by jon » Fri Jul 07, 2006 7:48 pm
Given Easy Rock Edmonton's history of demographics heavily weighted in favour of females, JOE's success in that demographic is nothing short of amazing. And their last ratings period showed a significant recovery.
But it is important to not miss the longer history, which was that, before this last ratings period, JOE-FM had dropped to almost half of its peak during its first year, to a point that was the same or lower than the disasterous first ratings period after they switched from Top 40 to Super Hits of the 90s and 80s.
I believe that they could have sustained most, if not all, of the first year peak ratings by spending as much effort reinventing themselves musically, as they did initially inventing themselves. To a person, everyone I've talked to who listened to them (I don't know anyone who is still listening to them) said that they stopped listening after a year because the music that had been fresh at the beginning of the year was just being repeated, and wasn't fresh anymore at the end of the year. Given that many of the JOE listeners were non-radio listeners who had turned their radios back on to hear JOE. They just turned their radios back off after a year, going back to their own music collection (CDs or MP3 player), and some have switched to satellite radio.
Obviously, we'll know more once we see JOE's next ratings book.