Country's Dirty Little Secret May Be A Future Strength

I love meeting with the sales teams at client stations during market visits and often tell them that country radio offers a unique kind of value-added that savvy media buyers expect us to give them for free and yet they secretly understand the power of it: 55+ listeners, lots of them.

Now, thanks to NBC Universal, we even have a name for the demo - “AlphaBoomers” (the affluent and active 55-64 demographic, a big part of country radio's extremely broad target audience of listeners) and this article in Mediaweek (click to read and print it out) may finally give us all the courage to ask for good money for our delivery of them.

NBCU President of Research and Media Development Alan Wurtzel “wants advertisers to know that, when it comes to consumer spending based on what they see in television ads, the 55-64 demo is the new 18-34.”

Reporter John Consoli says NBCU's new research “dispels myths about how adults 55-64 respond to advertising and spend as consumers.”

NBCU president and CEO Jeff Zucker said he’s hoping the findings will motivate tech companies like Apple, Droid and Bing—which are not advertising on CNBC news programs because they are older-skewing—will start doing so.

“What we’d like to see is these companies and their agencies start targeting AlphaBoomers as much as they do the 18-34 demo,” Zucker said, acknowledging that the presentation could also help other networks’ newscasts.

Research in the NBCU presentation shows that AlphaBoomers have a median household income of $69,000, dwarfing that of those under 25 ($27,000), 25-34 ($58,000) and close to those 35-44 ($75,000).

Other findings include:

• AphaBoomers spend more on home improvement products, home furnishing, large appliances, beauty and cosmetics and casual dining than adults 18-49.
• A similar percentage of AlphaBoomers have high-definition TVs, use DVRs and broadband as adults 18-34
• 70 percent of AlphaBoomers buy at least one product a month online
• 59 percent of AlphaBoomers send text messages via their cell phones
• Wurtzel: "people in that demo make buying decisions similar to younger demos.”

Anyone who's been to see a country concert has seen these folks face to face and knows how true this is.