Latest CBC Radio 2 survey data: the "S9 2010" results

Two years have now passed since the CBC completed their restructuring of the CBC Radio 2 programming.

As you may recall, the first phase of the changes to the CBC Radio 2 programming occurred in March 2007. The last survey of the CBC Radio 2 audience listening to the “old” programming conducted by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement was, in the BBM’s terminology, S1 2007. The most recent survey available on the BBMs web site covers the period from July 26 – October 24 2010 and includes data for Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver and is based on data compiled using the Portable People Meter, or PPM. Radio audience survey data for Winnipeg and Ottawa is based on data compiled using diary data and so is not available for this period, the last survey period for these markets covering the period March 1 – April 25 2010. I term the period from March 1 – April 25 2010 “S4 2010”, to be consistent with prior survey naming, but it should be noted that the BBM does not use this term.

Anyone interested in the success or failure of the new programming on CBC Radio 2 can therefore compare the current audience for CBC Radio 2 with the audience for the “old” Classical format. Since the goal of the restructuring of the CBC Radio 2 programming was apparently to increase the total audience, we would expect that the CBC Radio 2 audience has increased in the major markets surveyed by the BBM. At the time of the programming changes, the management of the CBC admitted that they were going to alienate many loyal listeners, but contended that they would gain additional listeners and would therefore increase the total audience for CBC Radio 2. So what actually happened?

As readers of previous entries to this blog are no doubt aware, the audience for CBC Radio 2 has plummeted. Changes in the survey methodology from diary data to the PPM data are no doubt one factor, but the decline in the CBC Radio 2 audience was evident even before the changeover to the PPM measurements. The audience has declined 41.4% in Montreal, 39.4% in Toronto, 67.1% in Vancouver, 56.3% in Calgary and 45.2% in Edmonton. This is a decline in market share of almost unheard of proportions. The charts below summarize the results for S9 2010. Note that the last survey for which full market data is available is S4 2010, which included data for Ottawa and Winnipeg.

While it is true that the total radio audience has declined in each of these markets, with the exception of Montreal English broadcasting stations, the decline in Radio 2's audience has been much more dramatic.

Many former listeners of CBC Radio 2 will not be surprised by this. You may recall that listeners protested the changes in most large Canadian cities in April 2008. There was a public outcry when the extent of the CBC’s plans were revealed to the Canadian public. Although the audience was vociferous in their condemnation of the CBC’s plans for the new programming, the CBC management proceeded with the restructuring in the face of overwhelming public opposition.

Consider how other corporations have implemented change and how they have reacted when their customers reacted negatively to such change. The most well-known example of a marketing debacle is, of course, the introduction of “New Coke” in the late eighties. For those few who may not know the story: Coke attempted to increase the market share for Coca-Cola by introducing a new formula for Coke that they dubbed “New Coke.” Their customers were outraged. New Coke sales plummeted. Coca-Cola relented and reintroduced “Coke Classic” to placate their customers, offering both “New Coke” and “Coke Classic”. Sales recovered and “New Coke” was quietly retired by an abashed Coca-Cola corporation.

Consider a more recent example. The Gap recently decided to change their logo. Their logo! Customers were outraged and protested. The Gap, having learned something during the past twenty years from other corporate missteps, quickly retreated, admitted their mistake and reinstated their old logo. Note that nothing apparently had changed with respect to the merchandise, shopping experience or pricing. The only thing that was altered was the logo! Yet the management of The Gap was quick to realize that they had made a mistake and recovered from the mistake in order to keep their customers happy.

Not so the management of the CBC. Not only did they ignore the public outcry that greeted the initial announcement of the restructuring of the CBC, but have apparently been oblivious to the declining audience of CBC Radio 2, judging by the lack of public statements to their shareholders, the taxpayers of Canada.

You can’t get away with stuff like this if you are a company operating in a competitive environment. If you’re a corporation that lives off the public purse, apparently you can.

CBC Radio 2 Overhaul - more cheerleading from the desperate

The following article appeared in the January 11 edition of the National Post. You can read the article on the National Post’s web site here. I’ve also copied the text below in case the link to this article is ever broken, as often happens in the world of the internet.

CBC Radio 2: The mix fix

16 months after CBC’s overhaul of Radio 2, it’s like the all-classical version never existed — in a good way

T’cha Dunlevy, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, January 11, 2010

"Hi, I'm Laurie Brown. Welcome to The Signal." These are a few of my favourite words. And I can hear them six nights out of seven on what just might be the best show on Canadian radio.

It's The Signal, like the lady said, on CBC Radio 2. Therein, Brown presents an array of evocative sounds, from the simply pretty to the esoteric and experimental, all with a fluidity and grace that can take you to unexpected places.

Much like Radio 2 these days. The dust has settled following the station's controversial makeover 16 months back, when it completed the transformation from an almost all-classical format to more varied programming featuring everything from indie-rock to folk, jazz, world and pop, with a little classical thrown in for good measure. The overarching emphasis is on Canadian content.

Brown arrived in 2007, at the early end of the change process. A veteran arts reporter for CBC-TV, it was her first foray into radio.

"I came to CBC and said I wanted to be able to do a music show that was capable of playing any kind of music, that was all about new music and about discovery," she says.

To her great surprise, her words fell on open ears: "For the first time in my entire career, CBC management was totally in sync," she said. "I hit the magic word: 'discovery.' I can't tell you how refreshing that was."

Another key player in Radio 2's overhaul is Rich Terfry, host of the station's recently expanded afternoon Radio 2 Drive. Also known as acclaimed rapper Buck 65, Terfry took over from revered DiscDrive host Jurgen Gothe in September 2008, replacing the classical symphonies of yore with a more youthful playlist.

He has been settling into his "first real job" ever since, weathering the initial storm of protest by keeping his head down, and emerging with one of Radio 2's most popular shows in the process.

"I don't look at emails," he said, reached at his Toronto home last week. "But I do get a sense of the people in the country, all over the country. After a while, you feel like you're beginning to develop a relationship with the whole country."

That's music to the ears of CBC programming director Chris Boyce, who sees Radio 2's metamorphosis as an opportunity to redefine the station's relationship with Canadians.

"We went into this with the theory that there is an amazing range of music being made in Canada," he said, "and very little of it is being heard by Canadians over the airwaves. We've been able to broaden the range of music being played on the station, being played on radio. It's been fantastically successful, if that's the measure."

It's not, or not the only one. Ratings matter, too, and Radio 2's are more or less on par with what they were before the change. The station reaches just over one million Canadians per week -- which is down 10% with a 2.7 share of the national market compared to its previous 3%.

So almost the same number, if not the same people, are tuning in. The average age of your typical Radio 2 listener before the facelift was a golden 65. It's now a sprightly 52.

"It's getting more evenly distributed," Boyce said. "To me, changing our audience is as important as increasing it. Is it about chasing younger listeners? No, we're a public broadcaster -- it's about serving all Canadians."

One of Radio 2's biggest coups has been its newfound support of Canadian independent music. A recent edition of Radio 2 Drive featured songs by Sarah Slean, Sarah Harmer, Chantal Kreviazuk, Native pop singer Elisapie Isaac, Sam Roberts, Joel Plaskett, K'naan, Stars, Feist, as well as established Canadian and international acts including Kate Bush, Wilco, Bob Dylan, Charlotte Gainsbourg, The Police and Drive hero Neil Young, who gets a daily tribute.

"Speaking not so much for myself but for Radio 2," Terfry said, "and listening to what management has to say, they want the show to be [one where] if people really want to know what's going on in Canadian music, what's up-and-coming, who are the artists making an impact, listen to this show and you'll know.

"The problem with that, the challenge from the beginning, is to get people to care about Canadian music. The average person doesn't."
The average person hasn't had much of an opportunity to care. Spin your way across the radio dial and you'll find station after station playing a mind-numbing loop of chart-topping pop, most of it from south of the border.

So for our national station to be presenting a homegrown alternative is a sort of quiet revolution. There has been resistance to Radio 2's makeover, from both the media and hardcore classical fans.

The latter can still hear their music during the daytime and on weekends, it should be noted, and all the time online on the first of Radio 2's four specialty channels: classical, jazz, Canadian songwriters and Canadian composers.

What's harder to hear is the emerging dialogue of a country coming to terms with its multi-textured musical identity. From Bob Mackowycz (weekdays) and jazz singer Molly Johnson's (weekends) eclectic Radio 2 Morning show to mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah's Tempo, Tom Allen's genre-spanning ( "from Bach to Bachman, Haydn to the Hip") early afternoon Shift, Andrew Craig's Canada Live and Katie Malloch's jazz show Tonic in the evening, there is lots to listen to.

Weekend offerings include Newfoundland musician Tom Power's Deep Roots, Bill Richardson's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap and the ever-gregarious George Stroumboulopoulos's new Strombo Show on Sunday nights.

It's a lot to fit into a week without coming off like an allover-the-place college station. The trick is to have it all make sense, and create a flow from one show to the next.

DIRECTOR'S TAKE

General manager and executive director of CBC Radio's English services Denise Donlon has come a long way from co-hosting CityTV's The New Music with Laurie Brown in the late '80s. She became MuchMusic's VP and general manager in 1997 before becoming president of Sony Music Canada from 2000 to 2004. She arrived at CBC in September 2008, just after Radio 2's transformation:
Her opinion "I agree with the changes. [Radio 2] was really a service that was very niche before -- which is great for commercial radio, but as a public broadcaster, it meant so much Canadian music had no other area for exposure."

On the naysayers "You can't make everyone happy. ...We're trying to please not only our audience, but the Canadian cultural community, independent artists, major label artists, the classical community. We're serving many masters to celebrate the best of Canadian music."

On the bright side "There's a real depth of conversation and richness of programming; any other station would be racing to commercials, while we're talking about all kinds of things."

The most remarkable statement from the article is this:

Ratings matter, too, and Radio 2's are more or less on par with what they were before the change. The station reaches just over one million Canadians per week -- which is down 10% with a 2.7 share of the national market compared to its previous 3%.

As I pointed out in my letter to the National Post, it should be remembered that the goal of the CBC’s restructuring of CBC Radio 2 was to make Radio 2 more “relevant” to Canadians. Presumably, one measure of relevance is the number of Canadians listening to Radio 2. After all, how can Radio 2 be relevant to Canadians if no one is listening?

Yet, as T’Cha Dunlevy states in the news report, CBC Radio 2’s audience share has fallen 10% (according to his/her figures) since this grand experiment was initiated. In fact, recent BBM results indicate a more alarming loss of market share of approximately 38.4% in the major markets surveyed by the BBM. See my next blog entry to follow. For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume a loss of market share of 10%.

In a public corporation, any corporate initiative which resulted in a loss of market share of 10% would result in those responsible for the intiative being sacked, or at least being given other responsibilities where they can do less damage. Has this happened at the CBC? Apparently not – management at the CBC is too busy patting themselves on the back at the so-called success of the Radio 2 experiment. Meanwhile, formerly loyal CBC Radio 2 listeners have abandoned CBC Radio 2 for other media which are more to their liking, such as satellite radio or Wi-Fi radio.

Please, tell me again – how is this good for CBC Radio?

Two years later - have the CBC Radio Two changes been a success?

As I mentioned in my March 30 blog entry, it has now been two years since the CBC initiated its program of Radio 2 restructuring.

Phase I of the restructuring began March 17, 2009 with the cancellation of the "World at Six" news broadcast, the replacement of "Music for a while" with "Tonic", the replacement of "In Performance" with "Canada Live", the cancellation of "Two New Hours" and the introduction of "The Signal", the cancellation of "Brave New Waves" and the cancellation of "Northern Lights". Phase III was completed in September 2008 with the cancellation of "Here's to You", "Studio Sparks" and "Sound Advice" and the replacement of "Disc Drive" with "Radio 2 Drive" and "Music and Company" with "Radio 2 Morning". So, you may be wondering, has it all been worth the pain and agony that the CBC has inflicted upon its audience? Has the new programming been successful?

To answer this question I continued the analysis of CBC Radio Two's market share that I first did in my October 30 2008 blog entry using audience share data from the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement. Since we now have market share data including the period Sept. 1 2008 - Oct. 26 2008 (S4 2008, in BBM's terminology) and Jan. 5 2009 - March 1 2009 (S1 2009), we can compare CBC Radio Two's market share before the changes were implemented; i.e. before Phase I of the restructuring was implemented and the market share after the changes were implemented; i.e. after Phase III was completed. Since we have data for S4 2008 and S1 2009 we can get a good picture of how CBC Radio Two's market share has changed as this represents seven months of elapsed time since the completion of Phase III.

Much to my surprise, I found from the BBM data that radio listenership has actually increased in the major cities surveyed by the BBM, increasing from 20.7M in S1 2007 to 21.4M in S1 2009, an increase of 3.3%! In an era of MP3 players, internet radio and ubiquitous CD players this should be considered nothing short of astounding. It seems that there is a place for good old broadcast radio in our era of new technology after all!

But what about CBC Radio Two? How has it fared? Well, not as well. In a period of increased radio listenership CBC Radio Two actually lost listeners, losing a total of 49,000 listeners, or 6.9%, during the period from S1 2007 to S1 2009. As anyone with a lick of sense will tell you, to lose listeners in a growing market is very bad indeed, especially if you are trying to become more relevant to your audience, as the CBC apparently is trying to do. The chart below summarizes CBC Radio Two's market share during the period S1 2007 to S1 2009, as well as the total radio listenership in the major markets surveyed by the BBM. You can check this data for yourself using the BBM Top-Line Reports at the BBM web site.

The CBC has responded to reports of declining market share for CBC Radio Two in the past by saying that CBC Radio Two "needs to find its audience". One would think that if the "new 2" hasn't found its audience six months after its launch, it's never going to find it.

Most public corporations have a predictable response to a failed strategy. Either they admit their mistake and revise the strategy, or management is replaced or the corporation fails. The management of CBC Radio - answering to no one, apparently - has the luxury of being able to continue on their merry way to self-destruction, oblivious to declining market share and the ire of their audience. (For radio, that is, television is another story, as recent events have borne witness.)

ABC - Australia Beats Canada? Anything but CBC?

No, ABC is "Australian Broadcasting Corporation". Similar to our CBC in Canada.

It has now been just over two weeks since I began listening to internet radio and I’ve quickly developed some preferences for the radio stations that I listen to.

I initially saved Ottava (Japan), Bayern 4 Klassik (Germany), RNE Radio Clasica (Spain), Radio Classique (France), Radio Stephansdom (Austria), Sveriges Radio (Sweden) and Radio New Zealand Concert FM into my list of favourites. But it is ABC Classical FM (from Australia) that has become my everyday, all day station.

Why? Well, first of all, it’s due to the selections that are featured on ABC Classical FM. Selections are played, for the most part, in their entirety. And it is not the “Top 40” classical format that you may hear, for example, on Classical FM in Toronto.

There’s also something enjoyable about hearing news from Australia. While you still hear the world news, you also get the local news stories from Australia that can be an interesting change, compared to the mundane local news available in Canada. And it’s refreshing to know, for example, that the high temperature will be 39 celsius in Alice Springs today, when it’s -30 degrees celsius in Ottawa.

The format of ABC Classical FM reminds me of CBC Radio Two, before the CBC’s disastrous attempts at restructuring CBC Radio Two. I became curious – just how successful is ABC Classical FM in Australia? To answer this question, I took a look at the AC Nielsen radio surveys in Australia.

There are some differences between the surveys done in Australia and the ones done by the BBM in Canada. For a start, there are eight surveys done each year in Australia compared to four in Canada. In Australia, both regions and major metropolitan areas are surveyed, whereas only major metropolitan areas are surveyed by the BBM.

So, I decided to compare the market share of ABC Classical FM in Sydney (population 4.2M) with that of CBC Radio Two in Toronto (population of the GTA 4.8M). I could have done similar comparisons between Canberra and Ottawa, perhaps, and Melbourne and Montreal, Brisbane and Vancouver, but I have only a limited amount of time that I can devote to this blog. So I only compared Toronto and Sydney.

Not surprisingly, both ABC Classical FM and CBC Radio Two had a similar market share in the S8 2005 (S4 2005 for Canada) survey – 2.2%. But, as you can see from the graph below, the trend for CBC Radio Two in Toronto has been declining, while the trend for ABC Classical FM in Sydney has been increasing.


What’s wrong with those aussies? Don’t they know that classical music is dead? Don’t they know that they have to represent all musical genres in Australia, to showcase music performed by Australian musicians? Don’t they know that their role, as a public broadcaster, is not to feature music that will not normally be programmed by commercial radio stations and that will enlighten and educate their listeners, but is instead to try to appeal to the widest possible audience by featuring a mish-mash of genres spread out over various times of the day?

Apparently they don’t – and thank God for that.

Why does CBC Radio Two need an audience?

Why does CBC Radio Two need an audience?

The answer seems obvious, right? But is it so obvious?

First of all, the CBC is publicly funded. While a commercial radio station sells advertising to survive, CBC Radio is not saddled with this constraint. The CBC gets a big pot of money from the taxpayers each year to do with as they want - in Fiscal Year 2007, the CBC received $948 million in annual funding approved through Parliamentary appropriations, plus an additional $60 million for "Additional non-recurring funding for programming initiatives". So, theoretically, CBC Radio Two could have no listeners at all in Canada and still get it's share of the big pot of money.

Or could it? At some point, you would think someone - perhaps the Minister of Heritage - would sit up and take notice that the Canadian taxpayer was not getting much bang for their buck. But how low would CBC Radio Two's market share have to fall before anyone started to question the value of funding this enterprise? Would it have to fall to zero? How about one percent? Two percent? What is the cut-off point where CBC Radio Two no longer deserves to be funded by the Canadian taxpayer?

The CBC has reported, in their own press release, that CBC Radio Two's market share fell to 2.9% according to the latest BBM survey.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as the Hon. John Crosby used to say.

Are the CBC Radio Two programming changes successful? - Part II

The following article appeared in the Thursday, Dec. 18 edition of the Globe & Mail:

"Pop made your numbers go down

RUSSELL SMITH
December 18, 2008

Well, I admit I am surprised. Even I didn't predict quite how dramatic a failure the new CBC Radio 2 would be. I expected that after the change to programming dominated by easy-listening pop, folk and blues, the number of listeners would rise. I was all prepared to argue that this didn't indicate anything of value: I was going to attack the value of numbers-based programming; I was going to argue that of course the numbers would rise if you started playing pop music instead of classical, but that numbers are not how you define the value of anything; and that an avenue of access to educated music for people living outside educated circles was still crucial to a nation's general sophistication. I would have said that if you want the greatest number of listeners, all you need to do is play the stickiest of commercial pap and then you obviate government involvement of any kind. And now I don't need to. Because the numbers have gone down.

On Nov. 27, the CBC distributed an exuberant press release boasting of the great market success of Radio One. This network, according to the fall research results released by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (BBM), is doing just great: There are more listeners than last year for a large number of shows on Radio One.

There is a little aside down at the bottom of this triumphant report: Radio 2 is not doing as well. Overall numbers of listeners are the same as they were before the change (around 1.2 million listeners), but the market share - the percentage of people with radios who tune into your network - is down.

The executive director of CBC Radio, Denise Donlon, claims this decline was totally part of the plan. "When you change a radio station as we did with Radio 2, you have to expect a dip in listening patterns before you gain new listeners," says Donlon in the press release.

My schadenfreude knows no bounds.

But then when you think about it, it really isn't that surprising. They expected the million or so old listeners of Radio 2 to tune out. But then they expected several more million younger listeners to tune in. Why would young people do that? Young people are already used to choosing their own popular music from multiple Internet streams. They chafe at the pop playlists of others. They have mostly forgotten what radios are.

Furthermore, the new music of Radio 2 is not very young. The few boomers I know really love it. All that Neil Young - it's just like being back in college! This new network is to middle-aged guys what the Lawrence Welk show was to their parents.

But there are a whole lot of other easy-rock networks out there. And the desperately sought 18-to-39s are still AWOL, glued to their iPods.

When CBC management was trying to placate the couple of million fans of classical music it was alienating, it tried to distract them with the Internet. Look, it said, you can have as much classical music as you want, you just have to get your grandson to tell you how to hook up your computer to your car radio. Classical will be on the Internet, they said; pop will be on the radio.
But isn't that the opposite of what they should have done? If the audience for pop is a bit younger, shouldn't it be they who are more comfortable with online music and the technological know-how required to get it into their cars? Isn't an older audience more likely to listen to radio generally?

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a CBC-funded all-pop music station completely online? It would cost very little. You could call it, say, Radio 3. (Rule one of CBC public relations: Don't mention Radio 3. Radio 3 does fine without us. We don't talk about Radio 3, got it?)

As for the remaining classical programming - the midday weekday ratings dead zone occupied by a giggling Julie Nesrallah - it's apparently not meant to target either young or old, but the teachers of elementary-school children who want to introduce their charges to the most-played music of all time. A great idea, but you could also buy one of those Favourite Classics compilations that Starbucks puts out. So I'm not surprised it's not bringing former listeners - most of whom have already heard Beethoven's Fifth and Dvorak's Ninth a few more times than they need to - back.

It's those crazy 18-to-39s the managers really want anyway. That's why the top brass of CBC Radio are pushing really commercial music on the unfortunate Tom Allen, who hosts the morning music show on Radio 2. They want to make that show the flagship. My spies tell me that the programmers of that show are not happy with the pressure coming down from on high to play more of the likes of Nelly Furtado and Jann Arden. (The pressure seems to have increased at around the same time as the appointment of a former MuchMusic and Sony Music Canada executive as head of radio.) Their point, I imagine - and I can't disagree with them - is that you can hear Nelly Furtado, indeed must hear her, in any Aldo shoe store in any mall in Canada. Why should the government pay for it?"

I'm not surprised at this turn of events - my analysis of CBC Radio Two's market share showed the same results. What surprises me, however, is that CBC Radio issued a press release in which they admitted Radio Two's loss of market share.

Now that my interest had been piqued, I began to search for CBC Radio's elusive press release. My first thought was to go to the CBC Corporate site, where CBC Press Releases are archived. Much to my surprise, there was no press release from Nov. 27 2007 listed.

I noticed that the CBC did, however, take the time to respond - to each newspaper or news organization that carried the story, no less - to the newspaper articles alleging excessive spending by Mr. Sylvain Lafrance. But no press release from Nov. 27 concerning CBC Radio Two's decline in market share.

Of course, my next step was to perform a Google search. Nothing relevant found.

I went to PR Newswire - nothing. I searched Market Wire - nothing. I went to the Announcements page on the CBC Radio site - nothing.

Now, I don't doubt that this Press Release exists. It just seems that the CBC, having issued the Press Release, isn't proud enough of it to include it on their web sites. Nor should they be, demonstrating as it does the failure of CBC Radio's program to revamp Radio Two programming.

This illustrates a point that I have made several times in the past - the shareholders of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have no means to determine whether or not the Corporation's strategy is successful or not, unless we go to the data sources such as the BBM to attempt to determine it for ourselves. We can not rely on the CBC to tell us whether or not the strategy is successful - either they don't, or the information is not widely disseminated. And a press release such as the Nov. 27 2008 press release seems to get buried quite quickly.

The Big Lie continues.

Bureau of Broadcast Measurement - track CBC Radio Two's audience in your city!

The Bureau of Broadcast Measurement provides data on radio station market share data for Canadian cities on their web site here.

The most recent survey only covers the period Jan. 8 - Mar. 4, so it does not reflect the recent programming changes and the effect it has had on CBC Radio Two's market share. The next survey, it appears, will be available mid-June. You can use this data to track CBC Radio Two's market share in your city and see for yourself the impact of the recent CBC Radio Two programming changes!