Following today’s publication of Numeris’ Summer 2016 results, The Beat 92.5 maintains its ranking as Montreal’s #1 Music Station! The Beat is not only the number one English-language music station among radio listeners of all ages, but it is now is now the Number one RADIO station in the most important demos, Adults 25-54 and Females 25-54!
This was the beginning of a very self-congratulatory press release from 92.5 The Beat on Thursday after learning they had finally beaten competitor Virgin Radio 96 not only overall but among their key demographics.
It’s good news for the station that on Tuesday celebrated its fifth anniversary. But we’ve seen this kind of surge from The Beat before, so it’s too early to tell if the tide has really turned.
What the ratings actually say
As readers of this blog are well aware, there are a lot of ways to play with ratings numbers to claim to be number one. In the case of The Beat, it means ignoring the French market entirely, and ignoring the top-rated English station in the market, CJAD. At which point you’re down to three commercial stations.
The top-line ratings results are posted on Numeris’s website. Here’s what they show:
Montreal anglo market (797,000 people), all ages, May 30 to Aug. 28, 2016:
Callsign |
Brand |
Share |
AMA |
Daily reach |
AMA Change from spring |
AMA Change from last summer |
CJAD |
CJAD 800 |
26.4% |
13,400 |
170,800 |
-11% |
-8% |
CKBE-FM |
The Beat 92.5 |
19.2% |
9,800 |
211,200 |
+11% |
+7% |
CJFM-FM |
Virgin Radio 96 |
16.3% |
8,300 |
207,300 |
0 |
-6% |
CHOM-FM |
CHOM 97.7 |
12.9% |
6,600 |
145,800 |
-4% |
+5% |
CBME-FM |
CBC Radio One |
6.2% |
3,100 |
43,500 |
-3% |
-6% |
CFGL-FM |
Rythme FM |
3.0% |
1,500 |
51,800 |
+25% |
+25% |
CKGM |
TSN Radio 690 |
2.9% |
1,500 |
40,500 |
-25% |
-17% |
CBM-FM |
CBC Radio Two |
1.6% |
800 |
19,100 |
0 |
+14% |
CITE-FM |
Rouge FM |
1.3% |
700 |
31,200 |
+17% |
+17% |
CJPX-FM |
Radio Classique |
1.3% |
700 |
19,200 |
-12% |
+17% |
CKOI-FM |
CKOI |
1.0% |
500 |
37,000 |
+43% |
0 |
Other stations have shares below 1%.
Montreal franco market (2,738,000 people), all ages, May 30 to Aug. 28, 2016:
Callsign |
Brand |
Share |
AMA |
Daily reach |
AMA Change from spring |
AMA Change from last summer |
CFGL-FM |
Rythme FM |
20.5% |
37,300 |
687,000 |
-1% |
+10% |
CHMP-FM |
98,5 fm |
17.0% |
31,000 |
484,700 |
-18% |
-13% |
CITE-FM |
Rouge FM |
11.9% |
21,700 |
376,400 |
+19% |
-15% |
CKOI-FM |
CKOI |
10.1% |
18,400 |
480,600 |
+28% |
+16% |
CJFM-FM |
Virgin Radio 96 |
7.0% |
12,700 |
414,300 |
+44% |
+23% |
CKBE-FM |
The Beat 92.5 |
7.0% |
12,700 |
400,200 |
+14% |
+23% |
CBF-FM |
ICI Première |
6.6% |
12,000 |
224,700 |
-19% |
-22% |
CHOM-FM |
CHOM 97.7 |
5.7% |
10,400 |
316,800 |
+32% |
+68% |
CKMF-FM |
Énergie |
5.3% |
9,600 |
344,600 |
+8% |
-16% |
CBFX-FM |
ICI Musique |
2.1% |
3,900 |
82,800 |
-5% |
-18% |
CJPX-FM |
Radio Classique |
2.0% |
3,700 |
86,100 |
-33% |
-36% |
CKLX-FM |
91.9 Sport |
1.3% |
2,400 |
50,600 |
0 |
+242% |
CJAD |
CJAD 800 |
0.7% |
1,200 |
37,500 |
0 |
+50% |
CKAC |
Radio Circulation |
0.3% |
500 |
47,200 |
+67% |
0 |
CBME-FM |
CBC Radio One |
0.3% |
500 |
15,500 |
0 |
+67% |
CBM-FM |
CBC Radio Two |
0.2% |
300 |
26,100 |
-40% |
-70% |
CHRF |
AM 980 |
0.0% |
100 |
3,800 |
0 |
N/A |
CKGM |
TSN Radio 690 |
0.0% |
0 |
3,400 |
0 |
-100% |
AMA means average minute audience, the average number of people who will be tuning into a station during any minute of a 24-hour day.
Daily reach refers to how many listeners will tune into a station for at least one minute during the average day.
Comparisons to spring (Feb. 29-May 29) and last summer (June 1-Aug. 30, 2015) are here for reference. I’d pay more attention to the year-over-year change than the change over spring, since summer ratings tend to go down particularly for non-music stations. And don’t read too much into the percentage changes for stations lower on the chart. The higher margin for error exaggerates the amplitude of the changes.
Listener boycotts had no effect on The Beat
The Beat has reason to be happy, being higher among anglophones than it was both last spring and last summer. But the big win is in the adults 25-54 and women 25-54 demographics, which it had consistently lost to rival Virgin, even while it had a larger audience overall.
“Today’s milestone results are the product of great teamwork and proof that our audience likes the changes we made to the schedule,” GM Luc Tremblay says in the press release. This is in reference to moving Cat Spencer to afternoons and Cousin Vinny to mornings, but left unsaid is that listener anger to the dropping of Kim Sullivan and Sarah Bartok hasn’t resulted in a drop in ratings. The Beat says its 25-54 audience for the morning show went up 35%.
The news isn’t all bad for Virgin and Bell Media. Virgin’s audience is up among francophone listeners (though just like last summer it’s exactly tied with The Beat for audience among francophones), and CHOM has much more franco listeners. Plus, of course, Bell Media owns four of the five commercial stations in the market.
More importantly, we’ve seen this before. During the winter of 2014-15, The Beat and Virgin had similar numbers relative to each other. The Beat’s program director said the station expected to continue to improve. Virgin’s said it was because it covered the Christmas period when The Beat does better with its Christmas music. The next ratings period, Virgin was back on top.
The next ratings period will tell us if this was another fluke. But The Beat has been consistently higher than Virgin in the overall ratings, and this ratings period was as far from Christmas as you can get.
Franco market: Rythme, CKOI see gains
On the francophone side, Rythme FM climbed above 98.5 FM to the top spot. Expect this to be temporary as 98.5’s A team comes back to work and so do the politicians whose activities fuel news-talk stations. (And besides, both stations are owned by Cogeco, so it’s not exactly a huge competition.)
CKOI is getting more respectable numbers than it used to. Not so long ago it was in the gutter, being outperformed by the anglo music stations among francophones. Now it’s well ahead of them, even nipping at the heels of #2 music station Rouge FM. We’ll see if that keeps up.
91.9 Sport is holding its own, with more than three times the audience it had last summer before the format change and equal to what it had in the spring (when presumably there was more sports to talk about). But its market share is still low, and it might need more to be viable as a talk station.
CHRF, the station that was supposed to be Radio Fierté and is now airing easy-listening music and some miscellaneous programming, is still stuck within the margin of error.