MONTREAL – The question Corus Entertainment CEO John Cassaday fields most frequently when it comes to his company’s radio business is: Why has radio in Canada remained strong and stable while Stateside, the business is suffering – and when, exactly, will Canadian radio suffer the same fate.
American radio “Has been in secular decline for quite some time,” he noted, speaking to attendees at the 12th annual CIBC Institutional Investor Conference. He’s asked: “Isn’t it just a matter of time before radio in Canada suffers the same secular declines as we’ve seen in the United States?
“I remind people there are three fundamental differences between Canadian radio and U.S. radio,” he explained.
1. “Local cable operators do not have the ability to sell local advertising like they do in the United States – a huge competitive factor that is absent here in in Canada,” said Cassaday. Indeed, cable regulations here say the two minutes per hour of local ad time offered by American specialty channels can’t be sold for a profit in Canada and must be given over to the promotion of Canadian television channels or promotion of the BDU company’s own products.
2. “When radio consolidation was allowed, we kept our focus on local while the U.S. moved largely to syndication – and I believe that the reason radio has continued to be so successful is because it is, in fact, a social media. It is a connection to the community.”
3. “We resisted the urge to commercialize our radio stations to the extent they did in the U.S. If you’re in Boston or New York, it would not have been uncommon to hear 18-24 minutes of commercial load in an hour of radio programming. Where, we’ve basically held our ad loads at 12 minutes an hour which is what people are accustomed to seeing in Canada and as a result, we haven’t disenfranchised huge pieces of our listening audience because of greed.”
– Greg O’Brien
