Does This Look Like A Format That's About To Fragment?

Since roughly a third of all radio users give all radio stations some 70% of their total hours of listening, it's safe to say that as goes the core, so goes the radio station they use.

That's why A&O&B has been tracking annual "Roadmap" online perceptual studies for many years.

In 2014, 8,874 very local fans in more than 70 markets in the U.S. & Canada gave us their opinions.  Nine of ten were "P-1," since just 9.3% choose country as 2nd or 3rd choice.

As Mike O'Malley blogged that passion for today's country runs very high:  "even among 55-64 year olds, six in ten like new country frommillennial stars 'a lot.'"  

That's driving improving total hours tuned:

It's especially the case with younger demos:

The biggest increase came 18-24, but is across all demos:

Loyalty (likely to switch if something new became available) is also on the upswing:

That's not say that there aren't individual radio stations failing to perform at these benchmarks whose listeners might jump at the chance to try something different and new.  As Radio-Info's Mike Kinosian reported on Friday, one third of the Nielsen rated country stations in his last tracking study failed to join the national up trend for the country format.

I hope you aren't one of them, but it appears that the average country station among A&O&B clients is well-positioned to fend off a niche competitor!

If you aren't among the majority, A&O&B can help,

Bye Bye P-1 Report, Hello Cluster Analysis "Junkies"

It has been fascinating to watch Nielsen decide to stop offering a report that was created almost thirty years ago even as radio researcher Mark Kassof released a report that indicates almost exactly the same statistical relationship of a radio station's heaviest users to their total averages.

35% of all listeners, multivariate data pioneer Kassof finds, account for about 70% of all listening for the typical radio station.

As "Research Doctor" Roger Wimmer and longtime researcher Pierre Bouvard recall, a bright programmer/researcher - Gary Donohue - originated the concept of segmenting radio tuning into quintiles for programming and marketing.

Donohue's "Fingerprint" stats from back in the diary-only days proved that about 30% of radio listeners gave stations roughly 70% of their listening.

When you see two completely different research approaches yield very close to the same result over a very long period of time, you have to believe that you are approaching that rare entity:  THE TRUTH.

Just because Nielsen has unplugged the "P-1 report," it's still vital to know who your heaviest users are, where they live and how they perceive and behave.

If you need assistance in creating your own reports to analyze their use of your station, A&O&B would be delighted to assist.

One More Surprise (Thanks To RateTheMusic.com)

And, it's a good thing (I think).

It its screener, RateTheMusic.com asks respondents how much they listen to country music radio every day.  The folks who say they listen two or more hours daily are 79% of this particular week's sample and the ones who report listening less than two hours are the remaining 21% (talk about a perfect example of the Pareto principle!).

This is important because high performing stations have a higher proportion of “P1” listeners than other stations (P1 is defined as the station that earns the most time from a listener).

• Lighter users like the very best testing songs a bit more than the core listeners do.  This tells me at least one reason why the format is growing now. 
• The two groups appear to agree on five potential "power" songs, but disagree on others.
• The non-core "likes" the Darius and Band Perry but doesn't seem to "love" them like the heaviest users do.  
• Meanwhile, they "love" Kip, Brad, Easton and Brantley more than the two-hour-a-day users.
• Among what might be "medium rotation" testers in the 60's, Keith Urban and Billy Currington perform better with the lighter users vs the core.
• Those in the bottom third of the test ranker by core positives that rank higher with the lighter users:  Lee Brice and Kacey Musgraves.

The decisions being made each week by smart programmers on factors like these show why programming music is both an "art" and a "science."

It starts with understanding the differences in the many subsets within your audience and then making intelligent decisions based on them.

For more on programming to P-1 tastes, click on Coleman Research, ARB's Bill Rose, Gary Marince, Mark Ramsey, Roger Wimmer, Arbitron Training Handbook (pdf)