Source: Montreal Gazette

Nancy Wood has more than 500 fans on Facebook, but a very few Montreal radio listeners may have sealed her fate as host of Daybreak.

This scenario was suggested by a Montreal radio insider. On condition his name be left out of it, the station manager explained how the new PPM ratings system works - and how the CBC could have read Wood's numbers.

Back in the 20th century, when I was writing about Montreal radio, ratings were compiled by the Bureau of Broadcast measurement using a diary system. A representative sampling of Montrealers was mailed diaries in which people would record their day-by-day listening in 15-minute increments. The BBM would compile the numbers and extrapolate them to cover the total population of the city.

The system was not perfect. Some listeners would forget about the diaries for a while and rely on memory - "Oh I must have been listening to CJAD last Tuesday at 10 in the morning ... I always do." In rare cases, unscrupulous radio programmers obtained BBM diaries and filled them in to boost their own stations.

The system was what it was. Not perfect, but equally imperfect for all the radio stations in the market.

Then the world became digital.

In 2008, the ratings service began using PPMs, portable people meters. Sampling participants wear an electronic device the size of a pager. Radio broadcasts emit digital signals that the device picks up, records and transmits to the BBM. It is a passive system: the listener doesn't do anything but clip on or carry the PPM.

The meter records minute-by-minute listening, unlike the 15-minute time blocs of the diary stem. It works 24/7/365 - a constant stream of data, rather than eight-week survey periods recorded by hand in diaries - and it records the radio you're listening to everywhere, at home or on the move.

My radio industry source delved into PPM data and came up with three relevant ratings numbers for Nancy Wood's tenure on Daybreak. From Sept. 7 to Jan. 31, the average minute audience (AMA) was 770 listeners, the average daily audience was 7,400 listeners and Daybreak's share of Montreal English morning tuning was 0.7 per cent.

Andrew Carter's top-rated CJAD morning show has an AMA of 36,270 listeners. The average daily Carter show reaches 145,000 Montrealers, and CJAD's morning share is 34 per cent.

But Nancy Wood was not competing with Andrew Carter. CBC numbers have never approached CJAD's.

The relevant ratings comparison is to Mike Finnerty, who preceded Wood as host of Daybreak and left the show in June. For a 21-week rating period between Feb. 2 and June 28, Daybreak's average minute audience was 980, its daily audience was 10,300 and its share of listening was 0.9 per cent.

The decline in ratings was cited by CBC-Montreal radio brass when they told Wood her tenure as Daybreak host would end in June. And there's no denying the numbers are down.

"But it's not like Daybreak went from a 5 share to 0.7," my radio source said. "The decline was from 0.9 to 0.7."

It's important, he said, to consider the sample size. When the BBM used its diary method to compile ratings, data was based on approximately 3,300 respondents. The PPM uses a much smaller sample, about 800 to 900 listeners.

"When you look at the difference between Finnerty's share of listening and Wood's," my source said, "he had maybe 10 listeners in the PPM sample and she had eight. So she lost two listeners in less than five months, and they fired her."

No one would pull the trigger this quickly in private radio, which derives income from advertising, whose revenue depends on ratings. Programs and personalities need time to build an audience.

On the CBC, which is commercial-free, Wood was given no time.

The whole sorry saga lends credence to a theory making the rounds: the CBC had someone in mind to succeed Finnerty, but the person was not available when he left last summer.

The person's circumstances have changed, and he or she has become more amenable to taking the Daybreak job. So Nancy Wood gets the hook.

Ratings decline, at a network that shouldn't care about ratings, gives the CBC brain trust cover for their machinations.

© The Montreal Gazette