Do Dreams Come True?

Find out and support this initiative by clicking here.  

Let's all encourage them to look more broadly than just video and ultimately include audio measurement as well in this work!

This Will Make You Feel Better, Country Radio

As a follow-up to yesterday's blog post, it must be noted that history indicates that country's shares shouldn't be jeopardized by updated encoding technologies as they come online over the coming months.

© Nielsen PPM markets combined average persons trend

• Voltair really took off about a year ago and into the Winter.
• New Country shot up starting last summer.

Why?

IMHO:  Music cycle, season, more stations in format.  While some country stations did buy a Voltair, it took place a few at a time over numerous months. 

Mike O’Malley recently made the statement to an A&O&B client that he can think of sixteen different things that affect time spent listening/time spent exposed (his list didn’t even include Voltair).

Both Mike and Becky Brenner will be sitting in the front row at Nielsen’s December 3-4 client conference in Washington where CBET testing and impact, the new SDK measurement system for digital audio, which reportedly gets away from having to rely on the meter panel and headphone adapter since it is measuring the traffic to the content regardless of how it’s heard, are on a full two days of presentations.

We appreciate Nielsen hosting this meeting and we’re absolutely looking forward to getting as many answers as possible.

Hope to see YOU there.

Increasing Your (Sales) Power (Ratio)

“It’s not my job to overpay for a radio station or to say, ‘You’ve done great, I’m going to reward you by paying more.’”   — JL Media director of broadcast Rich Russo in Inside Radio

IR’s writer opines:  “Improving ratings is often only half the battle. The next hurdle is driving rates in the marketplace. Convincing buyers who were paying $50 a spot to now pay $100 isn’t a slam dunk, even if the station’s ratings have doubled.”

They ran this graphic on Tuesday morning, posing the question about the reality that first the ratings go up and then begins the longterm task of getting the dollars the higher shares appear to justify:

Note:  this chart was updated after I first reproduced it and has now been corrected, with thanks to Inside Radio

This isn't the first time I have written about this (click to read some history from my perspective), but it's obvious to me at least that the increasingly automated cluster selling caused by consolidation that evolved over the past 20 years has created numerous situations where formats with great qualitative stories' power ratios have regressed to the mean.

Big owners have saved lots of money in expenses at the cost of top line growth.

Cuts in the cost of sales at many radio stations and the move to cost-per-point based transactional selling has proliferated as smaller owners attempted to compete and improve their bottom lines as well.

Now that a company has so many stations that they can throw into a pitch from multiple formats to chip away at a market leader's strongest station.

For example, Clear Channel owns seven stations in San Diego, more than twice as many as KSON owner Lincoln Financial.  At the same time, California's economy has not helped any media.

The country format audience share battles in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Portland, St. Louis, Boston. Pittsburgh and Seattle are much tighter than this single snapshot in time would indicate.  That requires a deep understanding of each radio station and the local market history.

Research Director, Inc's Charlie Sislen explains the problem like this:  "If we sell impressions and allow advertisers to treat all impressions equally, then the value of our spots goes down. However, if we position radio as a more valuable commodity, then we can grow our average unit rate and our overall revenue.  We need to continue to sell the value of our medium as a whole, and the value of each of our individual radio stations."

It has been great to see optimistic radio revenue forecasts from both BIA and Borrell, but discrete radio stations and individual formats will fail to achieve their real analog and digital potential until we get back to investing in local and national sales forces who understand the power of every format, have the time and tools to justify their unique value and we stop trying to steal pennies from other radio competition while leaving dollars on the table.

Now, We Have To DO It

I hate predicting ratings, and of course anyone who has done a budget projection has been there.  It's even scarier when the ratings researcher predicts that you're going to do well in the coming months.

Neilsen just did exactly that in releasing an overviews of April PPM data across 45 markets* using the full-week (Monday-Sunday 6 a.m.-midnight) daypart and audience shares for listeners aged 6 and older.

Country is poised to improve upon its record-setting summer of 2013, when it saw its best audience share numbers in PPM. The format’s April results of 8.1 (for listeners aged 6+), 9.9 (18-34) and 7.9 (25-54) are well ahead of where it stood at this time last year and, in some cases, are just a few 10ths of a share-point away from matching those records set in the middle of last summer. 

The next few months will tell if 2014 will be another ‘Country summer’ on the radio.

Well, the heat is on.  There ain't nothing left to it but to DO it!

Country Is Hot

Two weeks ago, I shared an advance look at Arbitron's Radio Today 2012.

• Arbitron Country Radio 2012, State By State
• Listening and Lifestyle Profiles of American Radio
• Country's National Audience Composition
• Country Radio Today - 2012

And, now, all of BBM's PPM and diary market data from Fall 2012 is out in Canada too and - though the country format is not either the country's most-programmed format nor #1 in audience shares as it is in the USA, there's still cause for celebration, at #3 12+ and #5 25-54, up from both the large-markets only Spring survey and also the Fall, which includes the smaller markets as well.

Look out, AC and Hot AC, we're gaining on you!

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.

• Country Radio Today - 2012
• Listening and Lifestyle Profiles of American Radio
• Country's National Audience Composition

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.

Listening and Lifestyle Profiles of American Radio Consumers

Radio reaches people wherever they are: at home, at work, in the car— nearly everywhere.

Regardless of one’s age, the time of day or the listening location, Americans depend on radio as a reliable media companion for entertainment, news, information, community service and, increasingly, social networking.

Radio has always been and continues to be a vibrant and relevant part of our lives.

              -- Arbitron, Radio Today 2011

That's why smart management, sales and programming executives are anxiously-awaiting the 2012 update, due in early December.

An in-depth snapshot of radio listening nationwide and by individual formats, Radio Today 2012 combines Scarborough qualitative data with Arbitron audience data to develop a comprehensive profile of radio listening across America. It also examines the listening activity for the most popular radio formats representing the Fall 2011 Diary and October-November-December 2011 PPM™survey periods, often in comparison with Fall 2010 and earlier years.  Features include each format’s weekly reach (Cume); national average-quarter-hour share overall in PPM™, Diary and non-Metro counties; segmentation of audience composition by age; time spent listening (TSL); educational levels; income by household; gender balance; ratings by daypart and state by state; ethnic composition in Differential Survey Treatment (DST) markets and listening by location (at home vs. out of home).

For the last few days, I've been blogging some of the stats for the country format which will appear in the new report.

More advance factoids about Country Radio Today:  1.152,900 of country's national cume of 3,480,100 (33.1%) listens at home and 66.9% (2,327,600) listens away from home.

Country's strongest average quarter hour persons daypart in the latest update of the report is Mon-Fri, 10:00 am-3:00 pm, delivering a 14.6% share of total average quarter hour persons for all formats.  Weekday morning drive (6:00 am-10:00 am) delivered a 14.4% share.  Weekday afternoons (3:00 pm-7:00 pm) deliver a 13.9% share, weekday evenings have a 12.0% share 12+, while weekends perform at 100% of the total week share with a 14.1%.

Country's national average 12+ total week cume audience (24,719,000) by daypart, followed by that daypart's format daypart average index compared to the Mon-Sun, 6am-Mid number:

MF 6-10 am:           33,196,100 - 137.72
MF 10-3 pm:           34,074,100 - 142.78
MF 3-7 pm:             31,485,100 - 125.5
MF 7-Mid:              11,373,700 - 39.3
Sat-Sun 6am-Mid:  19,021,600 - 77.33

Which states are best/worst for the country format?  That's coming in my next post, with thanks to Arbitron.

Country's National Audience Composition

Average Quarter Hour Persons %  Cume Persons %

12-17  5.1%                                    5.8%
18-24  11.6%                                  10.2%
25-34  15.0%                                  15.5%
35-44  15.6%                                  17.2%
45-54  19.9%                                  20.3%
55-64  15.7%                                  15.6%
65+     17.1%                                  15.5%

These averages are based on 1,857 country stations measured in 2011 by ARB.

Note that 18-24 is the most time spent listening-driven demo, since cume percentages are higher than AQH in all other cells.

Arbitron's 2012 edition of the "Radio Today" annual format updates will be out the first week of December.

Country Radio Today - 2012

Arbitron's much-anticipated 2012 edition of the "Radio Today" annual format updates will be out the first week of December.

As usual since 2008, the stats will reflect annual format averages through the preceding years' fall book.  Up to 2007, the report used shares ending with the spring survey. 

It should come as no surprise that the country format is UP:

Combined country shares (both "country" and "new country" stations added together) have shown impressive consistency over the last decade:

ARB reports that country's weekly cume of the 1,857 measured stations in the last year is 66,025,700 with an average quarter hour persons of 3,479,000.

The average share trend is positive and consistent over the last ten years.

Sp02 (2003 Radio Today):  13.4
Sp03 (2004 Radio Today):  13.4
Sp04 (2005 Radio Today):  12.4
Sp05 (2006 Radio Today):  12.9
Sp06 (2007 Radio Today):  13.0
Sp 07 (2008 Radio Today):  13.1
Fa08 (2009 Radio Today):  12.9
Fa09 (2010 Radio Today):  13.4
Fa10 (2011 Radio Today):  13.1
Fa11 (2012 Radio Today):  14.1

Country's national share in the new report will be 7.4 in the PPM markets, up from a 6.4 and a 7.1 in the previous two years, 15.3 in diary markets (up from 14.1 and 14.5) and 26.2 in unrated (county-by-county reports) markets, which were not tracked prior to 2011 but are also up from a 25.6 last year.

The gender makeup of that 3.5 million average quarter hour persons:  47.4% men 12+ and 52.6% females 12+.

I'll have more details in the next two days on audience composition, daypart, shares by state, qualitative, ethnic and TSL.

That IS What I Said, But It Wasn't What I Meant

With programmers looking for benchmarks or norms to compare their station to, Arbitron, Media Monitors and Inside Radio are working on a study that looks at the musical characteristics of top performing stations under PPM measurement which will be revealed next week at Arbitron's annual Fly-In in a presentation by Arbitron's Jenny Tsao and Heine.

It examines key music metrics, like library size, current playlist and turnover rate, at top performing stations and compares them to the average in that format.

Since one of the formats they’re looking at is country, Inside Radio's Paul Heine conferenced with Mike O'Malley and me the other day and then printed a few bullet points from that lengthy conversation.

In reading it, I felt a bit like Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich, wishing one of us had done a better job explaining what I meant to communicate in a clearer, more quickly-quotable manner.

The data shows top performers share remarkably similar musical characteristics with average stations in the same format. The study both reinforces the importance of playing the hits to build a ratings foundation while demonstrating how non-music programming components separate ratings winners from also-rans.

As Heine previewed yesterday in Inside Radio, the percentage of airplay devoted to the most played songs in individual formats is largely the same – whether a station is ranked first in its target demo or not. For example, nearly one in three spins (30%) on CHR stations are from the format’s ten most played songs and nearly seven in ten are from songs in the top 50 — regardless of the station’s 18-34 rank.

While slower current music rotations mean country devotes a lower percentage of spins to songs in the top 10, the percentages hardly vary whether the station is No. 1 in 25-54 (18% of spins) ranked No. 2 - No. 5 (17%) or ranked No. 6 - No. 10 (16%).

The findings of the study were largely consistent across six major contemporary music formats.

Arbitron and Mediabase — in conjunction with Inside Radio — tracked stations in PPM markets from April-June for the study: "Country — radio’s most programmed format — exhibits few variances in selecting top songs. No matter whether ranked first or tenth in 25-54, country stations appear to be spinning and rotating the same current songs at the same levels across PPM markets."

In viewing the stats, Mike O'Malley told Heine there are only minor differences in the way number one stations spin the top 20 (or even the top 50) vs. #6-10. What is outside the Top 50 creates the majority of what country plays regardless of rank. 6-10 play slightly more songs outside the top 50 than #1s (2%) or #2-5 (1%), but really that difference is insignificant. Because there’s little different in the way ‘currents’ are spun, ranks are a function of something else.

My perspective on what that might be: no matter whether a specific market is highly Hispanic, black or primarily non-ethnic, the leading country stations still do best when they overachieve among non-ethnic listeners with an almost even balance of 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54 listeners. Thus, "common thread/low polarity" songs which work to help hit that goal tend to be the same ones regardless of whether the city is Miami, San Diego, Philadelphia, Houston or Boston.

Secondly, music promotion to country is driven by the reality that many country music fans continue to purchase music on physical CDs as opposed to digital downloads and so record labels strive to keep stations in synch on the number of consensus current hit songs that retailers like Wal-Mart and Target have on their shelves at any given time, which keeps the number of currents we're all exposing to fewer than 20-25.

O'Malley made the point that, given that, smart country stations tend to differentiate themselves musically by the gold library material a station either plays or doesn't, rather than currents or recurrents.

Heine's report included the factoid that top-ranked 25-54 country stations are playing, on average, 200 more titles than lower ranked country stations: 681 active titles for top-ranked stations, 484 for stations ranked No. 2 - No. 5 and 480 for stations ranked No.6 - No.10.

Then, he added his own observation that bigger libraries and slower current rotations are one of the hallmarks of a format long on Time Spent Exposed and light on cume followed by a quote from me, “If a country station increases its rotations too high, TSE generally declines. That’s the steel sword country has: a very loyal, passionate core that listens for a long time...” which had me seeming to say that big libraries are what makes winning stations in ARB PPM when, actually, just the opposite is true.

The repetition I was talking about was spinning currents too often which can harm heavy user time spent listening, based on audience turnover that is about half for country what the contemporary hit formats have.

They need to play currents twice as fast as country radio does to be sure that their average listener hears them about the same amount.

Country has a weapon in its arsenal that CHR generally doesn't have access to, given our wider target age: high appeal gold songs as well as currents and recurrents.

However, I sure don't want anyone to get the impression that when it comes to country bigger gold categories beat tighter ones in PPM. They do not.

The main reason a country station ranks higher in a Minneapolis or Cincinnati than in a Miami or Los Angeles has everything to do with the size of the non-ethnic 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54 population in those places and how accurately the PPM panel reflects those demographics in the correct male/female balance, NOT the number of songs in their library.

Smiling While Scratching My Head

If you, like me, are glued to the stats and musings of Richard Harker & Glenda Shrader Bos on Harker Research's "Radio Insights" blog, you are already up to speed on their recent format comparisons, which they feel is a more accurate use of the numbers than Arbitron's own "Radio Today" analysis.

Devoting the entire front page to Country’s performance,“the most trusted news in radio” declared. The format ranked first among all formats in diary markets with a 14.5 but finished fourth in PPM markets with a 7.1. Put another way, Country’s average diary share is more than double its PPM share. The statement is factually accurate, the ciphering flawless, but in the end meaningless. A few lines later we learn the purpose of this expose' when the author asks rhetorically, “Why do some formats perform better under one ratings system than under another?” It's perhaps a fair question, but using Radio Today Country numbers suggests that the author really doesn't understand how to go about answering the question. Radio Today shares are calculated just like you’d do for a single market. Share is just a format’s AQH divided by the market’s AQH. To calculate a national format share, add the AQH of all the stations, then divide by the total AQH of all the markets. Simple, right? But what happens when there’s no full market Country station in New York or Los Angeles? The two largest markets in the country don’t contribute any AQH to the format tally. Consequently, the format's share is much lower. Radio Today is not designed to compare formats the way the author has tried to do.

Both approaches make country look very good, fortunately.

For example, the Harker researchers found: "There are 90 Country stations in PPM markets, but only 60 have a full 12 months of PPM numbers, so like the other formats, it will take several more months before we know how the entire stable of Country stations are doing.

"That said, PPM appears to have been very kind to Country. Nearly two-thirds (63.3%) are higher today than they were a year ago. Country has the highest percentage of gainers of any format we’ve looked at. The median Country station has a 4.1 share 6+, a tie with Hot AC for third among the formats we’ve discussed so far. The big difference between Country and Hot AC is that Country has positive momentum while Hot AC is stalled, so in this tie we give the nod to Country."

As I reported in this space when "Radio Today" released, Arbitron's research team pointed out:

The No. 1 format overall, in both Diary and non-Metro areas, Country reached more than 65 million listeners each week on more than 1,700 stations—the most outlets of any music format, not including 300 Classic Country stations. It also was the top format among most age groups (including a big lead with adults 25-54) and in most dayparts. Country enjoyed some of the longest time spent listening of all formats, and its listeners set a new high in college degree attainment in Fall 2010.

Harker distrusts ARB's approach on statistical grounds and so to assess the health of each format they looked at two key metrics, median station performance and momentum. The median station is the one in the middle. Half of the stations in the format have a larger share, half have a smaller share. As they see it, the median tells us how the format is trending. "If we see the median rising, it means mid-pack stations, the majority in the format, are gaining share. Tracking the median station is more useful than calculating an average share because averages can be distorted by what are called outliers, stations that dramatically outperform other stations in the format."

New PPM markets coming on-line make it difficult to compare current median shares to last year’s numbers because the newest markets tend to be smaller than the first PPM markets. So, to look at median share trends, Harker calculated median shares for just the stations that have been in the format and measured by PPM for at least a year.

While the median shares tell how popular a format is, Harker posits that a more useful metric for indicating the future prospects of a format is momentum, comparing past performance to the present.

Harker calculates momentum by comparing each station’s share today to what it was last year at this time, using a three month average. Positive format momentum means that more stations are higher today than they were a year ago.

Why is it that there's such a big gap when ranking format mo' and yet so much compression in the 6+ median share ranker, where just a tenth of a point separates #1 and #2, back just .4-.5 are the next four and then just a share behind #1 is #7, leading #8 by just .2?

Richard and Glenda have a theory on that as well, in a 2010 post called Arbitron PPM Trends vs. a Coin Toss, most of the month to month movement of PPM is random.

Stations go up and down for no other reason than luck of the draw. Share estimates always have two components. The first is the actual number, the share you would find if you could ask everybody what they were listening to, instead of just a small number of panelists. The second component is statistical noise. It is interference like static drowning out the signal from a distant AM station. The noise is completely random and unpredictable. Sometimes it adds to the actual share, inflating it. Sometimes it subtracts from the actual share, deflating it. Both monthly PPM share estimates and quarterly diary share estimates have so much statistical noise in them that it drowns out genuine changes in month to month ratings.

I'd interpret that powerful momentum to country's high level of engagement, in spite of lower levels of cume in PPM compared to the formats above us in median 6+ share. And, putting it another way, as Arbitron reinforced in their diary/PPM data for the past year: " Country enjoyed some of the longest time spent listening of all formats." Harker would likely predict that the country format could be a rank or two higher in next year's median averages with that solid improvement (as long as we can keep it up).

There will be a lot to discuss when we're all together next month in Baltimore, which is why both Mike O'Malley and I will be there.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that no matter how you count it, in PPM, diaries, by momentum over last year, average OR median shares, the country radio format is having one very good 2011.

(More) No One Ever Said Life Was Supposed to Make Sense

It's SO great to see nice guy WWYZ PD Lance Tidwell, morning personality Corey Meyers and the Clear Channel/Hartford team leverage Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley concerts to the highest country station 6+ share in the history of PPM measurement anywhere, 12.3 6+.

Meanwhile, country's PPM-measured share of the radio listening in Atlanta is 6.8. In Houston, it's a 10.1. In Dallas (where A&O hears that 40% of 25-54 panelists are Spanish-language-only households) it's a 7.8.

Can it really be that country music is hotter right now in Hartford than it is in Houston?

Bigger in Connecticut than Georgia?

Things I Don't Understand (A Continuing Series)

I scratch my head when a song charts #1.


.. and almost immediately the label puts out a "live" version.


.. once upon a time a programmer told a music promoter that he was dropping a #1 song due to "burn," (probably because he didn't want to admit that he was so stupid that he thought playing a song that ranked lower than #1 made more sense than playing #1 another week or two).

So, the label came up with a "live" version in hopes that would overcome the objection to keeping the #1 song in "heavy" rotation just as they were starting to get the biggest retail action of the release's "life at radio" on the tune.

I wonder...

1. Why drop a song just because it hits #1 on national spin charts? Isn't this the peak of its popularity, audience reach and acceptance?
2. Why test a hook for weeks and weeks, past the unfamiliarity and the polarity to the point that positives are at their highest, and then change the version of the song you play?
3. How could a song that is finally on 100% of the monitored and reporting panels and still growing spins to the point that it's capable of hitting the highest chart number be sufficiently "burnt" that you'd want to play it less?
4. If your recurrents - which is where songs like that move - test better than your heaviest rotation currents with higher positives and low negatives, wouldn't it help your targeting, cume and time spent listening potential to play them more, not less?
5. Has there EVER been a "live" version that listeners liked better on the radio than the "original hit?"

Leaving The "Class Of 1989" Boom Tunes To Classic Country

Is 2011 going down in country radio history as the year that "country boom years" (1989 to 1995) titles and artists move from mainstream country playlists to classic country libraries?


A&O's 8th annual "Roadmap" perceptual study was conducted in January and February by more than ten thousand listeners to 80+ radio stations across the U.S. and Canada of many stripes.

For the first time, listeners to the mainstream stations rated the early 90's era the lowest ever, while users of classic country stations ranked that music 42% higher.


Should mainstream country stations defend aggressively when they start to hear a classic country station they duplicate cume with move newer?

Only if they want to play lower testing songs with their 2011 target listeners.

.. and, only if they want to expose music that today's 25-44 year old country fans don't enjoy anywhere near as much as they do today's country.

The better new country music does with 25-54 and 18-49, the more exciting the potential becomes for classic country stations to move into the rich vein of songs and artists from country's biggest decade ever, the 1990's.

The "Gift" Is TSE More Than Cume

Entercom certainly knows how powerful a great country brand can be, since they still own SIX of them, even in the wake of the departure of San Francisco's WOLF (now relegated to an HD-2 side channel) to sports.

Yet, their Boston 850 WEEI franchise has been feeling (in spite of having an awesome online presence) the pressure of an FM competitor from CBS and WBZ-FM in another great sports town, so you have to know what a difficult, yet absolutely correct, revenue-based decision this has been for them.

Tom Taylor this morning calls it a cume gift to San Jose's KRTY and that's no doubt correct to some degree.

However, the departure of a direct competitor in a PPM market bestows an even more powerful present than more cume, as was proven in 2009 when Clear Channel shut off the country format on WDTW in Detroit: Time Spent Exposed.

Ask any country programmer in a PPM market.

It's almost impossible to completely stem TSE loss to a direct format competitor and nothing improves share in PPM as much as a solid, sustainable TSE increase. Nothing (other perhaps than going commercial free) drives that more immediately than pushing a shared-cume station out of the format.

Bob Kieve and his Empire Broadcasting team have played the game very well with signal-challenged KRTY and KLIV over the years.

Now, it must be said that they richly deserve what I predict they will see in the very next PPM weeklies and then monthlies, leading to great quarterlies, a substantial improvement in quarter hour persons and share, driven primarily by the kind of TSE that only having no direct competition can deliver.

Country's Age Target Is Only Part Of It

Inside Radio's item about the current attempt to present radio's powerful reach among "Alpha Boomers" reminds me of a similar effort made many years ago by all of the Golden West Broadcasters radio stations. They did tons of research (and I don't think anyone could have done it better than "the world's greatest radio station" owners) that proved how affluent and loyal to radio upper demos were, just like the current initiative.

With strong news and classic hits brands that attract high concentrations of the demo, CBS Radio is among the media companies trying to change outdated advertiser perceptions that this group consists primarily of silver-haired, shuffleboard-playing couples wearing Bermuda shorts. The company has been making Alpha Boomer presentations in all of its markets. “We’re walking into clients and agencies and showing them how this population of 50-64 year-olds is exploding and they’re so different compared to 30 years ago,” CBS Radio president of sales Michael Weiss says. “Their look and behavior is more contemporary, they take better care of themselves and their disposable income is much higher, particularly in the 45-64 year range.”

This is a great story for today's country, too, of course, which has been riding the boomer-driven age wave for the past three decades and the early 90's explosion for the format can partially be explained by the growth of 30-34 year olds in the population at that time...

.. and now is seeing Gen X's smaller proportion of the national population reflected in our aging average core audience as A&O's Roadmap 2011 indicates.

But, before we abandon hope for younger demos, take a look at the size of the "Taylor Swift generation" (also known as Gen Y/The Millenials).

Right now, they are centered in their young 20's, but in the next decade they will dominate 18-49 and 25-54 targets.


Hopefully, the 25 year old media buyers of today understand that demo well, perhaps better than we do, and are enjoying the values of country music radio.

Not only are they the ones we're hoping to sell our upper-demo story to today, but they will be the vanguard of our younger demo strategy of the coming decade.

As they get older, maybe their memory will fade, when we start pitching them on country's great 18-49 performance in just 5-10 years!

Country Radio's Future

Edison Research's Larry Rosin showed the format-specific data, not broken out until now, from last fall's American Youth Study, comparing today's 12-24's with the same demo a decade ago from the country listeners this week at A&O's client seminar in Nashville. A&O clients can see all of his presentation graphics (pdf) here.

"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.