Revamped radio station strong from the Jump

Top-hits format grabs more listeners, but talk is still king in local ratings

Ottawa’s AM and FM radio dials serve up some 35 mostly soundalike stations — or roughly one for every dentist office.

With that kind of concentration, it’s inevitable that most stations will end up with just a sliver of the market-share pie.

That was borne out in listenership figures released Thursday that showed perennial market leader CBC Radio One with 18.8 per cent of the Ottawa-area audience and all other stations with 10 per cent or less — often a lot less.

Within the figures, however, Dan Mellon sees some clues about the motivations behind the format changes that are a regular part of an ever-jostling market.

The Algonquin College broadcasting professor recalls the protests that greeted Corus Enter- tainment’s decision last March to convert its once hard-edged rock station The Bear to a top-hits outlet called Jump.

“There was a lot of talk on social media. ‘Why would you take it away?’ and, ‘Why would Corus do something like that?’”

But Corus’s Jump has already nudged the station’s market share to 3.6 per cent in the latest rating period from 2.4 per cent last spring, according to the report from audience-tracker Numeris, formerly known as BBM.

More significant, however, are less-widely distributed figures from Numeris that show Jump gaining favour with a demographic group coveted by advertisers, Mellon says.

“When we look at females 25-44, Jump now is the No 2. station in the market in the demographic, only behind Hot 89.9. So they beat Kiss, they beat a lot of stations. And in 18-34 women, so younger wom- en, they’re No. 2 with a 14 share.” Concludes Mellon: “They had a very, very strong debut.”

The impact of Bell Media’s rebranding of classic-hits station BOB-FM this month as New Country 94 won’t be known until new numbers come out next spring. But this week’s report could show why Bell was eager to switch.

While BOB held 3.3 per cent of the market, up from 2.6 per cent last spring, Rogers Media property Country 101.1 had double the audience at 6.7 per cent, up from 6.1 per cent in the spring. The capital’s sole country outlet until this month, Country 101.1 is broadcast from Smiths Falls, with uneven reception in central and east-end Ottawa.

Mellon says Bell saw a “great opportunity.” Country music is enjoying a resurgence and leads all other radio formats in several markets in Canada.

In Ottawa, however, talk is king, with CBC’s fare leading the market and CFRA earning a 10 per cent share.

Ottawa and Gatineau have more radio stations per capita than any- where else in the country, according to Statistics Canada. Even in such a competitive market, however, the stations are highly profitable. A Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission report in June said Ottawa outlets earned an average 27.8 per cent profit in 2013, an increase from 25 per cent in 2012.