VANCOUVER Radio Ratings PPM’s .. Dec. 1 2014 – March 1 2015

Let the unscientific & pointless speculation on the A2+ numbers begin!!

Ash, let me start. Geez, ‘NW is suckin’. The copy of CBC’s format with few callers and nice long interviews is going over well.

Wow…CKNW. I saw this coming. Worst ratings ever!

1. Jon…Your constant rant of mental illness is driving me crazy (people care more about fallen trees in Stanley Park, then the
Homeless)!
2. Simi…Quoting from Twitter and Facebook is not news or interesting. Replaying other radio hosts’ show is lazy!
3. Mike…whining about the government not spending enough money on special interest show how naive you are. You Remind me of my son who want something for nothing (he is 8 yo)
4. Weekends full of American White-Noise radio and/or advertising is dead air.
5. Your demographic do not listen to the radio, but spend their time gossiping on social media.

Michael Campbell….ONLY reason to to have CKNW on my tuner.
Bruce Allen DOES speak for the silent majority.

Bring in hosts who have actually lived outside the Lower Mainland, with an educated opinion and can talk about life experience.

I realize that ‘NW is losing the audience they once held, overall , almost down two full share points but the BIG question. Are they gaining the demo that they are looking for, the younger crowd?
Is it really working in that respect? I have my doubts.

Anyone on the inside or those with the numbers breakdown have the answer to that question?

This could be another KGO style disaster in the making.

Can’t remember the last time there was this much of a spread between second and third place. And CISL just ahead of LG? 104.3 needs some serious fixing!

Interesting that JR/The Peak has declining numbers, wonder if its a trend. QM-FM has a winning combination of hosts and good times.

So much for the new morning team of Kevin and Sonia at the Peak! Or can anyone give us an idea how the numbers are in morning drive, or any other parts of the day. In all sincerity, but I must ask. How long will Jim Pattison give it for the Peak to get out of the basement? What’s it been now, 5 years? Just looked at the Peak numbers in Calgary and I’d say it has long road to haul. And now looking over JR countries drop of almost 2 points. Is it any coincidence the GM was ‘immediately’ removed yesterday? I know in the Jim Pattison Automotive group, the low man on the monthly sales team gets the boot. Perhaps this policy should be implemented in his Broadcast Group more often.

CKNW is still slipping in the ratings. but that is in keeping with the quality of programing they now offer. I shouldn’t really be commenting as I quit listening after Till left. Weekends at the Top (read sick) Dog is a real train wreck.

Thanks to David Brays breakdown my question has pretty much been answered. ‘NW has taken a massive hit with males 25-54.

That has got to have the suits nervous. I wonder if they will re-think the canned American programming for starters?

Too bad for everybody but CBC …again. Would it hurt private broadcasters, well at least one private broadcaster, to emulate the Mother Corp and find hosts who were as engaging and spoke in a civil tongue at a conversational level? I’m convinced some really stupid people run this business, in accordance with their bean counting masters…it’s just so very sad.

I think the top 40 experiment at Sonic needs to come to an end. There are too many stations in Vancouver with this format, and they are not winning the game. Vancouver needs a station that serves Generation X, and I’m not talking about Jack FM, which is way past it’s best before date. Maybe 104.9 could try a format for the over 30, under 50 demo.

Very sad for the ‘youngsters’ at NW, thrown to the wolves with little or no direction, and even less life experience critical to this format. The ‘grand experiment’ has been tried before, and any consultant worth his/her huge per diem, would surely have known this.

The problems are many but easily resolved if…IF more experienced on-air staff, including the newsroom, were brought in. But that costs money, so it appears, NW’s going on ‘the cheap’ has come back to haunt them.

They need people who have actually ‘been there, done that’ with a record of success. Corner-office managers and consultants, with no record of on-air success, can hardly be expected to direct an even lesser-experienced staff currently attempting the format.

For now, NW has been relegated to a boring, middle-of-the-pack radio station, and unless and until the sales staff puts pressure on upper management to spend the money, this station will struggle for ratings and revenue.

Mike, Sonic became Kiss a month ago.

Any ideas why LG104 can’t compete with Rock 101?

This started for NW when they lost the Canucks through bean counting and followed it up by letting the Lions walk across the street based on pure arrogance. Where ever the Shaw family has hand, they continue to bleed blood out of a stone. Overextended senior staff, fumbling quasi-interns and mealy mouthed management are the hallmark of Shaw-Corus.

The combo of complacency, arrogance and greed from the top brought these dummies down.

There’s no rethink coming. Sales is pedalling a legacy while management chases a concept of catching younger listeners with no promotional presence whatsoever.

When Brad Shaw stops counting his multi-million dollar bonus, they’ll come looking to drill a new well in the radio division. Network wide syndication is coming.

If they could replace SImi Sara with “Siri” Sara as an automated non-salaried talk robot they would!

Why is everybody chasing the young listener? Don’t people over 50 buy things too? There’s a lot of them…and they know what a radio is.

Thanks Robert. I’m aware Sonic is now Kiss.It is exactly the same station with just a lame new name,and the old CKKS calls.The KISS name is very 80’s.

I have almost stopped listening to CKNW completely, except for checking in on Bruce Allen’s daily commentary. Mostly it is a yawnfest, and the endless reading of emails, tweets and Facebook postings can never match real live callers. I remember a few months ago someone commenting on how low things had gotten when Simi’s topic was about flushing toilets with your foot. I tuned in during 12 – 1 today, and after the Simi-Dave Sheldon chat, the topic was….wait for it….disgusting things you have seen on Skytrain or buses. Someone had posted some pictures of a woman cutting her toenails on the bus, and believe it or not Simi had a round table of two or three others, including a newscaster, to discuss this. Of course they had to put in their two bits worth of things they had experienced. Some of the situations were certainly not family friendly fodder, but the discussion went on. I eventually turned it off after one comment really turned me off. Can you imagine if Jack Webster, Bannerman, Rafe Mair and others tuned in to that? A sad commentary for sure. I think I will tune in elsewhere. The food they are feeding the former “Top Dog” is not fit for consumption.

CKNW’s line-up; McComb, Simi, Eckford, isn’t resonating– with anybody.
Their newscasts sound cheap, and people are noticing.
Radio listeners – particularly those under 50 – who want that kind of “young-ish newsy” programming can tune into CBC and hear it done way better, with decent newscasts.
What CKNW has become isn’t “CBC Light”… it’s “CBC Bad”.
Further, people under 50 in this market have no historical connection to CKNW. If you’re 48, your parents may have listened to CKNW, but you didn’t. So any attempt to build on “nostalgic brand loyalty” is silly. That share of the audience simply doesn’t exist any more.

I don’t blame the announcers. The all new “after the younger demo” is the brain child of the suits and programming. You can tell they are trying their hardest to appeal to that demo. Toenail clipping, toilet flushing, audio from youtube playing clips of people with lisps etc. is all an attempt to try and appeal to the younger set. I am surprised there isn’t a weekly round table discussion on the happenings with Kanye and Kim.

They still don’t get it that overall, young people don’t listen to talk radio. By the way, how does this Koenigfest guy keep his job? He has been steering the ship towards the iceberg for years now.

It’s really sad what ‘NW has become. Used to be my station, I guess that’s why I am so vocal about what it has become. Count me among the 1.8 who simply doesn’t listen anymore and when I do it’s like checking in on a dying friend.

Thanks to technology when I want talk radio I go to AM640 or CFRB even CFRA, ‘NW is now last on my list.

NW, so they have lost half their audience in the last ten years! Maybe I am getting older, but I remember that it was more fun and entertaining in the 80s and 90s. Back when they used to play ‘One Song In A Row’, I am being serious, but why don’t they play a song once and awhile, bring back live on-air contests, play sound effects, talk to the woman/man on the street, do something entertaining/innovative. McComb should be retired, Eckford should go, its a start.

Once a station like NW hits the 6’s in ratings they have a choice of moving the numbers down to the 5’s and reducing overhead by having the majority of the programming in syndication. Corus can do it fairly effectively when you consider their Canadian network of stations.

Might even be an improvement on the trash they have live during the day now.

I see NW’s assistant news director is defending the stations ratings among their key demo.

There is NO defending CKNW980 ratings decline. Only honesty may save the once TOP DOG. But I doubt we will see any honesty and humility from a station that truly once was the blue print to NEWS-SPORTS-TALK Radio. A station that I near religiously tuned in for many years with me going back to being just a teen in the 80’s. It helped me shape opinion and created a desire to want to be better informed about many issues in life, politics and society. Just as KGO810 the other then great NEWS-TALK giant did for me listening to it at night via the AM skip signal. Sadly both stations are broken and close to being on life support.

The lack of depth in reporting, talk and general debate on CKNW980 is brutally clear. One can count on virtually every news break to hear grammatical and pronunciation errors from those reading the news, traffic, weather and sports . It’s grating to a long time listener who grew up listening to a level of professional radio presentation on NW98. I don’t expect English teachers reading the news on CKNW980 but jeez can we at least have grade 12 level English.

The hosts probably egged on by management have dumbed down their shows to save a $1.00 or two. Rarely do they go deep into topics and rarely do they do extended phone call segments. Reading from Twitter and Facebook is done too much by these hosts and becomes boring to a listener. Replaying sound clips over and over from earlier in the day on each show is also grating and is a cheap thing to do.

Substituting deeper and longer segments from more experts adding to topics with IMO lack of life experience producers, associate producers and interns often on LAME topics is not endearing to talk radio listeners. Hosts that do too much monologing is also near egotistical bull flop. The best radio talk show hosts of the past knew better to balance their rhetoric with taking callers and with bringing on experts on various topics.

But CKNW management and Corus putzes will refuse to see the problems they have created and will likely continue down the path of killing the once TOP DOG!

I mean they must now have to sell commercial spots cheaply because the commercials breaks are longer (avg. 3min now) and are more frequent too.

As to weekend radio on CKNW980, surely it’s mostly dead in attracting serious listeners.

ALL IN ALL A TRAGIC RADIO TRAIN WREAK UNFOLDING IN SLOW MOTION!

It’s sad to see the once mighty top dog go down like this. A good number of the issues have been pointed out here already. If the general public can identify the problems why can’t they see them. I used to listen to NW because they used to have the best of the best, show hosts, reporters and yes sports department. You can’t tell me that there isn’t anyone out there with the skills of Rafe, Bannerman, George Garret, JP and Big Al. Till and Mcomb were always brilliant as a duo. Not so much on there own. This is just a small example but all were good at capturing an audience.

“…message boards full of people who think 12+ ratings matter. For anyone interested, NW saw increases in every time slot in our key demo (35-65), especially with women.”

James , so David Brays breakdown of the numbers is bs or are just drinking large amounts of the kool-aid?

I was quoting De Silva. Forgot that part.

Funny how you can down by that much , yet go up in every time slot? How exactly does that sort of math work? ‘NW must be run by politicians.

I am surprised that NW ratings are not even lower considering the dumb downed topics they are covering.

Hopefully the advertisers will pull away from NW and then maybe management might care about providing some interesting radio on some thought provoking topics. Wouldn’t it be nice to listen to topics that both inform and challenge your current belief system?

In the mean time I will listen to Alex Jones who is passionate and very informative on what is happening to the Average Joe. His syndicated show is exploding in popularity and it’s because of the topics he is covering as well as he goes after the establishment. We live in very interesting times and its just too bad that NW wants to sleep walk through it.

Maybe the NW audience has declined 50% in the last 10 years because they’re simply dying from old age?

Unless the suits at NW wake up and smell the ratings they are going to save themselves out of a job. You can watch (or force) the high priced on air talent retire. Good, Till, and the entire news and sports dept. gone. Mcomb must feel very lonely as he wanders the halls not recognizing anyone. As bad as the Monday to Friday has become its an oscar winner compared to what they have done on Sat and Sun.
Thr new NW app allows you a seat on the bridge of the good ship NW. You can actualy watch as the ship sinks. Please reach them on twitter, facebook and anything but the phone. It costs money to have live callers, and they might even be entertaining.

There must be a sign on the entrance to NWs studios and offices.
“Anyone that enters these premises that isnt on our payroll does so at their own risk”.
That would explain why they just keep reruning each others stories as if they were breaking news. Eckford. “This morning our own Jon Mcomb interviewed …… were going to play that interview right after the break” Cue the ads for retirement homes, funereal homes, joint pain relief etc. The ad department seems to understand who listens to talk radio, to bad the programer is an idiot. Simi talks to Sheldon who kibitzes with Clare Alllen who tells a story about her neighbours friends sons dog. The dog gets paid? Nah I didnt think so.

Is CHED in edmonton owned by Shaw as well? If it is it is in the same position as nw #4 and sinking. Yet no comments, nobody in edmonton cares?

I have listened to CKNW as far back as I can remember (Bob Hutton, Jack Webster, Brian Forst) CKNW was a mainstay in my home growing up and I continued Listening when I became an adult. I however am sad to say that over the past few years I listen less and less. Bill Good should have left years ago. I was sad to see Philip Till go and still enjoy Jon McComb. Although I must admit his morning content leaves much to be desired. I cannot handle the weekend format and do not listen to anything other than that than Sean Leslie. Simi Sara’s show is not interesting To me and the only time I continue listening is if Mike Smith is taking her place.

It is sad that after so many years of having CKNW playing in my home from morning to night I have taken to silence after Jon McComb and only listening if Sean Leslie or Mike Smith are filling in.

CKNW is too left leaning. Its painful to listen to. Especially if you cant call in to tell them what’s up.
No one who isn’t already a believer to their cause can listen to that most unprofessional blather. There are so many examples of stories ignored because it did not fit their narrow narrative.
Its alsmost an infomercial to the federal liberal party. Just like the CBC.
I don’t mind alternative points of view. But to pretend its objective journalism is ridiculous.
More than that, it borders on sheer propaganda.
OH Yea, there is soooooo much diversity, hurray! Except…everyone thinks the same and has the same opinions.
They deserve their ratings.

CKNW: if anyone is there is reading this ( judging by your programming, no one there gives a damn so I doubt it) please return to providing intelligent, informed, and interesting discussions on local and world issues that was once provided by the likes of Jack Webster and Rafe.
Those of us who listened to those greats are your audience. I’m in my 50s, part of the baby boomers, do we not count?
Sorry present radio hosts, your discussions are boring to the highest degree and certainly do nothing to promote forward, critical, and diverse thought on important topics to people of any age. Re hashing other hosts interviews is the worst! Lazy lazy lazy!

as a lifelong listener to N W I concur 100% with the comments lamenting their demise. Bill Rae ,must be rolling in his grave.
Remember roving mike, Rick Honey, Frosty, Bill Good, among other greats. Compare them to Smythe, Sara, Drex, gawwed ther is no comparison. downward spiral . Inevitable end. so sad!

LG is a great station so far. There needs to be different announcers on the weekend I get tired of Graham Hatch on Weekends. Hatch and Latremouille are find on the weekdays but not on weekends