People who work at FM stations make more than those who toil on the other side of the dial. But while commercial radio profits are down overall, AM stations are actually doing slightly better than FMs in the city. And surprise! Those who work for the CBC make higher salaries than people who are in private radio.
 
Those are just a few of the numbers revealed in an exhaustive list of stats from the CRTC on Thursday. You can spend hours analyzing everything if you have the time or the interest, but what I zeroed on were the radio staffing numbers – mostly all down in 2016 – and the salaries. It shows that for the most part, there are fewer jobs but that the salaries being paid are actually slightly higher that they were in the past four years.
 
One other disturbing finding: “Commercial radio stations have posted negative growth for the third consecutive year. This trend is more pronounced for local advertising sales. Some regions have cited economic slowdowns as a contributor to lower advertising revenues. English-language stations reported revenue losses while French-language stations reported a moderate increase in revenues.”  
 
The numbers are broken down by TV, radio, cable and more. And there’s a separate list by market, including Toronto, further separated by AM and FM if you really want to drill down.
 
I find the stuff under the heading “Staff” the most relevant. In 2012, the avg. staffing rate at all private stations in Toronto was listed at 1,151.7, In 2016, that number sank to 974.6. Average annual salaries five years ago came in at $72,773. Last year, it was $81.394. But that was down from 2015’s $83,137.

Staff count at AMs in the city stood at 538.2 in 2012. By 2016, those numbers dwindled to 433.9, more than a hundred jobs less. By contrast salaries on the AM side of your life went from $61,517 in 2012 to $73,385 by 2016.
 
FM employees here went from 613 jobs five years ago to 540.7 in 2016. Average salaries in that time period jumped from $82,648 a year to $87,820. It looks good initially, until you consider that in 2015, the aggregate amount being paid was $95,106.
 
(Interestingly, salaries in nearby markets like St. Catharines-Niagara aren’t that far off, coming in at $70,754. Not bad for a small market. By contrast, Windsor-Chatham employees made around $66,940 in 2016.)

 Finally, if you’ve read this far and haven’t gone cross-eyed from all the numbers, there’s the CBC. To no one’s astonishment, the Corp. has an average salary remuneration of $104,707. No wonder taxpayer-funded radio is often considered a golden ticket.

You can see the entire thing here.