Monday, November 26, 2012

Arbitron Country Radio 2012, State By State

If you have media buyer clients who believe that country music on radio is a Southern Redneck thing, you're going to want to share Radio Today 2012 with them when the updated annual report is released in early December.

Thanks to Arbitron, A&O&B has been blogging the country format's latest stats over the past few days.
When ranked by state, country radio really shines in six places and they aren't all southern by any means, but having locals of rural areas does seem to help an area index better than the national average average quarter hour persons share of 14.1.

South Dakota has 24 country radio stations which deliver an average share per station of 37%, an index of 262.96!

The other states which deliver DOUBLE the average persons quarter hour share are Montana (36 stations, delivering an average share of 35.87), West Virginia (32 stations' average share per station is 33.81), Wyoming (an average of 32.24% of all average quarter hour persons listening for the state's 29 country stations).

Kentucky has the largest number of country stations (70) of all the states which produce twice the share of the average.  The average country station in the Bluegrass State has a 31.49% of all average quarter hour persons listening to radio.

Election 2012 battleground state Vermont's nine country stations index 198.87 when compared to the national country average share with their 27.84% of the Green Mountain State radio audience.

26 more states can brag that their average country radion station delivers a higher than the typical share on a national basis (and again you'll recognize a number of hotly contested states in election years):

Missouri - 73 stations' average share of 24.43
Oklahoma - 46 - 24.32
Kansas - 39 - 23.52
Nebraska - 42 - 23.48
Iowa - 41 - 23.13
North Dakota - 23 - 22.84
Tennessee - 72 - 22.55
Arkansas - 50 - 22.33
Indiana - 49 - 21.37
New Hampshire - 9 - 20.82
Idaho - 25 - 20.05
Maine - 9 - 19.06
Alabama - 47 - 18.4
South Carolina - 31 - 18.16
Minnesota - 64 - 18.0
Wisconsin - 50 - 17.89
Virginia - 45 - 17.76
North Carolina - 40 - 16.88
Mississippi - 29 - 16.88
New Mexico - 34 - 16.41
Ohio - 48 - 16.28
Michigan - 51 - 15.67
Maryland - 14 - 15.13
Louisiana - 37 - 14.86
Oregon - 28 - 14.66
Alaska - 10 - 14.05 (index of 99.89)

States which the average country station only falls 10% below the national norm:  Texas (13.78), Utah (13.65), Pennsylvania (13.19), Georgia (12.78) and Arizona (12.59)

Finally, the state-by-state averages also prove that all statistics can be deceptive.

Rhode Island is listed as a state with no country stations and so in the Radio Today report gets a "0" next to the state's AQHP.

Tell that to The Hall Group's Cat Country, WCTK!

In spite of their downtown Providence studio location, their city of license is across the state line in the historic whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

So, for the purpose of the national analysis, that's the state getting credit for their listeners.

2 comments:

Jaye Albright said...

I checked with a data-head friend of A&O&B at Arbitron and was told today "you are correct in that the Rhode Island station is licensed outside of the state which is why the state doesn’t get credit for it. Our next iteration of the heat map will be market based, so it will be a lot more interesting (and markets like Providence will show up).

And just for a slightly extended explanation – our database, which happens to be Tapscan Web NRD, allows us to come up with this very interesting state-by-state data, but all of a station’s listening credit to each station goes to the state that includes the station’s city of license.

Our next version of the map will be more precise as to where the listening credit lands geographically.

Bob Walker, PD, WCTK, "Providence" said...

Cat Country ranked No. 2 among persons 25-54 in November; our midday personality Loren Petisce notched her third No. 1 25-54 month of the year. Our cume is 294,600.