By TSM
So the Fall book is busily being written as listeners either are or are not tuning in, so let’s take a minute to review the end of May- end of August book that just got reported.
The overall trend?
Down!
In the critical Males 25-54 every single show took it on the chin. Not surprisingly, the graveyard shift 1-4pm both stations suffered the least.
The Fan morning show went from a 7.6 to a 4.9. TSN lost half its audience going from a 1.4 to a .7
Blair went from an impressive 9.4 to a very average 6.0 (for him in this time frame). TSN dropped from a .8 to a .6
McCown went from a firm 8.5 to 6.4 while TSN’s afternoon drive went from a 2.4 to a 1.5.
Now, we assume a drop at TSN simply because they are not bought and paid for by the Jays. As long as the Jays appear on Rogers TSN will take the hit. The bigger thing to pay attention to then is the Fan numbers. No one can be surprised that a lousy Jay season equals a similar fate on the radio.
I haven’t seen the latest but I expect the same story on Sportsnet with Jays TV numbers.
What does it mean?
Nadda.
The next book is the one to watch. Leafs training camp, Raptors return, NFL is back. This is the time careers are saved and sealed. I’d look for all numbers to bounce back to at least the Feb-May numbers. Let’s see what happens.
Here’s the #s:
| Station | M25-54 | M25-54 | M18-34 | M18-34 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PPM | PPM | PPM | PPM | ||
| % Share of Hrs. Tuned | % Share of Hrs. Tuned | % Share of Hrs. Tuned | % Share of Hrs. Tuned | ||
| May 29-Aug. 27 | Feb.27-May28 | May 29-Aug. 27 | Feb.27-May28 | ||
| M-Fr. 6a-9a | |||||
| FAN 590 | 4.9 | 7.6 | 8.9 | 12.3 | |
| TSN 1050 | 0.7 | 1.4 | 0.2 | 1.1 | |
| M-Fr. 9a-12a | |||||
| FAN 590 | 6.0 | 9.4 | 11.2 | 12.4 | |
| TSN 1050 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 3.3 | |
| M-Fr. 12p-1p | |||||
| FAN 590 | 6.1 | 6.7 | 8.4 | 4.4 | |
| TSN 1050 | 0.6 | 1.1 | 0.3 | 7.9 | |
| M-Fr. 1p-4p | |||||
| FAN 590 | 3.9 | 4.4 | 4.9 | 3.7 | |
| TSN 1050 | 0.7 | 0.8 | 0.3 | 2.5 | |
| M-Fr. 4p-7p | |||||
| FAN 590 | 6.4 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 10.5 | |
| TSN 1050 | 1.5 | 2.4 | 1.8 | 6.4 |
Thanks again to:
David Bray is President of Bray & Partners Communications.
Feel free to forward questions and inquiries:
Phone: (416)431-5792
E-mail: davidbray@brayandpartners.com
Web site: brayandpartners.co
Thanks,
David
COMMENTS
Thanks for the new numbers. Not quite sure what to make of these numbers. As you stated the Jays of any other winning sports team seem to drive the ratings. Rogers beening the rights owners of the Jays and a majority the Leafs one would assume they should win the ratings war? Even maybe with not the best in the business of on air talent . Only time will tell, if teams do not perform the ratings suffer.
Not a surprising book. What is surprising to me, is TSN’s capitulation to the Fan. They are like a baseball team that’s out of it who are facing a team leading the division by a game. You either field your best team to honour a competitive outcome for the pennant race, or you field a team of A-ball players and get destroyed. TSN has done the latter. Their best talent is on the air between 10am and 4pm! Their prime time people are terrible (although Hayes is OK). TSN does hockey very well, so between mid September and early June, 95% of the morning show should be about hockey and hosted by someone other than Landsberg. I would move the Leafs Lunch crew to the AM with Hayes as the host, and load it up with hockey talk. Keep Petrillo at 10am, with a focus on hockey during the season. McArthur would do afternoon drive, but with a credible cast around him…not the current circus. The afternoon drive show as it is now, is a joke and need to be reformatted. Over at the Fan, I’d expect Brady’s ratings to go up. Blair has proven to be pretty good. Ennis needs to go. He is another in a long line of radio folks who are in love with the sound of their own voice and are way more concerned with HOW they sound vs WHAT they’re saying. I would expect further erosion of his numbers. McCown is McCown, but what happens when the contract is up? McCown was away in big chunks during the summer and we see what it’s done to the numbers. Who takes over? I’d open up the vault for Shulman and make him the heir to Bob. It comes down to what Shulman wants to do. If he wants to keep doing games, then work that into the contract. But he’d be every bit as good or better than McCown and that’s something that NOBODY in the Toronto market can claim. The problem is, 15-20 years from now, who is going to be that “Toronto radio legend??” It’s a sad question for the industry to ponder, because other than Shulman, nobody is on the horizon.
Few things that stand out in an otherwise uneventful book.
1) A 7.9 to a 0.3?!? Yes, I know hockey season is over but that is the wackiest number ever.
2) There is now a big divergence between how these stations draw across the demos. 590 skews younger (even though it leads in both categories), 1050 older.
3) Is 6.4 the PTS low? Don’t remember a rating worse than that.
Looks like the addition of an HD broadcast signal really paid off for 1050.
A summer full of guys like Joey Vendetta and Derek Taylor produced less than stellar ratings for 590 and 1050?………..who could have predicted that?
I heard today TSNR will be starting the Leafs Lunch show at 10 AM. If they aren’t interested in even trying in this market, just throw in the towel and be done with it.
@westdalerocks
Its like TSN radio is that expansion team that just never gets good. no matter what they try, no matter the program directors or on air talent, they dont know what they are doing. I think the on air talent, specifically the hockey guys like McKenzie and Ferraro are far superior to that of what Sportsnet can offer, but after that? They havent been able to do make a single dent in 10 or so years, i think they’ve fallen backwards if anything.
100% agree.
Comment re Ennis above. ^^^^^^^
@Cowboy-
I heard that it will be starting tomorrow at 10AM also. However, I thought it was a one off, as tomorrow is the opening of camp.
Also, is Naylor no longer part of the TSN morning show? I believe so, as he has devoted his time to CFL on TSN.
Lastly, any word on the whereabouts of Chris Schultz?
Thanks.
Yeah, TSN Radio definitely gives off a vibe that they’re not really trying anymore. Their lineup is pretty uninspired.
Why don’t they do something different? Hire a bunch of young guys and see what they can do, like in the Fan early days. Try to sound different than The Fan instead of just Fan Lite.
I heard Dan LeBatard say that when his show started, it was on a new Miami station that was taking on an older heritage station (much like TSN radio), and they knew they only way they’d win would be by doing something different that you wouldn’t hear on the other station. They became a dominant show pretty quickly. Ten years later, his show has the old Colin Cowherd spot on ESPN radio and his show (in my opinion) is the best sports radio show in North America.
@Daniel
At this point, you’d think they’d try something. Recycing TSN name guys isn’t working. Jay and Dan may, but there’s more money in TV for them.
http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/cord-cutting-2017-estimates-cancel-cable-satellite-tv-1202556594/
22million cord cutters by the End of 2017. Wow I think we are going to start seeing Telco’s divest of the cable TV business as it rapidly becomes irrelevant. Mainstream monopoly on information is done!!!!!!!!
Internet=new media. TSN radio and others soon to be put out of their misery as they certainly don’t move the needle.
Bob saying Kate Winslett should watch her weight and Shannon shilling hard for the Flames…the first PTS segment really had everything today.
C’mon, Mike and Jonah, I want to hear you defend Bob and Shannon!
@Anthony
They clearly aren’t interested in trying something new. They’ve been at this for well over 5 years now, and bad book after bad book continue to stay the same, or shuffle up the deck chairs on the titanic.
It makes no sense. Bell can’t even consider it as a loss leader to promote the TV station. Nobody is listening.
I wouldn’t say that TSN radio hasn’t tried anything at all. Andi Petrillo as LL host was trying something (and it seemed to have some traction in-season). Scotty Mac was something: they could’ve left Richards to wither in the slot. But the morning show was an unforgivable disaster that should’ve been scrapped after the first month, not expanded an hour when the PD gassed the 9-12 timeslot.
Canadian cable TV channels still makes nearly $1 billion in pre-tax profit. Sportsnet/TSN alone account for close 25% of the entire industry. They are not going anywhere for a while.
RE: Chris Shultz – I said hello to him in a bar in Burlington this past July. Dude was almost unrecognizable. Hope he is well.
Always great to hear Deitsch on the Fan590 talking about diversity on ESPN when Sportsnet & Fan590 are basically all old white guys.
I think BCE and it’s shareholders understand where the money is, they have the largest and fastest LTE wireless network in the country and their now bringing fibre optic internet directly to the holmes at gigabit speeds as oppose to just the neighborhood. Over the last few years Bell has devoted alot of time and money to these two infrastructures with good reason as Internet is king. Telus has been outperforming both Rogers and Bell for a few years now yet Telus does not hold any media assets or sports properties, difference is Telus has capitalized on their core assets while Rogers and Bell have portfolios that are all over the place. Funny how their was once rumours of a Bell Telus merger (Bellus) not anymore.
As a person of colour I will say it’s Funny how all of a sudden we have all these sports media people talking diversity, where was this talk in the previous eight years? To me many want ratings and recognition in the heat of the moment, so they take the PC approach as if they truly care while never coming to forefront prior. I thought RD’s suggestion that ESPN may be losing subscribers because of colour is baseless and irresponsible race baiting. Good on Bob for challenging this notion.
4×4 Time can you please clarify your Chris Schultz comment? Was he unrecognizable due to inebriation (he was at a Burlington bar) or due to possible illness?
TSN 1050 is what sports talk radio fantasy camp sounds like, not a lot talent, just a bunch of posers willing to give it a go.
I would agree with Daniel’s comment pertaining to LeBatard, his show is dynamic, he’s worked hard to be one of the best shows on radio in North America.
Jay and Dan Podcast not just #1 in the Sports & Recreation category, it is #1 overall. Interesting. But I haven’t listened. Not sure how the Itunes Podcast rankings work. Must be locally weighted. It is not possible that it is THE #1 Podcast. Overdrive #2 in Sports and Recreation, #59 overall. ( as of 9:15 am Sept 15, rankings change hourly). On S&R list: Leafs Lunch 7, PTS 23, Jim Rome 26. Something called ‘TSN 1050 Toronto Podcasts’ is #141 despite not putting out a Pod since June 14, beating Mike Wilner’s active ‘Blue Jays Talk Pod at #152.
@Ryan – No, would not say he was wasted,having some drinks obviously, but I just said hello. I was surprised because he was very thin looking, unshaven, just not what you see on TV. My band was playing in the bar, my buddy noticed him after the first set and he stayed until the end. Like I said, hope he is well.
@yaz
To my understanding the newer the podcast is, the better chance that they are #1. That said, I don’t doubt that they earned a top seed. Not sure if they will be there in a year, but the hype and love for those guys is fairly real.
How can anyone think it’s a good idea to put Vendetta on a roundtable when he jumps in to cut people off with 1 liners every 30 seconds is beyond me
Shannon in full shill mode for the Flames on Tim & Sid. Other than Blair and Brunt, has anyone from Rogers actually NOT shilled for the Flames? Disgusting.
Well thankfully it’s only 15 minutes I’m not getting back. The round table was in a word IMHO awful. I can’t imagine a worse collection of characters. I can deal with Grange or Shannon as one of four. I can’t listen to Vendetta at all. He never shuts up and he has this habit of dropping names and stories about guess who, himself. If as it appears he’s going to get a full time gig then it’s another nail in an already tightly closed coffin for me. I don’t spend more than a couple of hours a week listening to the station now. I used to listen to 10+ hours of PTS alone. Thankfully the podcast app is full every day. To much good material out there to listen to shills, self promoters and, sorry to say, empty vessels.
Shannon really is a shameless bootlicker for Flames ownership.
I’m actually really impressed how the mayor and public in Calgary haven’t buckled …. just because the city of Edmonton got robbed by Katz doesn’t mean Calgary has to do the same thing.
I would say he’s a shameless bootlicker for anything NHL and not just the Flames Mike.
He’s also in quite a bit of denial (or plain ignorance and with Shannon could easily be the case) about Vancouver and the basketball fanbase. The fans were not supporting that sideshow of a team and the NBA really did their best to get it out of there as soon as they could. there’s no way the NBA is ever going back there so Shannon should just stop with his west coast bias and go back to being a know-it-all about hockey aka whatever Gary Bettman tells him to say.
@Steve Jones – Hear hear about Vendetta – I can’t take that ego maniac – One bright spot I thought about the round table – I thought Shannon got on Cox a couple of times and more or less cut him down – Cox is just too unctuous for me – And quite frankly I am getting tired of hearing Bobs personal opinion about Trump – I get it he doesn’t like him but it is a sports show – I wouldn’t tune into Tucker Carlson expecting the MLB scores – Enough Bob –