Interesting discussion about LA's ethnic makeup and resulting radio format preferences. Last fall, I moved from LA to the Seattle area. Big difference. Other than Boston, Seattle may be the largest city where non-hispanic whites are still the vast majority of the metro's population. Seattle is diverse but its largest minority is probably from the Orient. There are also a lot of Asian Indians. However, neither Asians nor Indians "count" when it comes to Nielsen ratings. I wonder why not? Hispanics and African Americans, which do "count", are relatively small percentages of this metro. Consequently, no Urban nor Spanish language stations make a dent in this market's ratings. There are a couple of Rhythmic stations though.
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Holy cow, KROQ...
- Thread starter MarkW
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Getting an accurate sample of Asians requires a recruiting and support staff that may need to speak a dozen languages or more... Tagalog, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and on and on. And since different linguistic groups... or linguistic heritage groups... may have different listening habits, you'd have a myriad of new stratification variables to measure the Asian subset.
Beyond those difficulties, there has been no call for Differential Survey Techniques for Asians in general. No major broadcasters are directly targeting those many groups, and agencies don't make "Asian" buys.
I think we can say people in los angeles as far as rock radio goes would much rather here five finger death punch then the 1975.
Yes to led zepplin no to the interruptors. Yes to klos and no to alt 98.7 and defenitely no to kroq
At least according to the latest ratings.
Yes to led zepplin no to the interruptors. Yes to klos and no to alt 98.7 and defenitely no to kroq
At least according to the latest ratings.
So, there is a lot of fragmentation within the "Asian" community, due to so many different Asian languages, vs. the Hispanic and African American communities, where they all speak just Spanish and English, respectively. OK, makes sense. Thanks, David.
Remember, the pressure on Nielsen to break out Black and Hispanic audiences came from broadcasters focusing on those listeners. They wanted sales tools. There is no such pressure from the very small number of Asian language broadcasters.
Given K-CAL's struggles in the Inland Empire, I don't know if what you're saying is actually true.
KLOS predominantly plays Classic Rock. Its (minor) success is reflective of an appetite for Classic Rock, not Active Rock.
Certainly would be interesting to see how well - or not - a KIOZ-type station would perform in the Los Angeles market at large.
I'm thinking in the Bay Area this will change. Asians are the majority, I believe, in the city of San Francisco and are a huge presence in Silicon Valley in general. Smart broadcasters will eventually figure this out and want to monetize this information. Also, you can narrow down the Asian audience to larger (and deep pocketed groups)...1st and 2nd gen. from India, Taiwan and mainland China. The young demos in these groups are heavily into dance-oriented pop.
Your assumptions aren't totally on-target:
San Francisco (city): 48.1% white, 33.3% Asian, 15.1% Hispanic, 6.1% African-American.
San Jose (city): 42.8% white, 33.2% Hispanic, 32.0% Asian, 3.2% African-American.
Bay Area (region): 52.5% white, 23.3% Asian, 10.1% Hispanic, 6.7% African-American.
There are two Asian-majority communities in the Bay Area, though: Daly City is 58.4% Asian (second only to Honolulu among American cities), and Fremont is 54.5%.
Beyond that, Sunnyvale is 43.7% Asian, Santa Clara 40.8%. After that come San Francisco and San Jose.
I think your data is for the OMB/Census MSA.
Nielsen's Metro Survey Area, which is different, is 22.9% Hispanic and 6.6% Black. That is on Persons 12+.
Nielsen does not enumerate Asians, and does not weight for them. But the underlying ACS data for last year shows the radio survey area to be 29.9% Asian based on no age limitation.
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Considering that the 18-49 audience in LA is now over 50% Hispanic, and there is a large under-50 Asian community and even a 7% African American one... plus another 15% in that demo who were born elsewhere (Russia, Persia, Armenia, Arab nations) there just is not a core for active rock.
Few advertisers look at single cities in the metro. They look at the whole market area, from Campbell to Santa Roda.
Since there are no breakouts for Asians, and no client has demanded them, it is unlikely that the data will become a part of the Nielsen system. So stations will not likely program dance oriented pop unless it crosses over.
After nearly 20 years of Hispanic language preference measurement, Nielsen is still unable to accurately measure the percentages of English and Spanish dominant Hispanics as evidenced by the enormous wobble in the annual language preference adjustments for markets with Hispanic DST. They have attempted to achieve proportionality on various national origin groups within the Hispanic community, but the results are deficient even though there is only on common language, Spanish, among all Spanish dominants.
Measuring Asians would require recruiting, instructions and supervision in perhaps a dozen languages. Hindi, Punjabi, Hindustani, Mandarin, Japanese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Cantonese, Thai would be the minimum number of Asian languages that would have to have quotas based on language as well as national origin. Only a couple of markets nationally would warrant this, and nobody wants to pay the enormous extra cost.
Thanks, David. I was using Census data. We're still a long way from majority Asian populations in San Francisco, even using Neilsen's numbers. And as you rightly point out, "Asian" is not neatly packaged into one or two languages.
Michael - your figures are from the 2010 census. In the 8+ years since, which saw major gentrification in San Francisco, I'd guess that the percentage of both the white and Asian-American numbers are up, while Hispanics and African-Americans are down. If you walk the streets of the Mission District, the change is clear. Same with other parts of the Bay Area like San Jose, i expect.
Also, when you say Daly City is Asian - note that it is predominantly Filipino.
But I doubt that either middle aged or young Asian Americans are particularly interested in Asian-centric media. They are totally American, for the most part, unless they are first-generation. The changes in the Asian-American community in the past 40 years I've lived there are apparent. For example, in the late 70's - you would almost never see an Asian-Americans driving a Japanese car - I assume because Asian Americans in that era, primarily of Chinese ancestry in San Francisco, were born or brought up during World War II, and still resented the Japanese for their war atrocities. But for the last couple of decades, a major status symbol for affluent young Asian-American men is modified sub-compact cars, almost exclusively Japanese brands.
Strictly anecdotal, but I've worked with two first-generation (born in US, parents born overseas) Asian-Americans in recent years, both in their 20s. The Vietnamese-American guy was into hard rock, the Indian-American woman was into rhythmic American pop -- she would do a hilarious impression of a typical Indian female pop singer occasionally; she absolutely hated that stuff!
Llew: The 2010 Census was the only reliable data I had available. The point was only that the city of San Francisco is not, as the original poster believed, majority Asian or anywhere close.
I wasn't criticizing, Michael - just commenting on the changes I have seen this decade, due to gentrification, and the absurd cost of living in SF, and the Bay Area in general. You are correct that SF is nowhere near majority Asian, but my point is that even if we were majority Asian, there would be no market for Asian-centric radio.
Depending on where you are in San Francisco, you can be forgiven for thinking the City is majority Asian. The Sunset District - once an Irish-American neighborhood, is now predominantly Asian-American. Same with the Richmond District. Those two districts, roughly separated by Golden Gate Park - occupy the entire western portion of the city. Ingleside Terrace, east of the Sunset, formerly predominantly African-American, I have been told; is now predominantly Asian-American.
I attended San Francisco State University in the 90's, and I can guarantee you that the student body was majority Asian-American. But that's more a comment, I think, on the relative value different ethnic groups place on education, plus the financial ability to attend college.
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Well there both doin better then the failed kabc which is anywhere fron .03 to .06 monthly. So kroq and alt 98.7 are huge successes compared to that. Kabc didnt even break the top 40 radio stations. I still like kroq better musically. I like how they have teamed up stryker and klein for afternoons. And i enjoy there friday free for all at 5 PM.
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