A&O Roadmap 2011 - Good News/Bad News

Each February for the past five years, thousands of P-1 county radio listeners from all regions of the U.S. and Canada have given their feedback in an online perceptual.

Exciting: 72% of the 2011 sample agrees that they are "very satisfied with your current favorite country station," the highest percentage since we started asking the question.

Last year, that number was 68%, up from 2009's 64.6%. In 2008, 67% claimed to be very satisfied, down from 2007's 70%.

Click to see the meeting agenda

Potentially challenging narrow demo trends among the self-selecting random samples who completed our surveys over the past five years:


25-34 and 45-54 has been wobbling up and down, 35-44 slipped, as both 12-24 and 55+ have grown in their proportion of our core listener target.

• Is this merely the aging of country's traditional target into older narrow cells, but slowly being replaced by emerging Generation Y?
• The impact of additional competition from outside the format caused by new music cycles attractive in unique ways to each narrow demo within country's audience?

For sure: it has never been wise to find a "narrow age target" for the broad lifestyle/psychographic format that is country radio.

In 2011 it becomes even harder to build a values coalition between the growing demographic edges, both old and young, with a smaller Gen X in the center.

That impressive number of station loyalists who stated that they are more satisfied with the stations which asked for their opinions in 2011 proves that it's achievable, offering a promising sign for the future.

A&O will look at other fresh data points which may be driving those ups and downs in Nashville on Tuesday.

Hopefully. you'll be there.