"Broadcast Radio Continues To Strongly Dominate Listening"

Pardon me, if I join Katz in bragging a bit this morning:

“The latest findings bear out what we continue to find from all our research – and hear from consumers – that broadcast radio is still by far the overwhelming leader in audio listening,” said Mary Beth Garber, EVP/Radio Analysis and Insights at Katz Radio Group.  “Broadcast radio isn’t losing listeners – in fact just the opposite, which makes it clear that digital listening actually represents incremental listening.  So as digital listening – which is both AM/FM digital listening and personal music collection digital listening – continues to grow, it is an expansion of broadcast radio listening, additive to it rather than a substitute.  Research from Infinite Dial 2012 shows that digital listeners are also heavy broadcast users (3); digital extends the reach and popularity of broadcast radio to new devices and new listening opportunities. We're pleased with digital's growth and how it has added to the broadcast radio experience.”

Garber continued, “A digital-only ‘music collection’ audio service like Pandora only has 4.4% of total audio listening, even if you assume the Triton measurement of when the service is left on is comparable to the measurement of actual listening that Arbitron does.  That said, even though it is still a relatively small percentage of all listening, we remain excited about the role of digital listening in extending radio listening to new devices, further enhancing radio's role as the major mobile entertainment and information service to the consumer.”

In the most recent RADAR findings, the gold standard measurement system for radio, which measure national listening behavior from October 2011 to September 2012, broadcast radio continues to strongly dominate listening – reaching 243 million listeners per week and representing 92.4% of all listening (1).  In comparison, digital listening currently represents only 7.6% of all audio listening (2).

(1) RADAR 115 (Dec 2012, for period Oct 11 - Sep 12
(2) RADAR 115 (for period Oct 11 – Sep 12); Triton Digital Audio Top 20, Oct 11 – Sep 12;
(3) Infinite Dial 2012 

Coincidentally, that news comes this week just as Canada's entire Astral Radio group gets ready for their annual "Have a Heart” Radiothon events in every one of their markets.  This annual 12-hour live broadcast calls upon listeners to help raise much-needed funds to support care for young patients, enable the acquisition of new specialized pediatrics equipment and provide parents with support services.  This year's will run from 6am to 6pm Thursday May 2nd and one hundred percent of the money raised during this nation-wide one-day event will stay in Astral communities to help babies and kids.

Actually, now that I think of it, there is no coincidence.  

Radio everywhere routinely does large and small things for our communities.  

The announcement could have come ANY day, and there would be many things to point to that radio's dedicated public servants are doing somewhere.

"Don't sell the ratings. Sell the reasons you HAVE those ratings,."
   - Mary Beth Garber

AMEN.

If You Don't Understand This, You're Not A Media Buyer Or Planner

"Media is the New Creative", targeting media buyers and planners in English Canada is phase two of the ongoing national multiplatform trade advertising campaign from Canada's Astral Media (click here to watch them all).

The campaign is entirely web based and consists of three videos and one "making of" that all playfully highlight some of the stereotypes of our industry; the messages recognize media planners as the creatives they truly are, but not always recognized for.

Derev Antikacioglu, Director of Branding and Corporate Marketing: "This aims at raising the awareness of media buyers and planners of the near unlimited creative possibilities that Astral offers to reach targeted consumer groups multiple times a day."

Watch 'em and ultimately, I'm betting that like me you need to go back and reread the press release to fully understand what the campaign was trying to communicate ("...that the rapid evolution of today's media landscape is transforming the media planner's role. Media planning and buying has attained creativity in its own right. Being at the table at the onset of the ideation stage, media's involvement in the ideation process is becoming increasingly intimate.")

Here's hoping these creative types don't decide to produce a series designed to "playfully spotlight" the contributions of programming consultants to the biz.

I might have to join that media rep at that bar, just contemplating the possibility.

The mind reels...

Making A Big National Difference All In One Amazing Day

Astral Media's National Day of Caring for Kids Radiothon is happening simultaneously today on 60 radio stations across Canada (click their Facebook page to see what's happening), in support of children’s hospitals and health care facilities.

Double KUDOS to VP/BC Operations for Astral Brad Phillips who is also President of the British Columbia Association of Broadcasters and is simultaneously playing host to their 64th annual convention in Kelowna just as his 99.9 Sun FM, AM 1150 and 101-5 EZ Rock originate the one-day “Have a Heart” Radiothon event for Kelowna General Hospital.

This live broadcast calls upon listeners to help raise much-needed funds to support care for young patients, enable the acquisition of new specialized pediatrics equipment and provide parents with support services. The “Have A Heart” Radiothon will run from 6am to 6pm from Orchard Park Shopping Centre in the Sky Court.

This year, the focus is on raising funds for specialized equipment for the new pediatric trauma and waiting rooms at Kelowna General Hospital. One hundred percent of the money raised during this one-day, 12 hour event will stay in our community to help babies and kids.

Wow.. TWO Morning Newscasts In Under 4:30!

One of my favorite newspeople has worked in Winnipeg for many years on Astral's QX104.

Boyd Kozak proves that being contemporary and relevant is not a matter of the age of the journalist.

Sure, he's a longtime Canadian radio legend, but "Kozie" lives up to his reputation every morning in his writing, story choices and style. (click to listen to two consecutive recent newscasts)

• Nine stories in 1:51.
• Only one story repeats in the two newscasts, the right one.
• Stories I care about, and rattled through.
• The writing is excellent.
• Traffic was perfect "location first" content.
• And he blew through a two day weather giving me everything I needed to know in 10 seconds.

And, to top things off, he even explains in today's blog post how he's able to do it with some Monday Motivation.

I Want To See More Measurements Before Deciding What This Means

Was a radio tuning myth debunked during last Friday’s web presentation by Astral on the first full currency year of PPM results in Canada?

Summer, it seems, isn’t the write-off we all thought it was. With PPM comes a new measure over one full year of radio tuning across the four seasons – in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

In Toronto, consistency for 18-54s across all seasons.


Edmonton tuning dropped in winter, then picked up in spring and increases were found in summer.

Vancouver had consistency in fall, winter and spring with a 9% tuning hours drop in summer.

Calgary saw highest tuning in fall while winter and spring were flat and summer was up 6%.

In Montreal, spring and summer were up slightly compared to fall and winter.

My first take: since the measure is now 6+ and not 12+ as is the case in diary ratings, the impact of family vacations and children and teen radio use during summer months and the lack of it during the periods when students are in school could be distorting adult "away from home" listening estimates.

Or, are we just looking at variations in the statistical reliability of five different panel samples and nothing real at all?

Jim Seiler invented diary measurement of broadcasting in 1949 and was fond of reminding his clients for many years "don't believe anything in Arbitron until you see it three times."

That is why I am hoping ARB, which will have 43 PPM markets online by the end of the year will start tracking the seasonality of total persons using radio too, so that we don't have to wait three more years to find out if the Astral researchers have spotted a meaningful trend or just sample wobbles which will be totally different in another year.

My New Favorite (Online) TV Show

It stars Alicia Olson-Keating and Mike Mohammed.

Whether your “book” is good or bad, it’s always the best strategy to be the one your local buying community, let alone national and regional buyers, know that they can count on for trustworthy analysis and perspective as ratings come out.

Canada’s largest radio company’s research arm, Astral RadioPlus, shows that they understand this as they have been presenting monthly live webinars on PPM data results for Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal.

Here are some takeaways Mike O'Malley and I got out of the latest one (click to read the doc).
1. For example, in Toronto, there appears to be a targeting “hole” right in the “middle,” as the crowd seems to be skewing extremely young and female or male. Is there an opportunity in that bullseye? Or, does the super-serving of each of the four quadrants mean that no one station can possibly cover all the bases?

2. This is a good way for sales to lay out the market for a possible client in a pitch, to help them understand why psychographics and qualitative is important in addition to simple quantative rankers.

3. You can also "station-map" on your "listening to the competition" days, plotting your station and your sharers according to how they sound. Review the map for opportunities as well as “performance vs. intent.” Subjective, but it’s a visually effective self-diagnostic.

Canada's Astral Radio Explains PPM To You

In the U.S., Arbitron delivers monthly PPM updates as the researcher rolls out metered radio measurement.

In Canada, a large group owner's research staff has seized the initiative and is trying to establish itself as the PPM experts by delivering monthly reports on the new form of media measurement of radio usage arrives.

Alicia Olson-Keating, General Manager of Research & Marketing Services and Mike Mohammed, Research and Marketing Analyst for Astral Media Radio in English Canada put on their red Olympics mittens and took 30 minutes to present and analyze the second PPM currency results in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal.

There's a lot of great information in their presentation, including some tips on how to look at your own ratings. For example, before you open "the book" or start a download of data, make a note of important events, times and dates which could have affected radio and your own station.


Then, before tracking reach, time spent listening and share rankers, look at each station's ideal and real target on a male-female/young-old grid.

Here's how it looks in the most recent monthly numbers in four large Canadian markets:



Are you the first one on your block to disseminate the new radio ratings data to your marketplace?

It's a good way to establish a position of leadership and expertise with your media buying community.

What's Your Audio Signature?

(click to hear 'em) Astral Radio isn't out to brainwash all of Canada, just make sure that no matter which of their stations you listen to, there's a consistent image. Pretty smart, eh?