Country's Gen X (Conversation)

My Country's Gen X Problem post initiated a Facebook dialog:

Bob McNeill:  Of course country has a 35-44 problem. The average age of a country listener has been right in the middle of that demo for decades and now, with the influx of pop, they're disenfranchised. We never learn.  Country has always been the only adult format that's sustained by current music. Balance is always the issue. And with that, the development of core artists that aren't disposable as they are in pop formats. Disposable songs and artists are a danger to the country format. I fear we're allowing the music business to drive the direction of the format which is problematic since radio and records do have divergent goals at some point.

Ralph Cipolla:  Classic Rock PDs (and Sales folk) have been lamenting the inevitable march of time... now, they face what traditional Oldies stations did 15 years ago. The cell they owned - 35-44 - is now a secondary demo, as the format is firmly rooted 45-54. And each year, it gets one year older. The "newest" legitimately fitting songs in the format are now 25 years old, Led Zeppelin I is 44 years old and was the music of those who are now 60+ years old. Throwing in a category of polarizing Grunge & Metallica songs works for some stations with Rock roots and little competition, particularly in The South, but can be a disaster for others. I've always been interested in the Country airplay vintage v. audience age connection that appears to defy the typical music vintage to listener age if/then equation.  Is this a potential opportunity? A difficult-to-reach young cell appears to be coming along and could be welcomed into the fold, while a traditional core demo sees the ever-growing distraction of Sports/Talk & Talk & time-shifting tech that Arb can't yet measure - but they remain in attendance and need to be the object of a re-doubled engagement effort - assuming its not just a music issue (is it ever?)

Drew Edmundson:  I've always been more of a variety guy (mixing the classics in with the new) in pretty much any format. People 35-44 like new songs (I'm 44 and love Lady A, Zach BB, Aldean, etc). I think there needs to be a healthy dose of older songs so as to not alienate that demo.  I do nights on a country station as well as afternoons on an AC station and I see many crossovers. Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Jason Aldean, Kelly Clarkson, Lady A, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, etc.  I look at this as a good thing for the country format.

Leslie Humble As a DJ/Programmer of Country Music dating back even before my days at WSM and The Grand Ole Opry, I see several factors at play. A large section of the age group 50 - 65 hate the Pop country with the semi Country vocal over Rock/Pop instrumentation. The aforementioned 35-44 Cell is on the edge of being torn by the extreme fragmentation that is today's micro cell centric choices. Even 35-44 should be more incrementally targeted.  Two things: Going back to Jaye's original thought on capturing the 35-44 demo. Isn't it the same as it's always been? Lifestyle. Target your promotions, on air comments, remotes, to a 40 year old woman for that demo. Lifestyle. As far as the music....I must slightly disagree that Garth or 90's are as far as you can go. Even if it's testing that way. I do national voice over work mostly now and my shows are live ones. I see 20 year olds jumping up for Hank Jr., John Anderson, Mel McDaniel, Charlie Daniels and on and on. It reminds me of the story of how top 40 was discovered by Todd Storz by watching the same song played over and over on a jukebox. The music that demo and others will accept is also a self perpetuating thing. How many of us feel like we helped "break" or Make a hit record by playing it? Musically WE tell them what is a hit or good in many cases. The only distinction, to me, is that the PRODUCTION VALUES, must be of the level we expect today. 

Jaye Albright: Thanks, to all of you.  Personally, I don't think that it gets solved by playing 90's or earlier for a mainstream or a "new country" station, since the majority of 35-44 available to country radio today were not listening to country music when they were teens.  It's about balance, as more than one of you have noted. The great majority of today's A artists, almost all of which have emerged in the last five years aren't crossover acts.  Right now, country has 18 touring acts able to fill arenas, which is an unprecedented development in the history of the format.  We do have a handful of them you'd call "crossover" acts, but still the vast majority get played only on country radio.

PS:  If this piqued your interest and you want some specific advice on what to do next, click on the CRS 2013 session "Younger Country: Is 18-34 the New 25-54? and listen to very savvy panelists John Dimick/Lincoln Financial, Chris Huff/KSCS and Sean Ross/Edison Research share their perspectives on coalitions vs conflicts between tastes of the wide country  demographic targets.  It's an hour well spent, if you missed that session at CRS.

Country's Gen X Problem

Arbitron's full Radio Today 2013 annual update tracking all format quantitative and qualitative trends reflects both change and growth as my blogs of the last week have previewed.

It highlights something troubling that you're going to want to look at locally. 

Has recent under-30 growth hurt 35-44?

* All of the demographic proportions have remained relatively steady except for adults 18-24, which rose to its highest level in a decade, and adults 35-44, which declined to its lowest.

*  The country and new country formats are a strong performer in TSL, regardless of age group. Among the 16 top formats, it was tied for No. 1 among persons 12+, and was No. 1 by a full hour among persons 12-24. It ranked No. 2 by a wide margin among adults 18-34, was also No. 2 among adults 25-54, and third with adults 35-64.

Suggestion:  look very carefully at 25-29, 30-34, 35-39 and 40-44 in local perceptual and music test data.  Arbitron's data tracks actual PPM and perceived diary usage data, but isn't designed to be used to choose your most effective target, but 35-44 is going to be with us for too long as a marketing target for our clients to ignore any weakness there.

It's the only target cell in 2013's national averages where it appears that country radio is failing to get its fair share of the total population.

* Radio Today 2013 (get the full client exclusive report at "my.arbitron.com" (the Arbitron customer site where you download data). 

Meet You In 3-D In Five Years

Have you watched IBM’s “Next Five in Five” short list of innovations that have the potential to change many of the ways people conduct their lives, which is floating around the net (and I thought I'd keep it floating this morning in case you haven't as yet):



• You’ll meet with your friends in 3-D
• Batteries will breathe air to power our devices
• You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet
• Your commute will be personalized (be sure your traffic reporter watches this. It's not enough to tell where problems are any more. "Alternate options" is what listeners really need now.)
• Computers will help energize your city

Broadcast Dialogue's Howard Christensen sent it yesterday, adding: "Broadcasters’ best interests include keeping informed and taking advantage of new technologies, trends and keeping abreast of the human condition, e.g. the way people work, live and play."

Ya think?

Predictions That You Can Be Sure Are 100% Currect = Demographics

.. because the births which drive them have already happened.

The baby boom turns 64 this year.

On January 1, 1946, an 18 year period known as the post-war baby boom began. In 1946, 3.4 million children were born in the U.S. 78 million babies were born from 1946 to 1964: so, 10,000 people will turn 64 each day for the next ten years.

There are 68 million people who are 65+ today, 44 million are 33 to 44 and 72 million are under 32 (some would draw the cohort line a year or two younger than that today, calling them Millenials and positing that their defining years were the turn of the new century and 9/11).

Today's Gen Y and senior citizens are the biggest demo targets of 2010.

Common threads that reach both: fun, lifestyle and family. The smaller in number, but acquisitive age demos in between feel ignored and misunderstood.

Musical preference and attitude differences greatly outnumber similarities.

Fragmentation and niche marketing will continue to proliferate.

Finding common passions for Taylor Swift, Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts fans versus those who prefer Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn and George Strait is going to get to the point that it may become impossible soon.

How Well Do You Know Your Own Community?

Mark Hill, PD at Cat Country/Billings reminded me this week of this website which takes a "picture" of each market in the USA (click to check it out).

It covers population, education level, neighborhood information, median age info, employment diversification, crime, etc. It also helps you compare information between markets.

Research your town and see how much you know about the place where you live!

Averages

For years I have been saying that the average Arbitron diary keeper writes 2.6 radio stations in their book during the survey week and the average BBM ballot contains an average of 2.2 station mentions, which convinced me over time after many diary and ballot reviews that pretty much every diary respondent in both the U.S, and Canada wrote down, more or less, ‘two or three’ radio stations.

I'm betting that a lot of us have programmed our radio stations based on those numbers.

Somewhere deep down I have always known that if two people are in a room, one of them weighs 300 pounds and the other’s weight is 100, there is no one in the room even close to the ‘average’ of the two, but it has taken PPM data emerging over the last few years from Montreal, Philadelphia and Houston to prove how far my (not so) "educated" guess was from the truth, and how different each market can be when you start to see data as granular as PPM permits.

BBM reports that the Montreal electronic data shows - in a city with English speakers, French speakers and bilinguals and radio stations for each of those groups - that people actually, on average, tune into four or five radio stations.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. PPM markets out so far the average meter measures listening to six or seven stations.

In Canada, panelists are permitted to stay in the sample for up to five years, while in America, ARB removes them after two.

ARB VP PPM Sales John Snyder and Michelle Barker of Arbitron’s Research staff crunched some PPM data from Philadelphia in November 2008 (each dot is one meter in the sample) and found that two people actually listened to 25 different radio stations.

During the same month in New York, five panelists cumed between 26 and 30 stations (click on the graphic to enlarge it).

Conclusion: those averages I have been living with for my entire radio career were wrong; which becomes more obvious now that we can see real usage without the bias of top of mind recall.

I’ve always believed it, but now I know for sure: when we see PPM data from the rest of Canadian major markets and more American large markets later this year, we’re going to find that radio listening in Quebec is not the same as it is in Calgary, which is different from Toronto, which is different from Vancouver, which is different from San Francisco, which is different from Atlanta.

Yes, we've all been saying it for years: every market is different.

Now, we are getting the data which proves it.

Before You Open The Mic, Give This Some Thought...

"People aren't all that interested in what the talking heads have to say. Instead, they want to participate, control the content and communicate with each other."
-- Alan Levy, CEO, BlogTalkRadio, on Edison Research's "Future Of Webcasting" webinar

Boomers were the 'me' generation.
Gen X'ers are the 'us' generation.
Gen Y is the engagement ("you") generation.

What's your pronoun?

18-49 Attracts ABC Radio, R&R Chart Explains Why Perhaps You Should Retarget Too

The ABC Radio Press Release

"...To be successful, we must ensure our pipeline is full of new products geared toward serving our advertisers, including more offerings focused on the 18-49 demographic..."

(ABC Radio Networks Names Carl Anderson SVP Programming and Distribution) today reminded me of the above, from the front page of a July R&R. If you target 18-34 and 18-49, it's time to figure out what makes Gen Y tick!

High Demand for User-Generated Content, But Long Live Traditional Media!

To shed light on how different generations are “consuming” media — and what their future media preferences are likely to be — Deloitte & Touche USA LLP’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice commissioned an extensive survey on the evolving role of media in America. This State of the Media Democracy survey offers a generational reality check on the usage of current media platforms/devices and what the future may hold.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Millennials are leading the way, embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools — creating a “trickle up” effect where the older generations are learning from them. The survey found that despite their eagerness to embrace new media, Millennials have an affinity for “traditional” media, such as print publications and television. Almost 6 in 10 survey respondents (58 percent) say they use magazines to find out about what's "cool and hip," such as clothes, cars and music. Perhaps more important, almost three-quarters (71 percent) enjoy reading print magazines even though they know they could find most of the same information online.

When Millennials find something they like, they broadcast it, and the power of their amplification is extensive. The Millennials surveyed maintain large instant messaging (IM) and texting lists that average 37 people, compared with just 17 for the entire sample.And when they find a particular television show or Web site they enjoy, they tell an average of 18 people, compared with only 10 people for all age groups. According to the survey, word of mouth is the most common reason for Millennials to visit a Web site, followed by an ad on television. Almost half (48 percent) visit television Web sites in a typical week.

Generations Xers enjoyed the explosion of new entertainment in their youth and continue to embrace entertainment today. They are the most interested in general lifestyle/personal interest information, including celebrity and entertainment news. They are also most likely to be visiting television show Internet sites.

Baby Boomers are in their peak earning years and are entering their empty nesting life stage — retirement is still a few years away but certainly on their radar screens. Boomers are still very dependent on newspapers and spend the most time with local news and weather content. They do spend a lot of time on the Internet, but do not match the younger generations as far as embracing the new media platforms. Across many measures, Boomers seem to split the attitudinal and behavioral differences between Xers and the Matures.

The Matures spend the most time with national and world news content, as well as financial information. Not surprisingly, Matures are the most likely to embrace print media. However, there is a significant percentage of Matures embracing electronic media, as well as participating in electronic forms of communication and user-generated content. A significant minority of Matures also participate in:

• Gaming and user-generated content
• IM and texting
• Meeting new friends over the Internet

The Press release as a very cool pdf: The State of the Media Democracy (171 KB) Are You Ready for the Future of Media? - Survey Results. Press release: Deloitte survey offers reality check on millennial generation's media consumption

Four Numbers To Worry About

9. The total number of current songs tested this week by Critical Mass Media for Clear Channel country stations, as reported by Mediabase callout.

23%. CD sales' Soundscan January slump continues on total sales on the "all-format" chart dated 1/16/08, which are down almost -23%. Country CD sales are down -19.8% in the same report.

11%. - the percentage Tuesday's American Idol premiere was down from last year's, in spite of the fact that it was again Number One for the night.

1000. A per person diary value, never seen in the past but now showing up more and more in many larger markets in both male and female 18-24 and 25-34 demo cells, ethnic and non ethnic. Even more frightening, we are now seeing this incredible weighting figure in medium and smaller markets where sample sizes are so small that the key to reliable estimates is consistent sample proportionality. One national rep's researcher says that PPDV's over 1,000 are now "very common. 18-24 is actually not too bad in a lot of markets -- the problem has grown up and now invades 25-34 and even 35-44 ... a big money demo. And, it's not just Men anymore either ... there are horrendous PPDV's with Women too -- specifically W18-24 and W25-34 (not too bad with W35-44 yet .. that age cell problem is mostly with Men). Needless to say, there are markets with huge Black and Hispanic PPDVs as well..." (watch Mike O'Malley's blog for more on this scary trend Monday)

Lose Weight, Quit Smoking, New Job

Nielsen says that it's not just you with those 2008 resolutions: In January, consumers will spend more than $61 million on anti-smoking aids, and more than $47 million on diet aids. The Schaumberg, Ill.-based company says anti-smoking products generated 8.7% of annual dollar sales in January last year, while nutritional diet aids generated 9.9%.

And just in case you thought you were the only one ignoring the bathroom scale in December, last January's sales of diet products registered a 91% increase from the previous four-week period. But typically, resolutions are quickly forgotten. After a high of nearly $47 million in January, sales of nutritional diet aids dropped more than 14% to $40 million in February.

Typically, health and fitness resolutions are the most common: myGoals.com, a goal-setting Web site, predicts that 28% of all resolutions will fall in this "lose weight, quit smoking, get to the gym more" category, compared with 27% last year.

But thanks to economic worries, "we expect people to focus a lot of time and energy improving their careers and getting out of debt," the company says. It expects resolutions related to debt reduction to increase sharply as a percentage of all finance-related resolutions (to 52%, up from 26% last year). And it says resolutions related to saving money will rise, from 11% to 24% of all finance-related resolutions.

-- Sarah Mahoney

The 10 Most-Loved Spokescreatures

The M&M's Characters, created in 1954, lead the list, based on Q Score ratings from Manhasset, N.Y.-based Marketing Evaluations.

1. The M&M's Characters (1954)
2. (tie) Aflac Duck (2000)
2. (tie) Geico Gecko (1999)
4. Tony the Tiger (1952)
5. Poppin' Fresh/Pillsbury Doughboy (1965)
6. Energizer Bunny (1989)
7. (tie) Geico Cavemen (2004)
7. (tie) Trix Rabbit (1960)
9. Chester the Cheetah (1986)
10. Snap!, Crackle! and Pop!/Rice Krispies (1932)

Blu-Ray Players Are HOT, Rosie And The Donald Are NOT

Executive Briefing: Perhaps all the good little boys and girls didn’t get that big-ticket item for Christmas that they were hoping for…while purchase intentions for most high-dollar durables declined from December, they improved from January ’06 for autos, computers, furniture, home appliances, jewelry/watch, major home improvements, stereos, TVs, digital cameras, and vacation travel…housing down slightly, DVD/VCR flat.

Many may have to wait until the prices come down, but Blu-Ray players and DVDs are what’s hot this month…consumers are also eating up Verizon’s LG Chocolate Phone (particularly the under 35 set) and are eager to see Dreamgirls (especially those 35+), while women are getting a kick out of knee-high boots.

What’s Not? It’s the battle of the biggest loser, as Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump tank this month. Perhaps both will hear “you’re fired” very soon…