Are You Still Programming Like It Was 2008?

For eight years nearly a hundred A&O&B clients have participated in the annual online "Roadmap" study, tracking trends in music, tech, non-music elements and other aspects of usage and images.

The attitudes change every year.  For example, just seven years ago the average listener ranked country leadership and giving away big contest prizes as the #1 and #2 reasons to pick a favorite.  Music quantity out-rated music quality.

Eight months ago, when we tabbed the 2014 results, the most important parameters in choosing a favorite changed radically:

Is your emphasis on key images outdated?

If you're still trying to bribe listeners with prizes and music quantity promises, you may be out of synch with today's audience, which now wants the best songs, more fun, friendly authenticity and good vibes compared to what they did just a few years ago.

The "Other" Questions

This is the week A&O's 7th Annual "Roadmap 2012" perceptual study goes into the field. Client stations can track strategic and tactical questions to define clusters (in addition to music preference), understand how satisfied each individual audience is with their favorite station compared to national averages, tracked over the years, in addition to tech usage.

Each A&O client station will receive a customized local breakout. The first presentation of the national findings and recommendations will be at A&O Pre-CRS Seminar '12 next month.

It's never possible to have an unlimited number of questions. That's why as Mike, Becky and I finalize the study, we ask ourselves "are these the most pressing success factors affecting clients right now?," which means that there are many other "interesting" things everyone who creates content for listeners also need to know about today's listener which we decided not to ask, since any smart programmer or personality is going to hang out with real people in their audience and tailor what they talk about to as many tribes within their cume as possible.

Do you know how long your cume and core listeners have been listening to country music? Less than a year, 1 to 3 years, 3 to 6 years, more than 6? The exact percentages matter less to your success than the fact that a bit of your content must be engaging to each of those groups as consistently as possible.

How many folks under 30 live in their residence? Is it close to the national census average of two and a half? More/fewer? Why would that be? Is it unique to your station or the local community for some reason?

Besides country music, what other types of music do they enjoy listening to? What type of program do they like to watch on TV?

In the past year, how many times have they left your home state on vacation? Did they drive or fly?

If they could choose one place to go on a dream vacation, where would it be? Would they take the whole family or go alone for an escape?

When they have spare time, what type of activity do they like to do most often?

How many vehicles do they and the other members of the household own?

Is their personal vehicle domestic or foreign? Why?

How would they identify their political views?
Republican/conservative
Democrat/liberal
Independent
Other

Social networks are one great place to start to think about these "lifestyle" questions in terms of the kind of people you want to like and listen regularly to you, and I don't just mean Facebook, Twitter and the online resources where you can interact with the lives of real people.

You don't need a perceptual study to do that.

You need a "life."

PS: if you'd like to make sure your audience is part of "A&O Country Roadmap 2012," reach out now to Mike, Becky or me.

"When You're Not Listening To Your Favorite Country Station?"

- A&O Roadmap 2011

A&O Roadmap 2011: Repetition Complaints Down, But Still BIG

The “Repetition” trend over the last three years: 55%, 57% and now 53%.

Meanwhile, “Too Much New” complaints have been increasing from 20% in 2009 to 21% last year and 22% in this year's national online survey among A&O client country stations.

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.