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WANTED: PRE-2000 BBM RATINGS

Huff

Huff

Administrator
Staff member
Do you have any radio ratings books from prior to 2000, or know someone who does? Please reply or PM me if you have any old BBM books, regardless of market. I'm more than happy to get scans or copies, and am even willing to pay if you're willing to part with them.
 
I contacted John, he was quite gracious but didn't have any data nor leads to offer. I'm afraid the only way I'll be able to unearth older data is to make a trek to the BBM archives at Ryerson University in Toronto. (And I don't think I'll be making any trips to Toronto anytime soon!)
 
I last looked at the BBM archives at Ryerson in 2006. At that time they had all the radio and television books dating back to 1995 available for public viewing, with older books being located in closed stacks accessible only to Ryerson students and staff. The Ryerson Library website now implies that all BBM books are located in the closed stacks.

I'm in Toronto right now so if I have time this week I'll make a visit to that library and see if that is actually the case.

I personally find it bizarre how BBM, over time, has become more and more secretive with its ratings data. They used to list a lot more TV ratings data back in 2004 and 2005 than they do now. First they got rid of the Top 10 programs by market for each ratings period (which revealed how highly rated local news was compared with network programming), then they got rid of the weekly Top 10 programs for Toronto and other large markets, leaving only the national weekly Top 10. Even Arbitron is more secretive than it used to be with its data; used to be anyone could access their ratings data by market, but now you have to register and be approved. I think that while detailed data should not be necessarily available to the public, some top-line data should be available to the public, other than just the bare minimum top-line data for medium and large markets for radio, and nationally for television.
 
Hopefully you can make it by there. I just checked out the website and it shows the 1988-2000 radio reports to be available on the 5th floor, with pre-88 and '01-'09 surveys in the closed stacks. I'm interested to see what you find and just how accessible the collections presently are.

http://www.ryerson.ca/library/info/collections/bbm.html
 
I visited Ryerson Library today, and I regret to announce that there are no BBM books available to the public anymore. The area they used to be in has been wiped clean.

The only ratings books of any kind for public use in the library are a year's worth of weekly Nielsen people meter TV ratings for 1997, for Toronto-Hamilton. Most of what's in there is pretty predictable - CFTO's World Beat News was #1 at 6:00 with over 400,000 viewers, and the #2 position belonged to WUTV, with Simpsons reruns.
 
That is quite disappointing. So only Ryerson students/faculty (and BBM staff) have access to the materials now?
 
Trust me, I have exhausted the wayback machine. And Milkman's site itself is only archived back to 2000.
 
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