Thursday

Album rock
picks up the beat

Sinking format grabs on to alternative's stars

By Kevin Downey

   Not so long ago, album-oriented rock radio seemed immune to the sort of change that is morphing all other radio formats, in no part because of its reliance on old songs.
   Now even album-oriented rock--AOR--is being swept up in the change.
   Once the go-to stations for music by '70s bands like Jethro Tull and Mott the Hoople, AOR stations today are increasingly defined by new bands whose members probably weren't even born in the '70s.
   They include groups like Foo Fighters and Audioslave, and to add to the confusion, these bands are more often played on alternative rock stations.
   In a recent week, the two formats shared 11 songs in their top 20 playlists, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers' “Can’t Stop.”
   That’s the finding of Interep, which conducted an analysis of Mediamark Research and other data.
   What’s behind album-oriented rock's morphing into a variation on the alternative format? To be precise, declining ratings.
   While the overall rock category is still the fifth-most-popular radio format, its share of listening was relatively flat in the fall, with a 2 percent decline from a year earlier, to an 8.7 share.
   At the same time, however, the subcategory AOR had a 14 percent dip in its share, to a 2.4, while alternative was flat at a 5 share.
   In the past five years, AOR’s share has dropped more than 50 percent, from a 5.4 in the fall of 1998.
   “That may be a reflection of formats flipping over,” says Michele Skettino, vice president of marketing communications at Interep.
   “Rock generally follows the patterns of what people are listening to. When alternative first came out there was a clear difference between the bands that called themselves alternative, but that has changed as it got bigger.”
   As a point of comparison, the number of AOR stations fell to 186 in fall 2002 from 192 a year earlier, while alternative added 10 stations and is up to 137, according to a separate study by Katz Media Group.
   The number of AOR stations peaked in the fall of 1997 at 230 and has been declining since.
Still, while the two formats are starting to blur, there is still a relatively clear distinction between the AOR and alternative audiences.
   Alternative skews younger, with more than 63 percent of listeners falling into the adult 18-34 demographic. About 57 percent of AOR listeners are in the same age group.
   Moreover, AOR has a broader appeal.
   Roughly 27 percent of listeners fall equally into the 18-24, 25-34, and 35-44 age groups. In contrast, only about 23 percent of alternative listeners are adults 35-44.
   While AOR is changing, Skettino says the format still has great appeal to certain advertisers.
   Nearly two-thirds of AOR listeners, for example, are men and they are about 24 percent more likely than the average person to live in a household with an income in excess of $100,000.
   There is also something to be said for the devotion of AOR fans, defined loosely as those people preferring guitar bands from past decades.
   Skettino points out, for example, that 70 percent of the top music tours of 2002 were AOR-type bands. The top draws, in fact, were Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones, while other rock acts like Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith and the Elton John/Billy Joel concerts were among the 10 most successful tours of the year.

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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