As part of our ongoing series of market explorations, this month we delve into the city that gave the world Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, is home to the Royal Canadian Mint, and was crowned the “Slurpee Consumption Capital of the World” in 2012 for the 13th year-in-a-row (thanks to 188,833 Slurpees being sold every month at each 7-11 store).

As the eighth-largest radio market in the country, listeners in Winnipeg have 24 stations to choose from, including a surprisingly large number of community, campus and non-English language options.  For the commercial stations, there’s some serious money to be had – according to the CRTC’s 2011 Statistical and Financial Summaries report, the Winnipeg radio market was valued at $41.71-million, making each ratings point theoretically worth something in the neighbourhood of $400K. [Read more...]

Well, the Merriam-Webster definition is “running or turning back in a direction opposite to a former course,” but in this instance we’re wondering more in terms of what it means when your song goes “recurrent” at radio.

Let’s start from the beginning, with a record being serviced to radio. If a station likes it, they then add it to one of their “current” rotation categories, and if enough stations add that particular song, the combined airplay will cause it to debut and then work its way up the airplay charts, such as those found on Mediabase.

The songs that make up a station’s “current” rotation will fit into various labeled categories: “light”, “medium”, “heavy” or “power”, all of which signify the relative amount of exposure a song will get on the station. But all of those songs, in all of those categories, are considered “current”.

Over the following weeks, as more and more stations “add” the record (or increase their rotations), the song flies up the charts, amassing higher and higher spin-counts and attaining higher and higher chart positions (which is actually defined as lower and lower: Top-10, Top-5, etc) on the way to #1. But at a certain point however, a song will reach its peak and start to decline back down the chart. [Read more...]