Thursday, December 05, 2013

Improving Your Country Station's TSL: Are You Targeting A Bit Too Young?

Exactly one year ago, Scarborough research highlighted the fact that what the company calls "heavy" users of radio are significantly more likely to use the Internet as a source for entertainment than Americans who listen to less radio.

90% of Heavy Radio Listeners in Scarborough's research are between 18 and 64 but there are noteworthy generational differences.

Some formats, of course, have no choice in which generational cohort to target, but since country music preferences don't seem to fragment until our listeners get over 55 (see my post on this) and it's possible to target all three demos between 25 and 54, here's another reason to really understand 35-44 and not get drawn too quickly toward under 30!

2 comments:

Mark Ramsey said...

The hallmark of today’s media environment is that people with choices can find media which entertain and inform them from a variety of sources, only some of which will be radio-made. While the majority of your ratings may derive from fans, those fans are people first and format fans a very distant second. That means understanding what they have in common with all other people is every bit as important – perhaps more so – than understanding what makes them stand apart.

This is especially true when we are blind to so much of the attention our own listeners direct to media which are not radio. When it’s entertainment or information I’m seeking, it’s content that I want – everything else is just a distribution channel.

Ruth Presslaff in FMQB (click to read it all) said...

We’ve got a brand new TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for you: Time Spent Relating. At a time when programmers are zealously guarding their TSL and AQH they should be adding another three letter acronym to the mix, TSR.