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

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).

The biggest news for The Beat is that it’s now No. 1 during the workday among adults 25-54, stealing a pretty big share from Virgin Radio compared to the last ratings period.

As the charts above from Groupe Force Radio show, it’s a pretty significant change.

CJAD 800

Everything’s pretty stable at ‘AD. No major programming changes the past few months (though Mose Persico’s show is gone). We can confirm some effects (or lack thereof) from schedule changes last fall:

• Aaron Rand’s afternoon drive show has about the same ratings as Ric Peterson before him (at least among adults 25-54, for all audiences it’s down a bit).
• Peterson, meanwhile, is slightly below the ratings of a year ago of people he replaced in early afternoons, Kim Fraser and Dan Laxer.
• Viewpoints with Todd van der Heyden has about 16,000 listeners, a thousand less than Showtime with Sharman Yarnell a year ago. (On the other hand, the Chris Robinson Travel Show with Sharman Yarnell has lost about 3,000 average-minute listeners compared with last year).
• Kim Fraser’s Saturday show is a few points below that of Anne Lagacé Dowson in the same slot a year ago.

Strengths:

• Total listeners: When counting all age groups, including teenagers and retirees who are of little interest to advertisers, CJAD still has the largest market share at 23%.
• Early mornings (Andrew Carter): Carter’s morning show still has the largest audience before 7am, when Virgin’s Freeway and Natasha takes over. Carter’s show is also the highest-rated show in Montreal radio, with 32,600 listeners during the average minute among all age groups.
• Late night (Joey Elias): Elias’s comedy show gives the station a spike around midnight, particularly among women.
• Weekend mornings: It’s not quite as dominant as it used to be, but the station is still No. 1 among adults 25-54 before 10am on weekends. The weekend morning shows get 25,000 listeners, which is more than Tommy Schnurmacher.

Weaknesses:

• Youth: The station hasn’t historically done well among young adults, but its poor position is continuing to decline among adults 18-34. What’s worse it’s also losing ground among older listeners, handing the top spot among adults 35-64 to The Beat.
• Early evenings: The loss of Canadiens games to CKGM seems to have hurt the evening ratings. Among men 25-54, the station has lost half its audience between 7pm and 9pm.

CKGM 990 (TSN Radio)

Not too many big changes here either. The addition of Ted Bird to the morning show came too late to have much of an impact on the spring numbers.

Nevertheless, the station has lost a lot of the ground it made up during the fall months. A spike during the ratings period ending at the end of February has been wiped away, perhaps because interest in the Canadiens (both in listening to the games and talking about them) faded along with their chances at making the playoffs.

That said, it’s still better than it was a year ago, and the year before that.

Strengths:

• Mitch Melnick: CKGM is the only anglo commercial station with a stronger peak in the afternoon than in the morning. This is probably reflective of the fact that sports fans stay up later, but also of the fact that Melnick is the big star here.
• Canadiens games: The loss in ratings attributable to the loss of Canadiens games at CJAD has showed in a corresponding increase to CKGM’s ratings for the same time period on weeknights, doubling its audience among men 25-54 in that time period. From 7pm to 9pm on weeknights, the two stations are now neck and neck, among both men and women. There’s also an increase for CKGM on weekends from 7 to 9pm among men, which is probably also because of Canadiens games.

Weaknesses:

• Youth: CKGM has less than a third of the market share of CJAD among adults 18-34.
• Women: Should come as no surprise. Its 2.4% market share among women 25-54 gives it a sixth that of CHOM and a seventh that of CJAD.
• Mornings (Elliott Price and Shaun Starr): The flip side to a strong Melnick is a weak morning show, which has less than half the audience of any of the other four stations among adults 25-54. Will Ted Bird help change that? We’ll see in the next ratings report.

CKBE-FM 92.5 (The Beat)

Cogeco and The Beat are very happy with these ratings, but their increases aren’t quite in their target groups. The Beat is up significantly among men (where it’s behind CHOM and still behind Virgin) and young adults (where it’s still well behind Virgin). They’re up a bit in other demographics as well, but not as pronounced.

It’s too early to get any indication about Cousin Vinny in here. Though he started the very day after this ratings period ended, so it’ll be easier to make comparisons when the next set of numbers comes out.

If we compare to last year at this time, we can see noticeable gains in weekday and weekend mornings, weekdays during the day and weekday drive. There’s a more modest gain for Nat Lauzon’s weekend afternoon show.

Strengths:

• Middays (Donna Saker): The queen of the work day is now No. 1 among adults 25-54, increasing her average minute audience for that demographic by 50% over the past year. Most of the gain has come at the expense of Virgin.
• Older listeners: The Beat is now No. 1 among adults 35-64, passing CJAD.
• Men: As ridiculous as it might sound for a station that professes its love for women so much, The Beat’s gains this quarter are much stronger among the XY-chromosomed. The Beat, in fact, has the best-rated drive show among men 25-54, even though the drive show was sitting without a permanent host for this entire ratings period.
• Weekend mornings (Ken Connors): Though still behind CJAD, Ken Connors’s weekend morning show has shown significant results for The Beat’s key demo of women 25-54. Among men, it’s stuck with Virgin and well behind CHOM.
• Income: The average household income of The Beat’s listeners is higher than the other stations.

Weaknesses:

• Francophones: It’s not really counted in most market measurements, because they only count anglo households as part of the market, but CHOM and CJFM do much better among francophone listeners. So while Virgin and The Beat are neck and neck in overall market share among anglos, among francophones Virgin reaches 400,000 more listeners than The Beat in an average week, twice as much in an average day, and it has 50% more market share.
• Demographics: When the name of the game is to own a demographic to maximize ad revenue, being balanced gender-wise is a bad thing, and The Beat is the most gender-balanced of the five commercial anglo stations. It’s also older – an average age of 49 compared to 37 for Virgin. More importantly, The Beat still isn’t beating Virgin overall in the key demographic of women 25-54.

CJFM-FM 95.9 (Virgin Radio 96)

Even though it’s still No. 1 in many key categories, this isn’t the best ratings report for Virgin because it’s losing a lot of ground to The Beat. (It’s losing a lot of talent, too, though it’s unclear at this point whether the latter is the cause of the former.) Among adults 25-54, rather than being 14 points ahead of The Beat, as it was last year, it’s now only 2.3 points ahead. Among men 25-54, Virgin has lost seven points in the past year and The Beat has gained seven points.

Strengths:

• Youth: Virgin has a stranglehold 42% commercial market share among adults 18-34.
• Women: It’s losing ground and The Beat is coming on strong, but Virgin still has first place among women 25-54.
• Mornings (Freeway Frank and Natasha Gargiulo): Virgin’s morning show is still strong despite the loss of Cat Spencer to The Beat and Lisa Player to who knows where. It has a very concentrated peak around 8am among women.
• Afternoons and evenings: The drive show (now hosted by Andrea Collins) and the early evening show (with Tony Stark) are tops among both men and women age 25-54.
• Weekends: Even though Virgin uses syndicated programming and doesn’t have many DJs doing weekend shifts (Kelly Alexander’s morning show being the exception) while its competitors have high-profile weekend DJs throughout the day, Virgin dominates among adults 25-54 weekend afternoons and well into the evenings. Even among men, it’s neck and neck with CHOM for top spot in that age group.

Weaknesses:

• Older listeners: About the only category Virgin does poor in is adults 35-64, where it places fourth.

It’s too early to judge from these numbers what kind of impact Virgin’s recent afternoon changes have had. But program director Mark Bergman tells me bringing in a syndicated Ryan Seacrest show has resulted in a slight improvement in numbers and that new drivetime host Andrea Collins is keeping her ratings stable.

CHOM-FM 97.7

With the arrival of Terry DiMonte and Heather Backman and the departure of Pete Marier, just about the entire schedule has changed over the past year. The station, which has been stalling in the ratings for a while, is starting to make some gains in some areas.

It’s been suggested to me (by people with axes to grind) that Terry DiMonte would bring CHOM’s ratings up, but mainly for women, not men. The data seems to give evidence to this theory. DiMonte’s show has doubled its average audience for women, from about 2,000 listeners in the average minute to about 4,000 among women 25-54. There’s also a noticeable peak for female audience during the morning show that didn’t exist a year ago. But among men 25-54, the ratings are also up.

Strengths:

• Mornings (Terry DiMonte and Heather Backman): The show’s ratings are much higher than they were a year ago, when it was Chantal Desjardins and Pete Marier, among both men and women 25-54. Are they up enough to justify the expense of bringing DiMonte back to the mic? That’s a good question.
• Middays (TooTall): Now the highest-rated show on CHOM’s schedule (among men 25-54 and adults 25-54). A year ago, CHOM would slowly lose audience during the day, but with TooTall he keeps the audience (particularly among men) strong until 2pm. His gender balance (very heavily skewed toward men) is also sure to please advertisers.
• Weekends (Sharon Hyland and Rob Kemp): Hyland in the mornings and Kemp during the day have helped to boost CHOM’s ratings among men significantly compared to a year ago, at least until 2pm. Kemp does particularly well among young listeners, 18-34.
• Men: CHOM is still No. 1 among men 25-54, after being slightly behind Virgin a year ago.

Weaknesses:

• Afternoon drive (Bilal Butt): While the morning and midday shows are up, the afternoon drive show is stagnant. Its ratings are actually up slightly from a year ago, particularly among women, but the success of TooTall has made the dropoff in numbers in the afternoon more significant. Rather than dominating among men, Bilal’s numbers are about the same as the competition.

French radio

The big winner, once again, is CHMP 98.5FM, which has seen its overall market share go from 12.9% in winter 2011 and 14.3% in spring 2011 to 23.5% in spring 2012. After a spectacular ratings jump last fall, its numbers have actually continued to go up.

As Le Devoir points out, much of this gain comes at the expense of Radio-Canada.

Otherwise, there aren’t any big losers. Rythme FM still dominates music stations, and CKOI still struggles, barely staying No. 1 among adults 18-34. This helps explain why Cogeco has decided that it’s better to model regional stations after CHMP than CKOI.

CKAC 730 (Radio Circulation)

Because it has less than a point in market share, the error margin is pretty high and it’s hard to make too much analysis out of relative changes. So the fact that it’s down 25% doesn’t really say much. Suffice it to say the station isn’t going to shatter the industry in terms of advertising.

CKMF-FM 94.3 (NRJ)

Strengths:

• Mornings: It’s the highest-rated music station in the morning, and the only station that has it audience peak before 9am. (It’ll be interesting to see if that changes now that Mitsou is no longer part of the morning show.)
• Youth: Not far behind CKOI in terms of young audience

Weaknesses:

• Other than a strong morning show and okay performance among young men, the station’s ratings are mediocre.

CKOI-FM 96.9

Strengths:

• Youth: The station is No. 1 among adults 18-34, but not by much. It has a 23% market share, but the four other stations have shares above 15% in this demographic

Weaknesses:

• Everything else. There’s been a bit of a recovery from a very poor ratings report in winter, but not enough. Expect something drastic to happen to this station soon.

CHMP-FM 98.5

Strengths:

• Paul Arcand: By far the most popular morning host, and CHMP’s top-rated show.
• Paul Houde: Lesser domination, but Houde’s afternoon drive show also beats its competitors
• Ron Fournier: His Bonsoir les Sportifs gives the station better numbers from 10pm to 1am weeknights than it does earlier in the evening
• Men: The station is top-rated among men 25-54 throughout the day
• Average listening time: 6.4 hours a week per listener, almost twice that of the music stations and a record for CHMP

Weaknesses:

• Isabelle Maréchal: Even though it’s the one being tapped to be taken network-wide, Maréchal’s show from 10am to noon is the lowest-rated of the four big daytime talk shows, falling behind Rythme FM and even Rouge FM among adults 25-54.
• Weekends: With weak programming, CHMP falls behind all four music stations on weekend afternoons

CFGL-FM 105.7 (Rythme FM)

CITE-FM 107.3 (Rouge FM)

Strengths:

• Women: It’s second behind Rythme FM among women 25-54, but CHMP is right behind it. It’s also second among men, but a more distant second, and tied with NRJ.
• Weekends: It’s the only station competing with Rythme FM during the day on weekends, particularly among women. Its weekend morning show is also very competitive.
• Evenings: There are points where it’s No. 1, during the weakest part of the day for all the stations.

Weaknesses:

•  Mornings: Even among women, the morning show lags behind its competitors.