CFNY Edge 102 airs a promo every once in a while that claims they are "One of the ten most listened to stations in the world". Every time I hear it, I wonder how they can justify such an outlandish claim.
I read the most recent BBM Ratings for Toronto radio stations, and CFNY Edge 102 can safely claim they are one of the ten most listened to stations in the GTA. They aren't number one, but they're in decent shape. The Greater Toronto Area, however, is not the world. CFNY Edge 102 shouldn't be able to claim they're one of the ten most listened to stations in Canada let alone the entire planet.
A visit to the CFNY Edge 102 website yielded no further details. They don't reference the promo anywhere. I did some further digging and I think I know what this promo is referring to.
Arbitron maintains a list of Webcast Ratings. "Arbitron Webcast Ratings is a server-side measurement, which captures all tuning to participating streamed media channels by compiling a near census of Internet tuning sessions." It's difficult to access these charts, because this information requires a paid subscription, but I was able to gander at a series of the Arbitron Webcast Ratings top 75 as part of some of their news releases. This release has CFNY Edge 102 listed at a healthy #39 with 148,798 hours of total time spent listening in February of 2003. I had to go back to their chart of February 2001 to find CFNY Edge 102 in the top 10 when they were 10th. It's my belief that CFNY Edge 102 took this chart listing them as the tenth most streamed station on the world wide web in order to justify their "One of the ten most listened to stations in the world" promo.
Their spin doctors deserve a round of applause for that one. At one time they were possibly one of the ten most listened to stations on the web, but when you factor in people listening to radio stations on actual radios, their statement doesn't come close to holding up. It still sounds impressive though, doesn't it?
