Spring PPM survey shows election campaign not good for radio ratings across Canada

Expect few stations in Ontario to spend a lot of money covering upcoming Fall election

From where I sit On The Kowch watching the Spring 2011 PPM video analysis from Astral Media I was not surprised by their findings about how an election campaign doesn't generate ratings on a newstalk radio station except on election night.

For regular readers of this blog you will recall I said the same thing when the election was called in March and at the end of April offered tips on how to boost ratings on election night:

Astral's indepth PPM analysis of how newstalk radio stations in Toronto, Montreal (French and English), Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver is the first concrete evidence of radio listening habits during an election campaign.

It compares PPM Average Minute Audience (AMA) prior to the election campaign, during the campaign, on election day and post election campaign listening.

In blue is the base line of the audience prior to the campaign. That is set at 100. Anything under 100 in the graph means a drop of listeners. Anything over 100 means increased ratings.

So Looking at the chart the blue bar is the base line. The red bar represents ratings during the campaign and it's down across the country. The Green bar represents election day and it shows increased listening on May 2nd. The purple bar is post election showing a small decrease compared to ratings prior to the campaign.

The only exception were French language radio stations in Montreal. Francophone Montrealers are very much like American listeners - they love their politics and the French talk shows in that city are very politically charged. As a result they maintained their listener base during and after the campaign and soared 41 per cent on election day. Edmonton and Anglo Montrealers were the least interested in radio election results.

Edmonton newstalk stations had the lowest ratings of all five markets during the election campaign dropping 13%. Vancouver newstalk stations dropped nine per cent and Toronto ratings fell by eight per cent.

From where I sit On The Kowch, Astral Media's PPM election analysis leaves no doubt that it's just not worth it for radio to spend a lot of money on election campaign coverage.

The Astral findings are important because it will set the stage in the Fall for radio stations not to spend money following political leaders during the Ontario election campaign. This is budget time at radio stations across Canada. The Astral Media findings will make it very difficult for news directors to convince their management to give them $10,000 to send a reporter on the election campaign.

Steve Kowch is a former newstalk radio program director and news director

Contact: steve@kowchmedia.com

Comments

 

0 #1 Kelly F 2011-06-20 19:49

It's not surprising that Canadians are "electioned" out. We've had so many over the last few years.

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