More Ottawa radio numbers (Fall 2012)

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With the BBM ratings of Ottawa radio stations released last week, Canadian Media Ratings reported the numbers, but we wanted to do more with the data. Ottawa-Gatineau has a wide range of radio stations, close to the same number as the Greater Toronto Area. Since the nation's capital is being served by many different radio stations, the market is very competitive. The following shows the total number of hours of Ottawa-Gatineau Anglophone listeners split up by media company:

Bell Media slightly edges out CBC in number of listener hours by 0.7 percentage points. The top four media groups (Bell Media, CBC, Newcap radio, Rogers Media) attract a huge portion, 79%, of the total listening . Perhaps, even more astonishing is that Bell Media and CBC radio stations together have nearly half (45%) of all radio listening time.

With the news of Bell Media attempting to acquire Astral Media for a second time, one may wonder if the their market share will increase. At this point in time, Bell Media will likely not be keeping any Ottawa Astral stations. In an effort to comply with the CRTC rules, Bell needs to sell some Astral English radio stations and to ensure the Competition Bureau doesn't reject the deal, Bell has leaned towards auctioning off most of these assets, likely all of the Ottawa ones.

With the same Ottawa-Gatineau Anglophone dataset from BBM and after some simple calculations, the number of (Anglophone) listeners at the local and national level this fall can be compared to last fall:

 

Local (BBM calls it “Central Reach”): The estimated number of different listeners, within the central market area, who tuned to that station for at least 15 minutes in a week.

Outside OTT-GAT: The estimated number of different listeners outside the central market area of Ottawa-Gatineau, who tuned to that station for at least 15 minutes in a week.

Canada (BBM calls it “Full Coverage Reach”: The estimated number of different listeners in Canada, who tuned to that station for at least 15 minutes in a week.

The average number of local listeners is 65,021 for an Ottawa-Gatineau radio station. From the table, any radio station above The Jewel is above average. In fairness to the stations with fewer listeners, most of these are French ones from Gatineau.

Locally, Hot 89.9 has had more listeners than CBC Radio 1, which wasn't the case for the number of hours tuned in. The hit music station attracted 226 900 different listeners in a week. BBM states the “estimated population of the central market area [in Ottawa-Gatineau]” as 784, 171 (12 years +). So, this data suggests that 2 out of 7 Anglophones in Ottawa-Gatineau have listened to Hot 89.9 for at least 15 minutes on any given Fall week.

Despite holding the third spot in number of hours tuned to (share%), CFRA is actually fifth in number of listeners. After some on-air staff changes at CFRA, the total number of listeners have barely changed, if at all. (Remember, these figures are estimates.)

Most music stations have seen significant audience growth from last year. The second highest in growth is Live 88.5, who appear to have overtaken CHEZ in local listeners.