Saturday, December 15, 2012

Market index shows Calgary, Edmonton being the most competitive radio markets

Earlier this week, we looked at the share in hours of each media company in the largest markets in Canada. Using those same share totals, we can figure out how concentrated or competitive the Canadian radio markets are.

In each city or market, the shares of all media companies, not the stations themselves, like Astral, Bell, CBC, Corus, and Rogers are added. One would expect the result to be 100%. However, this isn't the case since community/campus radio stations don't participate in the studies and neither do ones from other markets that happen to be picked up. (As a reminder, the share is calculated by taking the the number of hours tuned to a particular station, or in this case the media company, and dividing it by the total number of hours listened to the radio.) So, the problem with using the share values from the BBM data is that we also have to include the other radio stations that help sum all the shares to 100% and we don't have that information.


With the result of the summation of each media player, we use can find the adjusted percentage of hours tuned for each media company. Then, with the new share value of the company, we square it and sum all the squares of the media corporations. The result is an indicator of the level of the market concentration called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index or HHI. This index has a range of 0 to 10 000. An index of 0 indicates, in theory, many small firms of equal size in the industry which suggests a perfectly competitive market, while an index of 10 000 (or 100²) indicates a single large firm in the industry or a monopoly.

With that preamble in mind, let's apply HHI to the English radio markets.

“Population” is defined as the estimated population of the central market area according to BBM Canada topline data and PPM, an abbreviation for Portable People Meter, is a BBM tool to measure radio ratings.

Data sources: Shares of hours tuned and populations from BBM Canada topline data Fall 2012. Shares of hours tuned for Regina and Saskatoon from Pugets Sound Radio forums.


The dark orange shows the markets or metropolitan areas with a high market concentration, an HHI of at least 2500 as defined by the U.S. Department of Justice. The yellow bands indicate moderate market concentrations, an HHI of 1500 to 2500.

The more concentrated markets (higher HHI) tend to have fewer media companies than the more competitive ones which is consistent with the market concentration index. When the number of firms decrease, the average share of each firm rises and so does HHI.

The index shows, out of the English radio markets, Windsor having the highest radio market concentration with merely three media players: CBC Radio, Bell Media and Blackburn Radio.

The data also shows that Calgary has a slightly more competitive market than Toronto which may surprise many. In fact, Edmonton and Vancouver markets are also somewhat more competitive than Canada's largest city. The differences are miniscule and since the data represents a population based on a sample, these figures are merely estimates. If we were to take a different sample of Calgary and Edmonton during the same period, Edmonton may have appeared to be more competitive than Calgary.

While the estimates of the shares may not be the true values, the estimated HHI indexes reveal a very similar level of competitiveness in the Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto markets.

Montreal is an unusual market whether we are looking at the Anglophone or Francophone listeners. Over 90%of the hours tuned for Anglophones is concentrated within three companies: Astral, Cogeco, and CBC. The other media players seem of very little significance.

As for the diary markets, the data suggests that Halifax is more competitive than Ottawa-Gatineau and Winnipeg. This is unexpected since Ottawa-Gatineau has more radio stations and owners than the Nova Scotia capital.

The markets measured using the more accurate PPM technology are noted in order to distinguish them from the other markets using the user-input paper diaries. A problem with the diaries is that respondents tend to under report their listening habits as they forget what stations they have listened to earlier in the week and in which time block. The newer method and technology, PPM, automatically records program and station information to the minute. Because of these differences in methods of data collection, comparing a PPM market with a diary market is difficult.

With the Bell-Astral merger proposal re-emerging and even if Bell does auction off the Astral English radio stations to the highest bidders, radio markets across Canada will still increase in concentration as a single firm is removed from each market and Bell's rivals snatch up those Astral properties.

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