, but the biggest change was to RNC Media’s Pop 100.9, which doubled its share. The last ratings period came just after they switched from rock to pop, which caused a dramatic decrease in ratings. Now they’re better than the 4.8% share they had a year ago as a rock station.

More coverage from the Journal de Québec and Le Soleil. Among the details noted, CHOI continues to do better in the suburbs while FM93 reigns in the central market, Jeff Fillion has the highest-rated noon show, and FM93’s move to all-talk weekends has had a negative impact on their ratings.

Sherbrooke

1. Rouge FM: 22%
2. Énergie: 18.5%
3. ICI Première: 16.4%
4. 107,7fm: 11.2%
5. Rythme FM: 8.1%
6. ICI Musique: 3.5%

Bell continues to dominate this market with its 40% share, double that of Cogeco, but Radio-Canada’s main network saw a bump.

Trois-Rivières

1. Énergie: 19.7%
2. Rouge FM: 16.8%
3. Rythme FM: 12.2%
4. ICI Première: 9.3%
5. FM 90,5: 9.0%
6. 106,9fm: 5.8%
7. ICI Musique: 4.6%

Another Bell-dominated market. But the story here is CKBN-FM (FM 90,5), a community station on the south shore covering the Bécancour region, which has climbed above Cogeco talk station 106,9 to claim fifth place in the market.

Saguenay

1. Rouge FM: 23.4%
2. KYK Radio X: 21.0%
3. Énergie: 18.7%
4. ICI Première: 11.5%
5. ICI Musique: 4.2%

Radio X is no longer king in blueberry country as Bell’s Rouge FM takes the lead. Énergie is also up, pushing Bell’s share from 38.5% to 42.1% since the spring.

Drummondville

1. Rouge FM: 30.8%
2. Énergie: 22.7%

The only two stations reporting in this market are both owned by Bell Media, so there isn’t much competition to talk about. But Rouge FM has pulled well ahead of Énergie after being a couple of points behind.

Ottawa-Gatineau

Anglo top 5:

1. CBC Radio One: 21.3%
2. Hot 89.9 (Newcap): 9.2%
3. CFRA 580 (Bell): 8.7%
4. CHEZ 106.1 (Rogers): 6.6%
5. Majic 100.3 (Bell): 6.0%

With more than 20 stations in the region, only CBC cracks the 10% share in English. Newcap’s Hot 89.9 leads the music stations and CFRA leads the commercial talk stations, but beyond that it’s a very tight battle.

Torres Media, which owns CIDG-FM, sent me (unsolicited) some numbers showing the station’s growth since it changed frequency from 101.9 to 101.7 and increased power. An 82% increase in the adults 25-54 audience is impressive. But the station still has only a 2.9% share overall.

Franco:

1. Rouge FM (Bell): 21.1%
2. ICI Première: 15.4%
3. Énergie (Bell): 8.5%
4. 104,7fm (Cogeco): 7.8%
5. ICI Musique: 5.1%
6. Hot 89.9 (Newcap): 4.8%
7. WOW (RNC): 4.5%
8. Pop (RNC): 3.6%
9. CHEZ 106.1 (Rogers): 3.5%
10. Jump 106.9 (Corus): 2.5%

At least the top five stations are all French-language ones among francophones. But RNC’s one-syllable pop music stations are down with the top-rated English music stations.

Elsewhere

• In Sydney, N.S., community station The Coast 89.7, licensed to Glace Bay, has been added, and reports a 13% share, good for fifth place out of eight stations (six plus CBC).
• In London, Ont., CKOT-FM (Easy 101), which was purchased by Rogers a year ago, has started reporting ratings even though it’s licensed to Tillsonburg, 40km away. Numeris shows it’s the top-rated private station in the market, behind only CBC. In the spring it was behind Bell’s country station BX93 and Virgin Radio.
• In Hamilton, CHTG-FM (92.9 The Grand) in Haldimand has begun reporting in that market after being bought by Durham Radio and switching from country to classic hits. It scores only a 1.2% share as a spill station.
• In St. Catharines/Niagara, CIXL-FM (Giant FM) has taken the lead from Bell’s EZ Rock, gaining five share points in a year while EZ lost four. Bell’s 97.7 HTZ also saw a bump from 5.6% to 8.0% in a year, but we’ll see if that survives the recent layoffs at the station.
• In Sudbury, Ont., which last year had four stations within 1.3 share points of the lead, KICX Country has climbed on top with a 20% share while the others fell below 15%. KICX is in the process of being purchased by Bell. Rogers’s 92.7 Rock jumped from sixth place to third by increasing its share by more than 50%. The market has six stations with shares above 10%.
• In Winnipeg, Corus’s rebranding of Fresh Radio as Peggy 99.1 has had only a modest effect on ratings, going from 1.6% to 2.1%. ChrisD.ca and the Winnipeg Free Press have more analysis of Winnipeg ratings.
• In Prince George, B.C., Vista’s CIRX-FM (The Goat) has climbed into a commanding lead with a 25% market share compared to second place with 19.7% a year ago. All five stations have at least a 14% share.
• Castanet has details on ratings in Kelowna, B.C.