'Radio people are some of the most entrepreneurial people in the world. On the show WKRP in Cincinnati, there was this classic episode about the marketing manager going to drop turkeys out of a helicopter. I’ve met 20 people in radio over the years that would do something like that.'

 

 
In radio, it's still
Country by a mile

Except in the South, oddly, where urban is gaining

By Gabriel Spitzer

    Country music is still the most-programmed radio format in the nation. No surprise there.
    But who’s listening is another story.
    In the South, where most would expect Country stations to dominate, another format has been quietly and quickly multiplying, and now it has more listeners there than even mighty Country.
    "I asked people around here what’s the most listened-to format in the South, and everybody said Country," says Mark Fratrik, vice president of BIA Financial Network. "I said, no. It’s Urban."
     In fact, Urban radio claims 15.4 percent of the audience share in the South, while Country nets 14.7 percent, according to "State of the Radio Industry: What is Going On With Radio Formats," a recent report from BIA, authored by Fratrik. The report is the fourth in BIA’s quarterly reports on the state of the industry, reflecting data gathered through 2001.
     Country music still has the most stations nationwide. With 2,183 stations and comprising 20.1 percent of the total, Country dwarfs its nearest competitor, Adult Contemporary, which claims just 11.7 percent of stations nationwide.
     However, Country’s quantitative dominance is not reflected in its audience share. At 10.8 percent, Country is just the third most-listened-to format nationwide, after Adult Contemporary and Contemporary Hits Radio.
     According to the BIA’s report, a good way to assess the health of a format is its "power ratio," or a format’s revenue share divided by its audience share (meaning that a number greater than one indicates that a format is able to extract a bigger share of local ad revenues than its share of local audience).
    Country’s power ratio is 1.1, making it one of the more efficient revenue generators in radio. The lowest power ratio measured by BIA belongs to Nostalgia/Big Band, which garnered just a 0.39. Sports has the highest; with a 1.9 percent audience share and a 2.9 percent share of revenue, the Sports format’s power ratio stands at 1.56.
    "It’s pretty straightforward, insofar as you get a thing like Sports that has an incredible power ratio. It’s getting a large portion of the males 18-34, which is a highly desired demographic group," says Fratrik.
    Spanish, the top format in the western U.S., and Urban, tops in the South, both have power ratios below 1, at 0.81 and 0.80, respectively.
    "I point out that the Spanish and Urban formats have increased in recent years. Why that’s significant is that they’ve increased while there’s been a big increase in the number of them," Fratrik says.
    "You’d expect new entrants there to bring down the average. But even with that influx of new Spanish and Urban stations, you still see the power ratios increasing. That means more established stations probably have been successful in bringing up their revenue shares."
     Rock-and-roll has enjoyed mixed fortunes over the last several years. Stations playing strictly "Rock" have shown a somewhat surprising resurgence, going from 383 stations in 1998 to 515 in 2001. Rock stations now comprise 4.7 percent of the total.
    Album Oriented Rock/Classic Rock, on the other hand, has lost some ground. From 1998 to 2001, AOR/Classic Rock went from 597 stations to 558, and its power ratio declined from 1.2 to 1.14. The changes are small, but they could be significant.
     "With the advent of Sports radio and the reinvigoration of Talk radio, that may have moved some of the older audience that would have gone to Classic Rock to those formats," Fratrik says.
    Overall, Fratrik says he has not seen evidence that radio’s ownership consolidation binge of the 1990s has contracted the number of different formats. In fact, the result may be just the opposite.
     "What was found even soon after telecommunications deregulation is that there has been more diversity of formats. If one group has more stations in the market, it might experiment more. Broadcasters are in a day-to-day battle, no matter how much level of concentration there is," Fratrik says.
    "There’s always a tremendous incentive to try and tweak the product a little bit. Radio people are some of the most entrepreneurial people in the world. On the show ‘WKRP in Cincinnati,’ there was this classic episode about the marketing manager going to drop turkeys out of a helicopter. I’ve met 20 people in radio over the years that would do something like that."


Number/Percentage of Stations
by Format in 1998, 2001

Format

1998

2001

#

%

#

%
Country 2,384 22.4 2,183 20.1
Adult Contemporary 1,296 12.3 1,270 11.7
News/Sports 1,147 10.8 1,218 11.2
Religion 1,147 10.7 1,180 10.9
Oldies 865 8.1 883 8.1
Spanish 430 4.0 597 5.5
AOR/Classic Rock 597 5.6 558 5.1
Rock 383 3.6 515 4.7
CHR/Top 40 359 3.4 472 4.3
Nostalgia/Big Band 401 3.8 469 4.3
Urban 345 3.2 374 3.4
Talk 299 2.5 328 3.0
Easy Listening/Beautiful Music 824 3.0 299 2.7
Miscellaneous 163 1.5 198 1.8
Middle of the Road 125 1.5 112 1.0
Jazz/New Age 86 0.8 86 0.8
Ethnic 63 0.6 75 0.7
Classical 53 0.5 58 0.5
Source: BIAfn’s MEDIA Access Pro

 

Power Ratios by Format

Format

2001 Share (%)

Power Ratio

Audience

Revenue

2001

1998

1995
Adult Contemporary 11.5 13.5 1.17 1.24 1.24
Contemporary Hits Radio 11.0 10.4 0.94 0.91 0.94
Country 10.9 11.9 1.10 1.12 1.05
Urban 9.4 7.6 0.80 0.78 0.71
News* 8.9 10.0 1.12 1.19 1.17
Rock† 8.1 8.4 1.04 0.96 1.22
AOR/Classic Rock 7.8 8.9 1.14 1.20 1.08
Spanish 7.6 6.2 0.81 0.67 0.80
Oldies 6.2 6.4 1.03 1.07 0.96
Easy Listening/Beautiful Music 3.6 3.9 1.09 0.96 0.90
Talk 2.9 2.8 0.95 1.04 1.29
Nostalgia/Big Band 2.7 1.1 0.39 0.40 0.36
Religion 2.5 2.0 0.82 0.62  
Jazz/New Age 2.2 2.1 0.96 0.92  
Sports 1.9 2.9 1.56    
Classical 1.2 0.7 0.58    
Middle of the Road 0.9 0.7 0.78    
Source: BIAfn’s MEDIA Access Pro; some historical data not available
* For 1995 and 1998 the News category included Sports stations.
† For 1995 the Rock category also included Classic Rock, which has subsequently been grouped with Album Oriented Rock (AOR).

 

Top Formats by Region
 Weighted Audience Share (%)

East

Midwest

South

Southwest

West
AC 13.7 AC 12.9 Urban 15.4 Cntry 15.6 Span 12.7
CHR
Top 40		 12.3 Cntry 12.5 Cntry 14.7 Urban 13.1 AC 12.1
News 10.5 News 11.3 CHR
Top 40		 11.4 CHR
Top 40		 11.6 CHR
Top 40		 11.1
Rock 10.0 CHR/
Top 40		 9.8 AC 10.4 Span 10.6 Cntry 9.1
Urban 8.7 AOR
Classic Rock		 9.8 News 7.3 AOR
Classic Rock		 7.9 AOR
Classic Rock		 8.6
Source: BIAfn’s MEDIA Access Pro

 

January 15, 2002 © 2002 Media Life

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.


Printer-Friendly Version |  Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us