A Newcap intervention against the two Sylvan Lake applications, by Clear Sky and Golden West, brings out some points that are not immediately obvious from the Red Deer ratings available publicly on the Numeris site and shown above:
- There are 6 commercial stations licensed to serve Red Deer with a seventh station licensed
to one of the Red Deer operators operating out of Lacombe. In addition there is a
Christian radio station, licensed to Touch Broadcasting that draws some revenue. - We would note that the Lacombe station is definitely a player in the Red Deer Central
market, drawing 13.5% of all 12+ tuning to local commercial stations in the Fall 2014
BBM ratings and 14.1% of 18+ tuning in the same book. The station is marketed in
tandem with their Red Deer located station, CKIK-FM, and CJUV’s website indicates that
they reached 30% of the Red Deer Central 12+ audience in Fall 2012 and 40% in Spring
2012. - The population of Red Deer is 98,525 people who are served by these 7 commercial
stations as well as CBC, the Christian radio station, CKRD-FM, and CKUA-FM. This
represents approximately 14,000 people per commercial station. This is a relatively low
number of people per station. - The problem is complicated by the issue of out of market tuning. We reviewed the BBM
results for the Spring of 2014. The book reports tuning to 42 stations in Red Deer Central
market. Two-thirds of the tuning goes to the 7 local stations with the remaining tuning
going to CBC’s services, CKUA and a variety of Calgary and Edmonton stations. - Most of the 7 local commercial stations have good signals through the Red Deer Region
although not all in all areas and many draw revenues from throughout the area. For
example, we estimate that our Red Deer stations draw 32% of their retail revenues from
the larger rural area. - In order to provide data to advertisers we commissioned a special BBM area, which is
called the Special Geographical BBM area. The proposed stations would be receivable in most of this area. - In the Spring 2014 BBM results for all persons 12+, there were 50 different stations
reporting tuning. Clearly these include the Red Deer and Lacombe stations and once
again the 6 Red Deer local and 1 Lacombe local stations account for two-thirds of tuning.
So the Lacombe station is clearly considered a local Red Deer station. Lacombe is about
the same distance from Red Deer as Sylvan Lake. - Despite the economic situation in Alberta in the past and in Red Deer, the radio industry in
Red Deer has not flourished in recent years. We believe this is a direct result of the large
number of stations licensed to serve the market. Data from the Trans-Canada Advertising
by Market (TRAM) report show that revenues in Red Deer have essentially been flat in
the years 2011 to 2014. - All of this data would seem to lead to a conclusion that, while Red Deer was sound
economically, it was also heavily served. The local economy could not support additional
service without harming the existing operators, particularly in the context of a declining
economy.
The CRTC Hearing on the two Sylvan Lake applications is currently scheduled for June 12th. The application for Ponoka has already been heard, and a negative Decision given.