Canadian Women, Sports Radio, and the PPM

There’s been all kinds of controversy about the Portable People Meter (PPM) introduced by Arbitron. Numerous challenges have been levied against it and its accuracy, while many others have supported its methodology and heralded it as the next clear step in harvesting audience metrics. Like most things in life, I would be willing to bet that reality falls somewhere in between.

BBM Canada, basically the equivalent of Arbitron north of our borders, just released their first round of PPM data and some interesting aspects of the system have come to light. You see, the PPM data shows a huge upswing in the number of female listeners tuning in to sports radio.

The Globe and Mail‘s Bruce Dowbiggin looks at the effect:

Why the sudden surge in female numbers for sports-talk formats? As opposed to the traditional diary methods of the past (which were often filled in after the fact by a single listener), PPMs record everyone in the vicinity of a radio or TV signal. So wives and girlfriends within earshot of sports-radio shows are now being lumped into the raw data.

“It was a factor of what I call aspirational tuning,” [David] Bray [senior vice president at Hennessy & Bray Communications] said. “Women filling in the diaries just felt better about recording CBC or light rock instead of a sports station. Now they can’t self-edit themselves with the PPMs.”

I find this extremely interesting. PPM measures your ambient soundscape, including radio that you might “tune out” in the background. This creates a far more complete image of what a person is exposed to over the course of their average day. How much of it actually registers, or registers only on a subconscious level, is impossible to say at this point. I doubt a reliable measurement of that nature can actually be made.

I do think it is important to have a window into the audioscape of our listeners, even something you tune out can make an impression after repeat exposure.  It is certainly something to think about.

I’m sure that the coming year or two (at least) will see a constant tug of war between Arbitron and Nielsen over what techniques of measurement are more accurate and why. Over time, competition should cause one or the other to field a truly superior product and approach. In the meantime, I advise keeping an eye on them both. Let’s see what the next level turns out to be.

Image: imuttoo / CC BY-SA 2.0

Canadian Radio is Thriving

I’m from the subtropics, a land where snow is something you see on television and if winter gets down to 20 degrees it almost stops the city. Canada, as you may imagine, is alien terrain for me. Even the summers are often what I would find to be utterly freezing. I know this for a fact because I’ve been there in June.

One thing that is not freezing in Canada is radio profits. According to an article in The Canadian Press:

Statistics Canada says advertising revenue among private radio broadcasters advanced six per cent to $1.5 billion in 2007.

That’s the third time in five years radio advertising growth has outpaced advertising market growth as a whole.

Of course stations in larger, predominantly metropolitan markets are raking in much greater shares of the profit than others. That is the advantage of a concentrated audience. What I found to be particularly interesting about the figures presented was the size that margin of difference achieved:

[…] radio stations operating in the five largest census metropolitan areas last year generated almost twice as much profit before interest and taxes per dollar of revenue as stations operating in smaller markets.

The article attributes the rise in profits to a combination of factors including the transition of numerous AM stations to the FM band, a portion of the spectrum acknowledged to be both more popular with the listening public and also more popular — probably as a result of the first factor. Another factor cited is the greater concentration of ownership that followed regulatory changes in 1998, something which has allowed more stability in the face of competition from new media.

Photo courtesy of Ian Mutoo, used under ts Creative Commons license

Matrimonial Transmission

It is extremely interesting to watch the back and forth flow of ideas between the Internet world and “real life.” In this day and age, anyone can throw together a website or MySpace associated with any sort of event or concept. Wedding websites seem to be particularly popular these days, as I found out during the chaos leading to my own wedding.

This is why the following story stuck me as interesting. Far to the north in Canada, a couple is not only setting up a website for their wedding, but also going on air with their own temporary radio station! This via Aloma Jardin of the Times Transcript:

In a world where wedding websites have become commonplace, Moncton native Serge Cormier decided to take things one step further and turn his wedding into a four-day radio broadcast.
“I’m just somebody that likes to stand a little bit above the crowd,” says Cormier. “I thought it would provide a lifelong memory of our wedding. We’ll make a recording of the entire broadcast and we’ll be able to listen to it time after time. And we will be able to share our wedding with the general population as well, which I thought is a neat idea, to let the world know how much we love each other.”

Fiancée Yanbing Zou, who Cormier met when both were students at the University of New Brunswick, only needed a little bit of convincing.

“She understands my passion for radio,” explains Cormier.

As our lives are increasingly on display thanks to social networking applications like Facebook, this is a beautiful example of things coming full circle. This is a great example of Internet age thinking being applied to broadcast in a new and interesting way. Microcontent makes its way to the airwaves, if only on a temporary basis.

The broadcast is actually going to be run out of a hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express on Mountain Road, where the wedding and reception are taking place. The hotel graciously allowed Cormier to install an antenna on its roof to help make the broadcast happen.

WedFM will begin broadcasting on 100.9 FM at 2 p.m. May 14 and continue until about noon on the day after the wedding, May 18.

“Basically when we have to check out of the hotel room,” Cormier says.

Cormier says the station will be broadcasting 24 hours a day, though, like most commercial stations, the overnight hours will be covered off by pre-programmed music.

Some of the other programming in the works includes a pre-recorded Top 40 countdown hosted by Cormier and Zou and Chinese language lessons to share a bit of Zou’s heritage. Zou grew up in China and moved to Canada five years ago to study at UNB.

“There will also be live coverage and interviews during the wedding ceremony,” Cormier says.

“Myself and my fiancée and other people in the wedding party will be interviewed during the day on Saturday and there will be a live-to-air broadcast of the wedding party on Saturday night.”

With only 50 watts of power, the actual broadcast will only be heard in Moncton, Riverview, and Dieppe, and Cormier expects even then coverage will be kind of spotty, so he is also hoping to webcast the radio broadcast on the couple’s wedding website, www.wedfm.ca.

While it certainly will require far more effort than a simple wedding website, this effort is guaranteed to be uniquely memorable. Cormier is not shy about the fact that he is going to see how things go with an eye toward possibly making this sort of temporary, wedding themed radio station into a business all its own. He’ll be looking at all of the feedback with that in mind (hopefully after the honeymoon).

I’d like to close by wishing the happy couple all of my best. May your signal be five by five and your ratings the highest possible!

Photo courtesy of Leslie Duss, used according to its Creative Commons license

Radio Advertising is Flying High in Canada!

It is now the second quarter of 2008 and guess what? It looks like the numbers once again defy the media’s “conventional wisdom.” Media in Canada reports:

For radio advertising, the second quarter of 2008 is a good news story, according to the latest findings by Canadian Broadcast Sales […] The Toronto-based organization predicts that, following an increase of 8.8% in national radio sales in Q2, a lift of approximately 8% will continue for the rest of the year.

Not only are the numbers good for the first part of the fiscal year, but the projections are, too.

The national retail category continues to lead all sectors in Q2, capturing one of every five dollars spent on radio. [CBS President Patrick] Grierson calls that “a strong endorsement of the local nature of the medium, its unique relationship with its listeners and, most importantly, its results.”

In addition to retail, several other areas showed increased radio ad spending over the period. Telecommunications, restaurants, automotive and financial services all showed significant increases in their outlay for broadcast ads. Grierson is quoted as saying that while 36.9% of last year’s business did not repeat (35% being the yearly average), the industry not only recouped those numbers but also added an additional 8.8%. “Radio’s resilience is a major factor in its strong performance,” Grierson notes.

Another interesting trend shown by the study is the increased focus on the female demographic. Advertisers spent almost 20% more on ads aimed at females than they did last year. At the same time, ads geared towards a male demographic reduced by 43%.

Looks like more good numbers for the “dying medium.”

Photo courtesy of jurvetson, used according to its Creative Commons license

Resilient Radio in Canada

Barbara Schecter of the Financial Post relays the news that Canadian radio is thriving:

Despite an “old media” label, radio continues to command more advertising dollars each year, which should help the stock prices of publicly-traded radio broadcasters, says Carl Bayard, a media analyst at Genuity Capital Markets.

He has a “buy” recommendation on Canada’s two biggest radio operators Astral Media Inc. (ACM.b/TSX) and Corus Entertainment Inc. (CJR.b/TSX).

Now that is a solid recommendation for radio if I ever heard one!

“Every year, we wonder if this is the year where radio in Canada finally kicks the bucket and performs along the lines of its dreadful old-media brethren,” says Mr. Bayard in a recent note to clients.

“And every year, we are surprised by radio’s resilience in the face of ever-increasing competition from alternative sources for information [and] entertainment.”

Old does not mean out of date. Despite the ongoing campaign amongst segments of the media to brand radio as an outdated technology, there has yet to be anything that can truly take its place. Despite advances everywhere, radio still reaches more people with less effort than any other medium currently in use.

In fiscal 2007, which ended in August, the radio industry posted growth of 3.9%, according to figures published by the Radio Marketing Bureau. While this growth was restrained in comparison to a 6.5% increase a year earlier, the first four months of fiscal 2008 have so far produced growth of 5.6%, says Mr. Bayard.

Looks like radio will be the dark horse of 2008!

Photo courtesy of Rick Harris