Has Country Radio Reached The Christmas Music Tipping Point?

"One last listen to the 2013 Holidays" (report) serves up one final piece of Christmas pie and makes it clearer why upper-demo targeted radio stations post such astronomical shares each December.

Overall terrestrial radio listening appears to be going down in PPM measurement during the same period, so it seems that getting a bigger slice of a smaller pie is at least part of what's happening.

I have used these charts before and I apologize for trotting it out again, but it's a good time to ponder how country radio users felt about the tactic seven years ago.

Back in 2005 and 2006, Edison Research did a massive national online database study for Country Radio Seminar and asked country listeners about it.

Kansas City in 2013 was a case study of what we may see more and more of in 2014.  The older-targeted country station was up after jingling musical bells, while the other two - targeting under 45 - were also both up and ranked in the market's top five, by carefully not doing the same thing.

As that 2005-2006 study showed, the decision for country programmers on whether to cavort with elves and Santa's helpers or not has always been a difficult one, but it's going to be even tougher - and important to know who else is going to do it - in the coming year.

Will Christmas Music Take Another Fall Book Toll On The Country Format?

As A&O clients received our 48-page Christmas 2009 package this week, we started it off by resurrecting a Mark Ramsey quote from last year’s hear2.0, saying that, with the extreme turbulence in our economy today, this will be the biggest year for Christmas music on the radio EVER.

He said, “I don’t mean just the number of stations doing it. I mean the volume of listeners finding safe refuge in it.”

AC Consultant Mike McVay notes that 100000watts.com and M Street counted 418 stations which went all Christmas last December and states

“We expect all of these and at least another 50 this year. Obviously, there are another 1,000 radio stations that play partial XMAS music or go to 100% Christmas a few days before 12-25. Most every radio station will play "some" Christmas music before 12-25. That includes news/talk stations.”

But, he also takes issue with Ramsey:

“I hope that Mark is right. We consult more AC stations than anyone else, so it behooves me if he is right, but I think that the Christmas following 9-11 was the biggest ever. Having said that, it is difficult to compare apples-to-apples, since the PPM is now a part of our world.”

Living At The Intersection Of Virtue and Meaning

Radio-Info's Sean Ross plans to tell the now completely-sold-out Christian Music Broadcasters convention tomorrow in Orlando that “Family friendly” is a position Christian ACs own by default.

He claims that Christian AC stations are diverging further from the formats they tend to share with, like country, noting that over the last four years country’s lyrics and attitude have changed so that using a positioner like “safe for the whole family” is no longer a good fit and if country stations edit out the slightly-objectionable words in some songs (pulling “ass” out of Zac Brown’s hit named “Toes”), they’re apt to get listener complaints.

While Country Music Association-funded research absolutely indicates that our listeners are driven by music's ability to give meaning to their lives and virtue is an important attribute to them, there is no indication - i.e. last week's "RateTheMusic.com" top ten ranking of country listeners favorite new music shows that those who "love" Brown's current hit outnumber the ones in country's audience who dislike it, three to one (click on the graphics to enlarge them).

Country music's strength is its sonic and lyrical variety. The narrower competing genres become, the larger our opportunity for growth as we reflect real life and values in all of its negatives, positives, temptations, joys, loves and hates.

Here's hoping we never lose that historical advantage!