Most of you know my feelings on PPM. Now Delilah offers hers....a very similar one to mine.
God save radio.
http://trib.al/oNqalZ8
God save radio.
http://trib.al/oNqalZ8
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Delilah and PPM
- Thread starter johntherogger
- Start date
You can crank a Voltair up to 11 and it's still not going to save her ratings.
Delilah started out talking to 40 year old women 20 years ago, on stations designed to play music for women who didn't like the top 40 of the day.
Those women are now 60.
Delilah can either learn how to talk to today's 40 year olds, or she can watch the rest of her audience age out of the demo, whether she's measured by meter or diary. She can blame her decline on PPM all she wants, but while the target of AC radio never changes, what appeals to that target does change.
Delilah started out talking to 40 year old women 20 years ago, on stations designed to play music for women who didn't like the top 40 of the day.
Those women are now 60.
Delilah can either learn how to talk to today's 40 year olds, or she can watch the rest of her audience age out of the demo, whether she's measured by meter or diary. She can blame her decline on PPM all she wants, but while the target of AC radio never changes, what appeals to that target does change.
And forget about the demo after that, because they don't own radios.
Sure they do. In their cars, for one place. The fact is (as mentioned in the article) the average age of the audience for these stations has remained constant, while the average age for this show has gone up. So the problem isn't the demo for radio, but the demo for this particular show. They've addressed part of the problem by making a workparts version of the show available in some markets.
It's not that people stop listening to radio at age 55. It's that it's very difficult to make any money selling a show that's heavy 55+.
This is why stations and shows must evolve and not stay stuck in the past. Your target never moves, but the people in your target do.
One place most people aren't in when Delilah is on.
Try this for a badly needed reality check:
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/numbers-whos-listening-radio/
This is from a media buying site, not a radio industry site. It presents information of value to the folks who pay for most American radio.
You will note that 18-34's spend an average of 11 hours a week using radio.
The article has some fundamental falsehoods that form the foundation for the conclusions.
PPM did not kill Delilah. It killed stations and shows that had low cume and high TSL. The average diarykeeper wrote down "Delilah (or her station) 8 PM------ 11 PM". In PPM, we found that those 3 and 4 hours listening spans were actually more like 8:27 to 10:35 with a whole bunch of interruptions to take a phone call, go somewhere else in the house, a walk with the dog, making a snack, etc. So the theoretical three hour span was actually as little as one hour. Reality bites.
And the stats on AC are pretty near bogus. Many of the remaining softer AC stations have morphed into mainstream AC stations in the last decade or so. And many mainstream AC stations have become Hot AC. It is all the same genre, with the differences mostly being in the current to gold ratios and the age of the gold. All of this has been done because music taste changes have occurred in the target demos for all forms of AC, demanding brighter and more rhythmic songs. The partisans of softer AC are mostly over 55 and generally undesirable.
So AC stations kept up with their appeal to some part of 26-54, while Delilah admits that she is what she is... which is a person talking to a mostly over-40 listener base in a lower real TSL PPM world.
Interesting:
According to this, Boomers use radio more than any other daypart...
...but their biggest daypart is middays, biggest format is country, and primarily consume radio at work.
When you look at the AQH chart overall, listening declines pretty rapidly after 7 PM.
Question:
Can you quantify that television usage ramps up around the same time of day that radio usage starts to drop off?
Historically, the 7PM drop has been a fact of life for at least 15 years. Maybe longer.
Certainly TV usage us a major factor, because they're going after the same demo. But also there has been a huge rise in casual activities after 7PM, from sports events, concerts, movies, and even going to the mall. All of these things drive down AQH, although radio usage happens to and from those activities. The 7PM daypart has ceased to be "prime time" for radio. Delilah is now competing against a lot of better produced and more contemporary shows at that time. In the midst of the changes, she's tried to stick with what she does. That will all lead to ratings loss.
Here is the data from Arbitron for San Francisco for 1973:
Average Persons Rating (Percent of persons using radio on average in daypart)
6-10 AM 21.4
10-3 18.4
3-7 PM 15.9
7-Mid 9.9
So evenings had less than half of the morning drive listening level 43 years ago.
As some others have mentioned, this has been a fact of life for a long time, especially for country, AC and talk. In fact, that's a lot of what led to syndicated night shows like Delilah and Lia (for country). They cost a lot less and didn't hurt the ratings (at least before PPM).
Truth also is that Delilah was never the goddess she seemed. She rode your ratings more than anything else. Much like Rush Limbaugh 10 or so years earlier, her strategy was to go to the top rated station in her format and try to get on there. It was an easy sell in most cases because of how much cheaper she was over live talent and how the ratings remained level. Plus, you got 9 minutes and a couple of live reads an hour with her show. A good case in point was a station I worked for about 15 years ago. We had a live request show at night while the competition had Delilah. Our night show clobbered her, but we fired the nighttime host and replaced her with Delilah a couple of months after chasing the competition out of the format.
The show was a much better performer in the diary, as it was a benchmark and people remembered listening.
Part of the problem is there are a lot of other syndicated competitors in her daypart, and they're higher energy and fresher sounding. The problem being heritage is you're vulnerable to attack from someone just a bit hungrier.
If PPM is such a problem, then do what Lia is doing, and focus on all the diary markets.
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