RADIO RATINGS ANALYSIS is a complex task, as we noted last week. For radio station promotion departments getting their quarterly analysis in Canada's five largest markets, it's about toying with the numbers — age, gender, time of day, relative growth — until your station becomes number one, or at least number one in categories advertisers like.
But what about longer-term trends? We took Numeris top-line ratings data over the past seven years to capture portraits of stations in those five major markets who made changes to their programming, and what happened to their audience as a result.
For the sake of a fair comparison, and because they're the only numbers published directly by Numeris, we're using their top-line PPM numbers, which count all listeners in a central market, regardless of age or gender. Some stations may be happy with a change that reduces their overall rating in exchange for a boost in a target demo. And some changes in ratings could be due to many factors not considered here. We're not necessarily proposing a cause-and-effect link, just showing what happened.
Last week we looked at the Vancouver market. Today, Calgary and Edmonton.
EDMONTON
TSN 1260 (CFRN)
Bell's rebranding of the sports-talk station to TSN Radio in 2013 led to a climb in share from 1.5 per cent to 2.6, including a peak of 3.6 in the spring of 2017, the only time in the past decades the Edmonton Oilers were in the NHL playoffs (even though rights to Oilers games are held by Corus's CHED). The past year has seen TSN 1260 drop back almost to its pre-TSN level.
Click here for a larger chart on the market’s talk stations.
95.7 Cruz FM (CKEA-FM)
This Harvard Broadcasting station saw a ratings spike after switching from adult-contemporary Lite 95.7 to this adult hits format in December 2013. But otherwise it continued a decline until a low of 1.9 per cent in 2015. Since then, the share has been slowly improving and hasn't been below 3 in a year and a half. Click here for our chart of the market’s pop/AC stations. Click here for a larger look at the market's top pop/AC stations.
CALGARY
95.9 CHFM
In December 2013, Rogers changed this station from adult-contemporary "Lite 95.9" to its hot AC "Kiss" brand. The next ratings book showed promise, with an 8.9 per cent share, but excluding the winter books, when it becomes "Calgary's Christmas station", there was a precipitous decline in ratings, especially starting in 2015. In December 2017, it switched back to a "lite" format, and so far it's in a slightly better position year-over-year with a few hundred more average-minute listeners and a share of just over five per cent.
Soft Rock 97.7 (CHUP-FM)
In 2013, this Rawlco station got the CRTC to eliminate a requirement to broadcast 30% folk music that it had imposed when first approving the station in 2006. Ratings improvement came slowly, from a low of 2.5 per cent 
right after the licence change to a high of five in summer 2015. That fall, the station switched branding from "Up!" to "Soft Rock", maintaining a classic hits format. The trend line has continued to be positive, with a 5.6 per cent rating in the past two periods, within a point of Calgary's three rock/alternative stations and second only to XL103 among pop stations.
101.5 Kool FM (CKCE-FM)
In 2014, this former CHUM/Bell Media station was sold to Pattison as part of the Astral Media divestitures. Pattison shifted the station to a hotter AC format, but its ratings are flat, from a 3.8 per cent share under Bell to a 3.6 share under Pattison.
Click here for a look at Calgary's pop/AC station ratings.
Wild 95.3 (CKWD-FM)
Launched as The Peak in April 2014, this Pattison station switched from AAA to country in February 2016. The station's audience grew, from a 1.4 per cent share before to a 2.0 share after, but it's only a third of the share of its direct competitor, Corus's Country 105. Here's a look at Calgary's local country stations.
Funny 1060 (CKMX)
In 2013, after acquiring this 98-year-old station in the Astral deal, Bell Media switched its format from classic country to comedy, as it has done with a handful of AM stations. The slow ratings decline continued, from an average of 2.4 per cent before to a 1.3 per cent average since, but it has done well so far in 2018, with a two per cent share this summer, putting it ahead of Sportsnet 960 for the first time since adopting the comedy format.
Click here for a larger look at Calgary's talk station ratings trends.
Thursday, we continue our move east to Toronto.
Images created by Steve Faguy.
