last link on the left

It was good while it lasted.

Six months ago, Global took out full page ads. This time around they're probably taking a hard look. But that's not the big story of the Fall 2006 Edmonton BBM TV ratings survey.

Global saw a full quarter of its 6 p.m. TV news audience disappear – literally – from the survey measuring the period between October 19th and November 22nd, 2006.

While some of the 25,000 viewers that abandoned the CanWest Media station likely drifted to other channels, the total numbers for all TV outlets indicate local news viewership is down.

Spring 2006 viewers totalled 266,300. The Fall 2006 audience added up to only 240,000 – give or take a few couch potatoes – a drop of 10%.

But wait – there's less. The Fall 2005 viewership totalled 268,600 – nearly the same as the current tally but given Edmonton's tremendous population boom, that translates into fewer overall newshounds for the city.

CFRN showed a modest gain, and CBC saw signs of slight improvement after moving its local newscast head-to-head to the top of the hour in January 2006.

Anticipating better results, Global had booked a full page on the back of the City section of the January 10th, 2007 Edmonton Journal.

It seems ad copy Plan B was published instead. In an e-mail to the Last Link, CTV/CFRN public affairs director Steve Hogle pointed out the ample amount of white space in the ad.

At least Global can take heart in knowing it could have been worse. Just ask the folks at Citytv.

Still reeling from the July 2006 mass staff gutting due to the CHUM/CTVglobemedia (formerly Bell Globemedia) merger – and the resulting unknown status of CTV's plans for markets where they own two stations – morale among the remaining folks at the former A-Channel outlet must surely be as low as their ratings.

Citytv's attempt to pick up supper-hour audience scraps by airing their "Your City" program at the half-hour seems to have gone down in a blaze of failure.

News of yet another ratings victory for CFRN was broken and carried only by the winning station, and Daryl McIntyre was beaming almost as much as his eight-month pregnant co-anchor Carrie Doll as the numbers rolled off his tongue.

The CFRN dynamic duo also gloated over numbers for the noon newscast.

CTV had 45,000 viewers at lunch time, eating up competition served by Global with 17,000 viewers and Citytv bringing just 1,000 folks to the table.

With the numbers out there, news directors soon made the news themselves in interviews with local papers.

As to the mystery of where 26,300 viewers went, Global's Neill Fitzpatrick forwarded his views.

"If you compare the numbers now to where they were during the mid-'90s, the numbers are way down across the board. People are finding news in other places, like the internet."

In February 2006, Global Edmonton re-shuffled its late afternoon/early evening lineup.

Global National moved up an hour to 5:30 p.m. allowing the station formerly known as ITV to match CFRN with an hour-long 6:00 news program. The station also debuted a 5:00 p.m. newscast.

"You always want to go up," Fitzpatrick said. "It just takes people time to adjust to a new format."

"We stayed pretty flat overall," he admitted. "Any time you're tinkering with program schedules, there does tend to be a dip."

Whether Global can overcome the one-two lead in of Dr. Phil and Oprah over at CTV remains to be seen.

While it was all smiles at the CFRN studios on Stony Plain Road, Steve Hogle said his station wasn't standing still.

"We're always working hard to ensure we're delivering Edmontonians the best news possible."

Hogle said the CTV station plans to make their news available in a podcast and improve their web site delivery in coming months.

As far back as February 2005 Hogle admitted, in an e-mail responding to this site, his frustration with his station's online presence.

Compared to the competition in this series of clickable webshots taken mid-January 2007, the CTVglobemedia outlet has a lot of information highway road construction ahead of them (under the images are live links to the sites).


CFRN	Global	CBC	Citytv

Note: On February 19th, 2008 CFRN did an extreme makeover to their site, giving them a web presence on par with the competition.

Citytv's station manager Craig Roskin pointed out that "Your City" started airing just as the latest BBM survey got underway.

"We're not surprised that we haven't seen higher ratings. With [the competition] being in the marketplace for so long, it's very difficult to break tradition."

Roskin defended the program which forsakes live news coverage with short feature stories about people in the community.

Stories are "a little longer form than your standard ambulance-chasing local news, and frankly that's how we characterize it," Roskin said. "It's more about asking police about gangs and how guns get into the city, than just showing the actual event."

For its part, in February CBC Edmonton is launching an hour-long, locally produced show with national and international elements included.

The next TV ratings period takes place February 8th through March 28th, 2007 with three of seven yet-to-be-determined weeks sampled.

Results will be released May 4th. Stay tuned ... and catch the whole story here on the internet.

television - edmonton ratings archives - fall 2006