SINCE WWW.CARTT.CA WAS IN Vancouver a couple of weeks back, we decided to drop in on Paul Fisher, the executive vice-president and cluster market manager for Rogers Radio in the city.
Having moved west two years ago after a very successful stint as general manager of then-Toronto market leader CHFI, we wanted to ask Fisher about the differences in the two big-city markets (why does Jack FM work so well in Vancouver and not Toronto?), the similarities (News 1130 in Vancouver is built off the successful 680 News template from Toronto) and how Rogers’ newest brand, Clear FM is faring.
What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation between www.cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien and Fisher.
Greg O’Brien: You’ve been here two years now, right, after being VP and GM at CHFI, right?
Paul Fisher: Yes
GOB: What have been the key differences to you in these two big markets… from a listener point of view, comparing News 1130 to 680 News and Jack FM here to Jack in Toronto, for example. The ratings are quite different where the news share here is lower than the Toronto station but the Jack share here is far higher than Jack’s ratings in Toronto. Does that speak to the difference in listeners in the two cities?
PF: It speaks to a number of different things. First of all, the news station here is essentially on the same path that 680 News in Toronto has followed but it’s a couple of years behind. In the last two years, we’ve seen the cume on 1130 rise wonderfully. The acceptance by advertisers has risen as well and it became a profit centre two years ago. It’s beginning to reap all of the benefits of the many years of losing money.
680 News, people forget, lost money the first five years. News 1130 lost money the first six-and-a-half, seven years.
GOB: How long has it been all-news?
PF: Next month will be 10 years – in fact, we’re celebrating our 10th anniversary with a big client and listener party in February… It’s 10 years old and as of this year, it has come into its own and in my mind – it’s just a powerhouse. It is going to continue growing and will follow the 680 path that’s been blazed already.
GOB: What about the differences in the two Jacks? The playlists are essentially similar but Jack in Toronto has gone with no DJs where Jack in Vancouver has found success with the traditional format of a morning show and so on.
PF: I think, as much as we like to say every market is essentially the same, there are some differences and in Vancouver, for a number of years, there really weren’t any stations exposing the kind of music Jack plays, whereas in Toronto, there were a few stations that were flirting with it somewhat. So, Mix plays some of the tunes. You might have had CHUM FM playing some of them. To a degree, CFNY might have played a couple of them.
Vancouver didn’t have that and for a number of years, Vancouver was a pretty stable market – there just weren’t a lot of changes going on. So, when Jack launched, it was just such an explosion of ideas, music and attitude, it really was able to capture people’s attention – but with Toronto being a market that was somewhat served by some of that music already, it just had a different effect there.
Jack Toronto is profitable. The numbers aren’t as big as Vancouver but it’s still doing moderately well in terms of its revenue.
GOB: The Jack format has cooled off a little compared to where it was.
PF: That’s not a big surprise. You have these peaks, especially when there’s certain excitement coming in. With Jack there was that wonderful newness, which is going to change a little bit.
The important thing with Jack now is to maintain where it is and have peaks with the occasional downturn – but essentially always going up more than you’re coming down. Jack will always be in that 8.5 to 11 share range. It’s not going to see a 15 share again, but that’s fine. I don’t think any station in Vancouver is going to see a share like that again.
The biggest thing with that is managing the expectations – saying to our financial people, I know what it billed this year and next year, it will bill a little bit more. But the year after that, maybe not grow quite as much.
GOB: Is there anything you have to do to revitalize or boost Jack to maintain or grow excitement?
PF: Almost on a daily basis. Our program director is Andy Ross and he has done a great job of managing the music because you can’t just play the same songs over and over again on Jack. You have to platoon things in and out and you have to be forever looking at new combinations of songs.
Our Jack playlist is over 2,000 songs and you’ve really got to maintain that. You can’t just hit the start button and walk away.
Likewise promotionally, we’ve done some of the most innovative marketing of any radio station last spring and summer with our Vijay spots.
GOB: Is that campaign over with?
PF: We ran it through two cycles.
GOB: Those were strangely, quirky, funny ads (starring Rogers Radio engineer Vijay. Click here to have a look).
PF: We called them very Jack-like. They were a little in your face, a little “what the hell was that all about?” But it’s had its run. We’re going to freshen things up and now we’ll be looking to capture attention in other ways.
GOB: Going back to the news side, has it been difficult for 1130 – because CKNW is so popular in the market, and I know they’re not a news wheel like 1130 is – to make inroads with the news consumer?
PF: Perception might make it seem that way but the reality is that News 1130 has beaten CKNW a number of times in the ratings in terms of cume. In the summer book, we actually beat them 12+, which was an amazing accomplishment. But really, we tend to look 25-54, which is what the advertisers look at… and News 1130 beats CKNW in many demographics.
The one place CKNW wins is 55+, and we’re okay giving that up.
GOB: Back in Toronto, 680 seems to skew quite heavily towards the business community. A lot of the advertising is for high end cars or document managing companies or other business services, and so on. Is that similar here?
PF: We’re doing more and more business to business advertising on the station. Again, part of the situation with 680 is all the head offices in Toronto, so you have the CFOs and CEOs of the company listening to 680 News and saying to their ad agencies, “why am I not on this station?”
Then the ad agency comes in and says, “well, we’ve crunched the numbers and the owner says ‘I want to be on that station.’” And, we are finding that more in Vancouver.
GOB: The Clear brand is 12 or 15 months old – after the switch away from XFM? How is it performing.
PF: It’s right on expectation. We looked at the market and decided that we would try to fashion a radio station that actually reflected Vancouver and wasn’t necessarily made up of a bunch of music charts — and we agreed at the time that we would want quality over quantity and that we would build a product that will attract the affluent listener, the lifestyle-oriented listener. So, you’ll find that a lot of the advertising on Clear is spas or wine merchants – we just signed a nice deal with Lexus – those are the kinds of clients we have on it – along with the regular clients like The Bay and Save-On Foods.
Clear is something we’re developing as a brand. It’s not just an AC station, it’s a lifestyle station which reflects the city we live in. The imaging and marketing associated with Clear points towards that. We don’t say 10 songs in a row. We don’t say five hours commercial free because we’re more about the lifestyle and we’re enjoying sustained growth on the station.
It’s moved into a profitable position which, after a year, is very nice to have. We never expected it to explode like Jack. This is a station that is going to continue to grow in the key demos. It’s skewed a bit more towards women 35-44 than any other demo but I sit in our research groups and I see a lot of men saying ‘this is my station when I want to relax’ and the line for it is “Vancouver’s new way to relax.”
It’s something very new and different in radio as far as we’re concerned.
GOB: This looks like a brand that could be exported to other markets.
PF: It could very well. When you come up with a new brand, you need to give it room to grow and evolve. When Clear began, compared to where it is now, essentially, we had to refine the music a little bit.
We’re playing a certain amount of unfamiliar music (some smooth jazz tracks, for example)… we don’t play a lot of hot AC or even AC hits. We don’t really focus on things like Madonna. We allow other stations to do that, Instead, the core performers for us are people like Norah Jones and Dido.
GOB: It’s now been over a month since satellite radio has launched, are you on your way out of business yet?
PF: Oh, no! We’ve tried to help them by accepting their advertising dollars… The Canadian services are so different than the American ones because what is driving the American market right now is Sirius and Howard Stern.
GOB: I can’t believe that (Sirius Canada) launched without Howard Stern, actually.
PF: I guess I can, because we have a different set of guidelines in Canada. What you do with one facet of your company can impact what you do with other facets of your company (Standard Radio and the CBC are partners in Sirius Canada). I’m not sure that’s the case in the States.
Yesterday I was getting a haircut and the guy doing my hair knows I work in radio and he asked me to explain the whole Howard Stern thing. So I told him about Stern and what he does and he said “no, how do they pay him $500 million?”… I guess satellite radio is worth 12 bucks a month to enough people to hear Howard Stern say the F-word on radio.
GOB: I was bored with his show a long time ago. It seems to me to be the same stuff over and over.
PF: You can’t argue with his popularity though. The question is, do you want to pay 12 bucks a month for that?
Look at digital television, for example. When you have digital television like I do at home, you get about 40 music channels with it and that’s satellite radio, basically… And most of those TV (music) channels are not programmed all that well – and satellite radio is programmed by the same type of person who, I like to think, is not good enough to work in terrestrial radio, perhaps.
