Monthly Archives: June 2012
Radio ratings: Good news for 98.5, The Beat and CHOM
Quarterly radio ratings were released earlier this month. You can see the BBM compilation of top-line data here (PDF), but it doesn’t say too much.
Astral and Cogeco both provide analysis for the benefit of advertisers, Astral in the form of a slideshow (PDF) and Groupe Force Radio (which represents Cogeco stations and independent former Corus stations in Quebec City and Saguenay) also does a slide presentation (PDF). The latter tends to be more detailed, but is also more biased, highlighting their stations’ successes and their competitors’ struggles.
Here, based on those reports, is some analysis of what’s going on in commercial radio in Montreal. We’ll start with the English side.
English radio
Afternoon ratings show a spike for Donna Saker’s show on CKBE, rocketing it to No. 1. There’s a similar spike in late mornings and at noon-hour.
Overall, there hasn’t been much change in the ratings. A few points up, a few points down. But breaking it down a bit you see some significant gains for CKBE-FM 92.5 (The Beat) and a few highlights for CHOM-FM 97.7 as well.
The Beat, which rebranded last fall in an effort to attract a younger female audience but hadn’t seen much movement in ratings until now, is starting to see the change (and accompanying marketing spending) pay off. It’s second behind Virgin Radio among adults 18-49 and 25-54 (in both cases passing CHOM), first among adults 35-64 (passing CJAD) and has seen a gain of more than 50% in a year for men 25-54 (which is interesting because the station is targetting women).
STM’s Michel Labrecque looks into the future
STM chairperson Michel Labrecque
Michel Labrecque, who chairs the board of the STM (and ostensibly represents its users on that board, though try to find some way to reach him on the STM’s website), did a little live Q&A on the STM’s website on June 14. He got asked some interesting questions and gave some interesting answers.
I’ve summarized a few interesting bits he said below, mainly about stuff that’s happening down the line (2014 looks to be a pretty busy year for them):
- Replacement of the other half of the metro fleet (the MR-73 trains that run on the blue and orange lines) is set to begin at the end of the decade. The first set of new cars to replace the older MR-63s are to arrive in 2014.
- Labrecque isn’t very interested in the idea of maritime shuttles to the south shore. Too impractical, he says.
- Studies are in progress to determine the placement of stations on an eastern extension of the blue line, but it will follow Jean-Talon St. until the Galeries d’Anjou.
- On an eventual rapid transit system on Pie-IX Blvd. (starting in 2014), boarding of buses will happen on all three doors for people with passes, as is done in other cities. The STM is studying using such a system on other high-traffic routes as well.
- As automated machines handle more duties previously done by metro booth employees, they will be doing more duties of a customer service nature and be more in contact with users.
- Real-time bus data is expected to start working in 2014.
- The orange line could have as many as 40 work sites operating in the four hours a night the metro is not in service, doing repairs and maintenance.
Radio Canada Irrational
Radio Canada International is, essentially, dead.
The last broadcasts of the service on shortwave ended Sunday night. (You can listen to some of the final transmissions here and here.) Its budget has been cut by 80%, its Portuguese and Russian services are gone, two thirds of its staff has been let go, and the huge transmission site in Sackville, N.B., sits unused, to be sold or torn down eventually.
The video above is Marc Montgomery, host of the daily program The Link, at the end of its final broadcast on Friday. As you can see, he gets quite emotional at the end, explaining why cutting RCI is a mistake.
While most Canadians have probably never heard of it, RCI isn’t for them. As Montgomery explains, the shortwave service in particular is capable of reaching people who don’t have Internet access or whose Internet access is blocked or filtered. With an online-only service, third-world countries that restrict foreign media online won’t have access to it.
Does that matter? Do people in third-world countries really listen to RCI in the first place? Maybe not. Maybe RCI has outlived its usefulness, and its shortwave service was mostly just a hobby for lonely ham-radio types who like to tune up noisy distant stations broadcasting in single-sideband AM. In that case, it might as well be shut down completely.
I’ve seen enough media outlets go online-only as a result of budget cuts to know that complete shutdown of RCI is, at this point, inevitable. Few people will listen to it because it’s harder to access and has so little original programming, and that will be used as justification down the line to pull the plug completely.
Many people have been trying in vain to find some way to keep RCI going. Sympathetic stories have been written about their demise. Politicians have been conscripted into the cause. A rule mandating a shortwave service has been found and subsequently eliminated by the government. A protest has been organized with a few people showing up. Attempts are being made (unsuccessfully) to have the federal government set RCI’s funding aside from the rest of the CBC. The RCI Action Committee, started the last time the CBC tried to gut the service, is actively pushing these activities and chronicling with regret the dismantling of the service on Twitter.
But they’re all in vain. The damage is done. Any groundswell of public support will eventually fade. People will forget. The CBC isn’t going to go back on its decision and the government isn’t going to force them to. The latter will point out that it sets the parliamentary appropriation and leaves the details on how to spend it to the public broadcaster. The former will point out that its budget situation has forced it to make difficult decisions and that things like local news and current affairs programming matter more to average Canadians than an international shortwave service.
So while it’s nice to hear that RCI won’t disappear quietly, the best we can do is honour the service and regret that it’s now gone. CKUT’s International Radio Report, which aired Montgomery’s signoff in its entirety, itself got emotional talking about RCI’s shutdown on Sunday (MP3).
The CBC News Network program Connect and CBC Radio program Dispatches also aired their final episodes this week. The final episode of Connect is here, with a retrospective starting at the 36-minute mark. The final episode of Dispatches is here.
Quebecor shuts down Mirror
Well, this one’s kind of a shocker. Mere weeks after Communications Voir finally pulled the plug on the struggling Hour, Quebecor has responded not by positioning Mirror as the dominant alternative weekly for anglo Montreal, but by simply shutting it down. Thursday’s issue is its last.
Like Hour, staff were not told of the shutdown until after the fact, so there’s no goodbye message. Quebecor says the shutdown will result in seven layoffs, plus two people being moved to other parts of the company. The paper was also a source of income for many freelancers, and (along with Hour) gave many journalists their first professional bylines.
For those employees, and regular freelancers, the news hit hard, especially when coming from a corporate giant like Quebecor.
Caption The Beat’s station manager Mark Dickie
Cogeco to convert three CKOI stations to talk radio
Cogeco Diffusion will convert its three regional CKOI stations to talk starting Aug. 20. (The Quebec City station is owned by Leclerc Communication)
Cogeco Diffusion announced Wednesday that it is converting three of its regional stations from music to talk starting Aug. 20.
The word isn’t mentioned in the press release, but all three stations – CKOY-FM 107.7 in Sherbrooke, CKOF-FM 104.7 in Gatineau and CKOB 106.9 in Trois-Rivières – are part of the CKOI brand.
CFEL-FM 102.1 in Quebec City also uses the CKOI brand, but isn’t owned by Cogeco. It was sold to Leclerc Communication as part of the conditions of sale of Corus Quebec stations.
CKOI-FM in Montreal, the flagship station, is not included in the list of stations undergoing a format change.
For the three regional stations, the move is kind of a step backward. All three used to be talk stations until Corus changed their vocation in 2009: CJRC/CJRC-FM in Gatineau, CHLT/CHLT-FM in Sherbrooke and CHLN/CHLN-FM in Trois Rivières. All three were AM stations that converted to FM about five years ago. In 2009, Corus converted them from music to talk to become Souvenirs Garantis stations, and then they became CKOI after Cogeco took over.
The full schedule still has yet to be set, but Cogeco assured journalists on a conference call Wednesday that there would be no reduction of local programming, that morning shows, afternoon drive shows and weekend shows would stay local. One show we know will be carried across the network is Isabelle Maréchal from 10am to noon. Jacques Fabi’s overnight show will also be carried across the network.
Sports programming will remain unchanged from what’s there now. All three stations carry Les amateurs des sports with Michel Villeneuve and Bonsoir les sportifs with Ron Fournier/Mario Langlois, as well as hockey games (Canadiens in Sherbrooke and Trois Rivières, Senators in Outaouais).
A handful of jobs will be affected by the change, but most of those will be given other duties, the stations’ managers said. There isn’t expected to be a net change in the number of jobs, though Cogeco Diffusion head Richard Lachance said he is “not closing the door” to new jobs as new programming is developed.
Branding wasn’t discussed during the conference call, but it’s expected to be something similar to what’s used in Montreal and Quebec City, namely the frequency and the letters “FM”. On May 1, Cogeco Diffusion registered the domain names fm1069.ca, fm1077.ca and fm1047.ca. It already owned 1077fm.ca, but 1069fm.ca and 1047fm.ca are owned by others.
Coverage
- La Tribune (Sherbrooke)
- Le Journal de Sherbrooke
- CKOI Estrie
- CKOI Mauricie
- CKOI Outaouais
- La Revue (Outaouais)
- Projet J
- Cartt.ca (subscription required, written by yours truly)
NDG Free Press editor resigns after child porn arrest
David Goldberg is no longer the editor of the NDG Free Press. His resignation wouldn’t be such a big story, except for why it happened.
Goldberg was charged on May 30 with accessing and possessing child pornography, and released on $5,000 bail, according to The Gazette. Among his conditions, beyond staying away from places kids go, is that he can’t use the Internet, which I guess means he won’t be reading this post.
At the Free Press, things changed quickly. The biweekly paper reports in its June 12 issue (PDF) that Goldberg resigned on June 1. Publisher David Price takes over until June 18, when Marlene Eisner, a former Suburban EIC and Concordia professor, takes over.
To the credit of the paper and Price, the news wasn’t hidden or sugarcoated. In addition to announcing Goldberg’s resignation and Eisner’s appointment, the paper carries a short story with Price’s byline about Goldberg’s arrest.
Caption Radio-Canada’s animateur de foule Jocelyn Laliberté
CJFM’s Virgin Radio Takeover makes use of Listener Driven Radio
The press release says “Virgin Radio lets YOU takeover the airwaves!” – but don’t show up to Astral’s studios on Fort St. looking to get behind the microphone.
Instead, CJFM 95.9 is giving its listeners more say in what music ends up on the radio, at least for a few hours. Four nights a week starting Monday, June 11, Tony Stark hosts Virgin Radio Takeover, a show that allows listeners to suggest songs and up- or down-vote upcoming songs on its playlist to shape what makes it to air.
It’s based on a platform called Listener Driven Radio, brought to Canada’s Virgin music stations via Orbyt Media. A similar show launched in April at the Calgary and Edmonton stations.
“This is real social radio,” program director Mark Bergman tells me, and is a big step toward the so-called So-Lo-Mo strategy of social, local and mobile.
In addition to influencing the playlist by voting up and down songs added to it, the system allows people to suggest songs to add to the playlist. But the system is set up according to parameters set by the program director, which means you won’t be able to suggest Mozart or death metal or other types of music that don’t fit on the station. (My attempts to add Weird Al tracks to the playlist failed, for example.)
Bergman said he didn’t know exactly how many songs are available to suggest, but that it was in the thousands, and represents a large part of the station’s music universe (meaning all of the songs played on the station). Naturally it includes a lot of pop hits from artists like Katy Perry, Usher, Black Eyed Peas, Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez and Maroon 5. But it also includes some older hits from Backstreet Boys, Bon Jovi, New Kids on the Block and NSYNC.
Changes to the playlist are shown in realtime, with animations showing songs changing position in the list.
I wondered if there was some veto power or other massaging of the playlist that could be done in case listeners’ choices start going too far toward one artist, for example. Bergman assures me it’s all out of his hands. “The only power I have is I can go on and vote for songs myself,” he says, and the choice of song is “literally left to chance” based on listeners’ votes.
What about Cancon? Is the system rigged to make sure that enough Canadian songs are played? Apparently not. But that’s okay, Bergman says. If the playlist that comes out is low on Canadian content, they can make up for that later.
Bergman says he’s anxious to see how the audience will react to this new format. Will it attract more listeners in the 18-34 demographic that they already have a strong lead in? Will it make them more engaged? We’ll see when the next ratings book comes out in the fall.
Virgin Takeover airs Mondays to Thursdays from 7pm to 9pm. Stark continues as the host in non-takeover mode until midnight.