TORONTO – Canada’s top radio stations all share three distinct characteristics – large daily audiences who tune in multiple times throughout the day including at locations away from their homes such as in their cars and at work.
Those were the key findings of a new study by Coleman Insights presented Thursday as part of Slacker Canadian Music Week’s RadioActive conference in Toronto. The study, The PPM DNA of Canada’s High Performance Stations, compared a full year of audience data on 13 ‘high performance stations’- so designated because their adults aged 18-49 audience shares were significantly larger than the shares of competing stations – to 68 other stations in Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver using InfoSys+ Radio software from BBM Analytics.
These radio stations, which performed the best under BBM Canada’s Portable People Meter (PPM) audience measurement in the country’s five largest markets, are differentiated by their abilities to attract large daily Cume audiences, get listeners to tune into them multiple times each day, and generate significant out-of-home listening.
The high performance stations were identified as CFBR-FM (The Bear)/Edmonton; CFBT-FM (The Beat)/Vancouver; CFGL-FM (Rythme FM)/Montreal; CFNY-FM (The Edge)/Toronto; CHDI-FM (Sonic)/Edmonton; CHFI-FM/Toronto; CHQM-FM (QM/FM)/Vancouver; CHUM-FM/Toronto; CIBK-FM (Virgin Radio)/Calgary; CJAQ-FM (Jack FM)/Calgary; CJFM-FM (Virgin Radio)/Montreal; CKNO-FM (Now! Radio)/Edmonton; and CKZZ-FM (Virgin Radio)/Vancouver.
“Our findings are similar to those we uncovered in a similar analysis of American PPM data in 2009” said Coleman Insights VP Doug Hyde, who also authored the study. “They support the idea that those radio stations that are well-known, have clearly-defined positions, and have brand attributes that listeners want to affiliate with are the most likely to perform well under PPM measurement.”
The study also revealed that:
– the average Daily Cume Rating of the high performance stations was 130% higher than the average for the non-high performance stations;
– high performance stations achieved slightly higher Time Spent Listening levels, primarily because they generate an average of 5.6 listening sessions per day, 15% more than the 4.9 average number of daily listening sessions generated by non-high performance stations; and
– the proportion of listening that high performance stations generate out-of-home (69.9%), is higher than the listening generated out-of-home by non-high performance stations (62.9%).
