Some Montreal ratings analysis from the latest PPM ratings survey, as put together by Astral’s helpful team:
As you can see, not much has changed in the local anglo radio landscape. CJFM Virgin Radio still dominates, with CFQR second and CHOM third. This graph shows weekly reach, which means the number of people who listen to the station at least once a week.
I'm pretty sure this was the original idea behind this photo of NRJ people with Alouettes' Larry Smith
I’m kind of a stickler for format purity, in that a broadcaster that specializes in one thing shouldn’t try to be something else just because that something else gets ratings.
So I’m not crazy about live-action movies airing on Teletoon, or funny pet video compilations airing on the Discovery channel. Unfortunately, I’ve seen both in the past week.
When it comes to radio, the genres aren’t so specific, at least for over-the-air broadcasting. They really come down to two camps: music and talk. The latter can have news, sports, comedy, documentary, or whatever else they can think of. The music stations (at least commercial ones) just play music, perhaps with the occasional goofball listener contest thrown in.
NRJ, a music network based off a brand developed in France, announced that it will be carrying Alouettes games until 2013, a job formerly (and quite logically) left to CKAC, the AM sports station. The Alouettes also have a release in English and French.
So once a week, for a few hours, NRJ will stop playing music and start airing football play-by-play. Not just in Montreal, but all over Quebec.
This has already happened on the anglo side. CHOM-FM has been airing select Alouettes games, even though all of them are available on CJAD.
It’s worth pointing out, by the way, that CHOM, CJAD and NRJ are all owned by Astral Media. CKAC is owned by Corus.
As for CKAC, well, they still have the Canadiens, of course. And they carry home games of the Impact. They’re also adding a few baseball games to their schedule.
One of the things actually being advertised in this release is that the play-by-play won’t be done by NRJ or anyone at Astral Media, but will basically just be taken off the audio feed of RDS.
CKAC tried this back in 2007, and the result wasn’t particularly favourable. The next season, they brought in Charles-André Marchand to do their own play-by-play.
We’ll see if NRJ learns the same lesson, or just decides that, even though TV play-by-play doesn’t work on radio, it’s cheap enough that they can live with the mediocrity.
Les Grandes Gueules: José Gaudet and Mario Tessier. (Photo from grandesgueules.com)
In case you haven’t heard, they’re coming back to radio (NRJ), starting Jan. 18. Coverage from Cyberpresse, Rue Frontenac, or just read the statement (PDF).
And if you have no idea who the heck les Grandes Gueules are, you can check out Wikipedia and their website.
Not having been invited the time to attend all the fall launch parties being put on by the radio and TV people over the last little while, I’m pleased to see that most of them are briefly summarized in video form.
The two big ones were rebranding efforts: NRJ radio, which is what Énergie has turned itself into, and V, which is the new TQS.
But there were also launches for CKOI, Rock Détente, Rythme FM, Musique Plus, Radio-Canada, Télé-Québec, TVA, VRAK.tv and Télétoon, and fortunately the people at WebPresse believe these parties are news.
So here are the launch parties in YouTube format from various sources: