TORONTO – Current economic uncertainty caused national radio sales to dip by 5% in the second quarter of 2009, reports Canadian Broadcast Sales (CBS).
Telecommunications spending in the quarter was off by 33% but still accounted for 9.5% of total spend, the data showed. Restaurants increased their share to 9.4%, up from 7.8%, while the financial services and insurance sector was at 8.3%, and the automotive category rose slightly to 7.6%.
“All ad spending continued to decline in this economic environment, but we expect conventional television and daily newspaper to bear the major impact,” said CBS president Patrick Grierson, in the press release. “We believe radio will fare relatively well, notwithstanding real declines year over year. Our churn rate of 42% remained in the normal range and when coupled with a modest shortfall of replacement revenues, led to a 5% revenue decrease for the quarter.”
Grierson also noted that lead times for campaign booking were “at their all-time shortest”, which he said underscores the flexibility of radio.
All numbers were adjusted to reflect the fact that Q2 was a 12 week quarter compared to the normal 13 week quarter, the press release continued.
CBS represents over 60% of all private Canadian radio national revenues and provides the broadest single industry measure of national radio sales.
