Four times a year, when Numeris releases its quarterly ratings report, each radio station cherry-picks the results to find some way to proclaim itself No. 1. in Montreal, even though 11 of the 13 commercial radio stations that subscribe to Numeris’s ratings system are owned by either Bell Media or Cogeco Diffusion.
Last Thursday, as they do every quarter, Cogeco’s The Beat 92.5 and Bell’s Virgin Radio 96 proudly proclaimed to be the “number one” top-rated radio station in Montreal. Neither of them is, though, by a long shot. The French stations do better because of the larger number of francophones (though both stations are ahead of CKOI and NRJ overall). And even among anglophones, CJAD has the largest market share (26 per cent).
Still, one station had more reason to celebrate than the others. The Beat had a 19.9 per cent rating overall, more than a point better than it has ever had since it launched out of the ashes of the former Q92 in 2011. It’s also more than five points higher than Virgin, which had its lowest share since Numeris began measuring ratings using its current meter system.
Shares of total listening hours among anglophones in the Montreal central market ages 2+, measured by Numeris.
On top of that, for the first time The Beat has outperformed Virgin among the adults age 25 to 54 and women age 25 to 54 demographics coveted by advertisers. And its morning show with Sarah Bartok and Cat Spencer, which was fourth in the market a year ago, is now first in that key age group. It even beat out CHOM among men age 25 to 54.
Why the ratings spike? It’s probably no coincidence that it happened just after The Beat hired Sam Zniber as program director in August. But Zniber, whose résumé included jobs in the U.S., Europe and Australia but little experience in Montreal, spread the credit around to his team.
“I compare a lot radio to sports, and the human dimension is what makes the difference,” Zniber told the Montreal Gazette.
Asked repeatedly and in increasingly creative and roundabout ways what explains the ratings increase, he refused to say.
It would be hard to give sole credit to the on-air personalities. Zniber dropped Anne-Marie Withenshaw’s All Access Weekend (a lawsuit over the broken contract is pending) and brought back Jeremy White for overnights, but the weekday lineup is unchanged. And both stations cram as much music as they can on the air: about eight songs an hour during their morning shows and about 13 an hour during off-peak times. Announcers are left with rushed breaks of as little as seven seconds between them.
The music better explains an across-the-board increase in ratings. When Mix 96 became Virgin Radio in 2009 to attract a younger audience, its competitor responded by shifting its core demographic younger and relaunching as The Beat. Now it brands itself as “Montreal’s perfect mix” and sounds a lot like the Mix 96 of old, mixing pop music with more R&B-style singers like Rihanna, Beyoncé and Usher, and more upbeat dance music.
Mark Bergman, program director for Virgin Radio, pointed out that Virgin still reaches more listeners (1.9 million people listen to the station at least once a week), and that The Beat tends to do better over the winter.
“Our format generally underperforms during the Christmas holiday period, whereas stations that appeal to an older demographic tend to see gains,” Bergman said.
He’s somewhat right. Winter has been the worst quarter of the year for Virgin the past few years. And we’ll have to wait and see if this spike is an outlier or a real shift in audience loyalty. But the difference between the stations has never been this large. And more importantly, over the past two years, the trend has definitely been in The Beat’s favour.
One person who won’t get to thump his chest about The Beat’s ratings is Wayne Bews. Hired only a year ago as its general manager (previously he worked at CTV Montreal and before that ran TSN Radio 690), Bews was let go last week. A spokesperson for Cogeco Diffusion said the position has been eliminated, and its duties spread around to other managers at Cogeco.
In Montreal’s French-language market, little has changed. Cogeco’s CHMP-FM 98.5 with a 21.8 per cent share is again the top-rated station, and the most listened-to not only in this city but throughout Canada. It’s followed by Rythme FM (16.6 per cent), Rouge FM (11.8 per cent), ICI Radio-Canada Première (11.6 per cent), CKOI (7.3 per cent) and NRJ (6.6 per cent).