CKOR, Penticton, 800 kHz, an Adult Hits station which comes in like a local here in Seattleland, is being 'bounced' to a new owner later this year.
The 45 stations are half of all the radio stations they own. A few of them, CKOR 800 Penticton, CJDC 890 Dawson Creek, and CKFR 1150 Kelowna, I've heard at night. CKOR comes in sometimes like a local, with their "Bounce Radio" format, a lively Classic Hits format. I listen to them a lot, as I like the mix of music they play.
I suppose the 'bright side' of this story, if there is one, is that Bell will still retain 58 radio stations, ones they think are more viable economically.
The logo for CKFR, Kelowna, BC -- They are also being sold, to Vista Radio, which is also buying CKOR Penticton. At least these stations are staying on the air, and it looks like maybe the new owners will keep them alive for a while.
In press releases, Bell's media chief Robert Malcolmson said Radio "is not a viable business anymore." He also said that Radio is a business that "is going in the wrong direction." Malcolmson added that Bell is in the midst of a "digital transformation".
The 45 stations, most of them FM, and located in Ontario, Quebec, BC and the Maritimes, will probably be bought by other Canadian radio companies. But the fact that a big player is increasingly pulling out of Radio in a big way isn't a good sign. And not only did the 45 radio stations get put up for sale -- Bell Media is cutting its CTV news staff, and cutting back on some CTV programming. CTV is a big Canadian TV network -- in fact, it's Canada's largest private TV network.
Here's a Canadian news story on the selloffs.:
It looks like 21 Bell owned stations in British Columbia -- just north of my state's border -- will be sold to Vista Radio, a smaller radio company that already has a fairly decent portfolio of stations, including one I've heard periodically, CKBX 840, out of 100 Mile House, a small city in the lower Cariboo region of BC. CKBX play Country, sometimes including some Country/Roots rock.
Beautiful Kelowna, BC -- the #3 city in the province, and the #20 metro area in Canada, in a metro of over 220K people -- and the home of CKFR 1150, a News-Talk station that Bell Media is selling to a smaller radio company, Vista Radio. Kelowna, along with the rest of the Okanagan region in BC, has some of the mildest inland winter weather in Canada. The weather is one of the reasons the area is growing.
Photo courtesty of Wikipedia, photographer GoToVan.
Bell Media, which is a big player in Canada, got into the radio business well over a decade ago. They even launched their own version of IHeartRadio's streaming platform in 2016, the platform being called IHeartRadio Canada.
In the following pic, taking from a Canadian media news article on the launch, you can see some logos on that platform, including at least one station that was eliminated (taken off the air) last Spring -- "News Talk 1290 CJBK", London, Ontario. Streaming, even on a large platform like IHeartRadio Canada, unfortunately didn't save it.
In the 2016 article, the Bell Media spokesman at that time said the IHeartRadio Canada platform "will be a success with Canadians" because Canada, at that time, was "underserved" by streaming services. I wasn't aware that Spotify, YouTube and Pandora aren't available in Canada, but you learn something new every day.
You can read that article here.:
At least some of the IHeartRadio Canada stations were taken off the air last Spring. The platform itself, however, is still going.
But, so much for the concept of Streaming saving Radio, eh?
REMEMBER RADIO DISNEY?
Of course, it wouldn't be the first time a Radio company ditches Over-the-Air radio for streaming, saying that Streaming is the "future", and stating that Radio streaming platforms are a "growth market" -- only to discover otherwise.
Remember Radio Disney? They dumped all of their AM stations -- which still had around 16% of their listeners -- for Streaming and HD2's. When they got rid of the AM'ers, the Disney people said that Streaming is the future, that Digital is where the listeners are, and the young people listening to Radio Disney would all migrate to the Streaming platform, and that the Streaming platform is a growth market.
And like Bell Media today, Radio Disney in 2015 was in the middle of a 'digital transformation', using HD2's in various large metros, and the Radio Disney Streaming site.
How'd that all work out for them?
Not that terrific. Radio Disney eliminated the HD2's a couple years later, in 2018, leaving the airwaves completely.
And then -- a couple years after that -- they ignominiously ditched the Radio Disney Streaming platform completely, replacing it with a dead link. All those Radio Disney listeners who were going to be drawn to the digital Streaming platform didn't materialize, and those who were already listening to the RD Streaming platform in 2015, when the AM stations were sold, apparently didn't count. Or they left. Maybe those AM'ers were delivering, after all.
On one hand, the fact that these Media companies are basically leaving Radio speaks loads.
But the failure of Radio's Streaming services to save Radio stations also speaks loads.
I've said it before here, at least twice, in the past several months. I said it when KNPT Newport, Oregon, which had an FM translator and a Stream, failed in December. I said it when ESPN Yakima (which was on 1460 AM, in Yakima, WA -- a metro of over 200K), which had a stream, failed a month or two before KNPT failed.
Here are links to my articles on KNPT's demise and ESPN Yakima's demise.:
Both of these stations had streams. The streams didn't save the stations.
I said again it just a few weeks ago in my article "Who Killed Radio", when I quoted the statistics showing that young people listen massively more to Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube than they do to IHeartRadio's streaming platform. IHeartRadio has less than 20% of the listeners that Spotify does, and 1/6th the listeners that YouTube does. Even Pandora outstrips IHeartRadio by more than 2:1 in listenership. IHeart's streaming platform has just 8% of the 18-34 demographic's ears.
Here's a link to my article "Who Killed Radio", where I go into detail about the various factors that reduced radio to the way it is today.:
This doesn't mean that IHeartRadio, and its competitors (Audacy, TuneIn, Streema, etc.) are failures, or have no future. They may still have a bright future ahead of them. How successful, or unsuccessful, that such Radio streaming platforms turn out to be remains to be seen. I still think that the Streaming media picture is in the development and 'shakeout' phase.
But for anyone to say that Streaming will "save Radio" is just foolhardy right now, especially when looking at the numbers. Some may say that Radio station ratings partially reflect listenership to those stations' streams, because the streaming numbers are hidden in the OTA rating numbers. They may have a point. It's too bad that the actual ratings aren't publicly divvied up between OTA and Streaming better, so that the rest of us can get an accurate picture. One would think, that in a numbers oriented industry like Radio, that an OTA / Digital listening breakdown would be necessary. It's possible that those types of numbers are only available to the paying subscribers to Nielsen.
But -- even so -- when the largest Radio Streaming platform in the United States only gets 8% of 18-34 listeners at best, and just 6 percentage points higher in the 35-49 demos, Houston, we've got a problem. YouTube, Spotify, and Pandora are eating IHeart's lunch. And Audacy and the other streaming platforms aren't even registering in the surveys.
IT ALL RUNS ON ADVERTISING, AND ADVERTISING'S DOWN, SO...
In the Canadian news article linked above, Bell Media mentions that they have been hit by losses in Advertising revenues -- something hitting nearly all traditional, as well as online media. The article states that in 2023 Bell Media's ad revenues declined by $140 Million CDN.
The post-Pandemic economic situation is socking it to a lot of media right now -- but that's not the only factor that is socking it to media. The migration of retail from brick and mortar to online, and the increasing importance of various types of social and non-social Internet websites as being "Media" is permanently changing the Mass Media landscape -- something I talk about in a previous blog post on the disappearance of "Mass Media", which I posted in February, 2022.:
Right now, everything is "Content", and everything is just "Media". And it is affecting the bottom line of a lot of former big hitters in the Media landscape -- Bell Media probably included.
One thing frequently mentioned on Radio forums is the concept of markets being "saturated" with FM and AM stations. Saturation is a bad thing, because it means more competition for the same advertising dollars. Then the same experts will sometimes wax poetic about the potential of Streaming to save Radio... Forgetting momentarily just how saturated online media already is.
Online is the definition of Saturation. Just ask any content creator about that one.
A POSSIBLE SILVER LINING? I.e., More Small Company Ownership?
In a way, I do not envy companies like Bell Media. It must be tough running a big Media company with Radio assets. It's tough for Radio fans to see stations get shovelled off like yesterday's junk, and it's even tougher for the laid off workers. In this latest case, it looks like the 45 stations that Bell is ditching will be sold to other, somewhat smaller Radio companies, who may continue to run the stations, and maybe the stations will be around a lot longer because of that.
It may be a portent of "smaller is better". A lot of Radio fans on FB and in other forums seem to insist that we need to re-enter the day of the Mom & Pop radio owners. While I don't think that will ever happen, perhaps this Bell Media sell off is a sign that some of the large Radio behemoths will get smaller, with the second tier Radio companies regaining importance as they buy the medium performing stations, and buy underperforming stations with potential -- perhaps turning them around, and keeping Radio alive a lot longer in the process.
For Radio people, one can only hope, eh?
Until the next article, my friends,
Peace.
C.C., February 11th, 2024.
April 6th, 2024: I corrected the spelling of Nielsen, from the incorrect "Neilson".
Got to get the spelling correct there, eh?
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