National Advertisers and 55+ radio audiences

[boombox4]

But a funny thing happens... formats age demographically exactly one year with every calendar year that passes. In other words, this is a slow process. Stations can either adjust playlists or change format as time goes by.

This is not something that happens rapidly; that sort of situation in radio is rare, such as the "instant death" of disco in 1980 where suddenly there were no real new hits in the genre and stations dropped the music very rapidly.

Understood. It makes sense. That said, if the stations / format directors were into adjusting the playlists year by year to keep at least most of those formats in younger demos, why are the median ages still as old as they are? It looks like something else is at play here.

I agree, however, that the calls of FM and AM radio's soon demise are overstated. There are 4K AM's and I think 11K FM's total in the US, they aren't going to be disappearing for a while.

 

[michael hagerty]

Ok! I'm turning 62 a week from tomorrow. What that means in terms of "typical music" is that I went to high school between 1977 and 1981 so under what I've read, the music that most people remember the best is the music that they were listening to during their teenage years.

Ted, roughly speaking. It's not so much about recall now as it is awareness at the time the songs were popular.

The original concept of peak musical awareness was that most (not all) people were most aware of then-current music between the ages of 16 and 22.

Clearly, awareness begins earlier and tapers off with age (for most people).

I found, when programming in the 1970s, that the audience's second-highest level of awareness was of songs that hit after age 22 but before 30 (the freshness of those songs helped---my target was 37), and the third-highest level came in the six years prior to the peak---age 9 to 15.

Also worth remembering that while Casey Kasem played 40 songs every weekend and KHJ had 30 songs on its playlist, the typical person couldn't name more than maybe 10 or 15 of them at any one time.

And---awareness cuts both ways. People who had miserable teen years may hate that music because of the association. This is why research matters.

 

[michael hagerty]

I agree, however, that the calls of FM and AM radio's soon demise are overstated. There are 4K AM's and I think 11K FM's total in the US, they aren't going to be disappearing for a while.

That assumes a linear decline.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

That's from Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. AM's been in trouble for 40-plus years. That's the gradual part.

FM's got more runway than AM, but it now has issues as well.

 

[kevtronics]

Clearly, awareness begins earlier and tapers off with age (for most people).

The Los Lobos version of "La Bamba" was my favorite song when I was a kid. My older sister even made fun of me because of it. I also taped U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" every time it came on the radio.

I was 7 at the time.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Exactly. Nobody's saying 55+ can't listen.

And I've said this before, too. What they really want is someone to finance the operation of a station they like. NONE of them are saying "I want to hear more advertising trying to sell ME things."

We have never been able to get the average listener to understand that the ads are the trade-off for the lack of a subscription fee. Personally, I think the rise of cable networks in the 1980s started that mindset, because you paid an upcharge for the tier with CNN, ESPN, CBN, MTV, Nashville, Lifetime, Nickelodeon, ARTS, etc., but then all of those channels also had commercials.

That made subscribers think "why do I have to pay extra for more channels with advertising on them?" And them add in the "everything on the Internet should be free" attitude in the '90s and '00s, and ... well, how do you get them to understand that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch?

And the listener who tries to tell me I should program their way because "I'm your customer" are always horrified by the end of the resulting conversation to learn that they are the product the radio station is actually selling ... to the advertisers.

 

[davideduardo]

Let's see. That means that someone who is 55 years old now graduated from high school 7 years after I did, or in 1988. The music that person is most likely to remember the best is music that came out between 1984 and 1988 while he/she was in high school.

But the radio stations that person who is 55 years old now were playing back then also included "oldies" or "throwbacks" or whatever from ten to fifteen years prior. So the 18-year-old high school grad was hearing music that was about as old as they were.

So today's 45 year old, a high school grad 25 years ago, should be familiar with a lot of the 80's songs that were hits when they were toddlers.

The only case where I saw a total break with the past was with post-WW II kids who very much abandoned the big bands, crooners and the like when rock 'n' roll came on the scene. Those top 40 stations in the later 50's played very little gold and thus all the pre-1955 material was generally not exposed to them except for an occasional "Mack the Knife" type of song that got on the Top 40 stations... where their sales research did not show that the 12-24's hated those cuts.

 

[radiofan2023]

So today's 45 year old, a high school grad 25 years ago, should be familiar with a lot of the 80's songs that were hits when they were toddlers.

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I heard enough of the Cars, Kajagoogoo, etc. as a kid and don't want to listen to them again. I'd rather listen to current stations.

 

[michael hagerty]

But the radio stations that person who is 55 years old now were playing back then also included "oldies" or "throwbacks" or whatever from ten to fifteen years prior. So the 18-year-old high school grad was hearing music that was about as old as they were.

Nope. Because today's 55 year old (born 1970) was in high school from 1984-88...a period where CHR was playing very little gold.

The 10-15-year Gold library was very much a thing of the 60s. By the early 70s, the outer limits were more like 7 years.

My first awareness that Elvis must have died was when I got back into my car after going into a store and heard KFRC, San Francisco playing a then 15-year-old Elvis tune. There was no other explanation I could think of, and sure enough, when the record ended, John Mack Flanagan made it official.

 

[davideduardo]

Also worth remembering that while Casey Kasem played 40 songs every weekend and KHJ had 30 songs on its playlist, the typical person couldn't name more than maybe 10 or 15 of them at any one time.

And this is where the top FM CHR / Top 40 in the later 70's, beneficiaries of actual call-out research, realized that there were less than 20 real hits at any time.

And, as you say, the typical person only had perhaps a dozen "favorites" among the new songs "at any one time".

Heavy rotations and longer time spent listening to radio burnt the hits out fast. So stations would have as many as 5 or 6 "new" songs in rotation. This was when, to fill out the hour, we played gold and invented the term "recurrent" so we could play the songs in decline but at a much lesser rotation.

 

[davideduardo]

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I heard enough of the Cars, Kajagoogoo, etc. as a kid and don't want to listen to them again. I'd rather listen to current stations.

Remember, "current stations" play lots of recurrent and gold cuts.

And those stations research each song, one by one, and find the ones that people in their audience enjoy hearing occasionally.

Of course, there are some listeners that can't be totally satisfied with any mix in a "curated" radio format and they will always prefer a personal playlist... whether on a cassette in the 70's or an MP3 later on or a streamed source today.

"Outliers" have always existed. A key task for a programmer is to avoid trying to please the un-pleasable.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I heard enough of the Cars, Kajagoogoo, etc. as a kid and don't want to listen to them again. I'd rather listen to current stations.

And yet there are enough people who haven't "heard enough" and are the reason 80's-centric Classic Hits stations are still viable.

Personally, I find current-based stations annoyingly unlistenable. But no one forces me to listen to them any more than you are forced to listen to gold-based ones.

And I would rather lose a listener to the CHR stations than have to deal with a listener who wants me to play their personal favorite song that peaked at #67 in 1979.

 

[semoochie]

But----you need people over 65 to tell you what "Logan's Run" was and explain the plot.

Seventy if you want an explanation of Jenny Agutter's appeal at the time.

I think that anyone who has seen "Logans Run" understands Jenny Agutter's appeal!

 

[TheBigA]

Personally, I find current-based stations annoyingly unlistenable.

In a way, the AAA format is a currents-based format that appeals to over 55s. Same with Americana. There are a lot of seniors who are still interested in new music. What they don't want is new music that sings mainly about issues that affect people in their 20s and 30s. A lot of AAA music is more mature.

 

[ted chittenden]

But the radio stations that person who is 55 years old now were playing back then also included "oldies" or "throwbacks" or whatever from ten to fifteen years prior. So the 18-year-old high school grad was hearing music that was about as old as they were.

So today's 45 year old, a high school grad 25 years ago, should be familiar with a lot of the 80's songs that were hits when they were toddlers.

The only case where I saw a total break with the past was with post-WW II kids who very much abandoned the big bands, crooners and the like when rock 'n' roll came on the scene. Those top 40 stations in the later 50's played very little gold and thus all the pre-1955 material was generally not exposed to them except for an occasional "Mack the Knife" type of song that got on the Top 40 stations... where their sales research did not show that the 12-24's hated those cuts.

Reading your response, the question that comes immediately to my mind is how good was the methodology and how trustworthy were the numbers coming from the methodology used for that sales research. I mean, back in the 1950s, we didn't have today's sophisticated research techniques nor as much knowledge of statistics so it seems, to me at least, that any numbers from that era could be considered suspect by today's standards.

 

[DOGDOG]

So then ..alot of interesting numbers here and alot of guys admitting their ages How many of you actually feel your numerical age or are you mentally above or below and going one step further, for the average person, how does the age they feel affect their choice of music. We aren't the average person or the average listener!

 

[davideduardo]

And the listener who tries to tell me I should program their way because "I'm your customer" are always horrified by the end of the resulting conversation to learn that they are the product the radio station is actually selling ... to the advertisers.

Listeners are the Soylent Green of the radio industry.

 

[michael hagerty]

So then ..alot of interesting numbers here and alot of guys admitting their ages How many of you actually feel your numerical age or are you mentally above or below and going one step further, for the average person, how does the age they feel affect their choice of music. We aren't the average person or the average listener!

I'm 69 and, thanks to good health and no injuries, I really don't feel that much different from how I did at 29. I've certainly had more experiences, so I make different decisions than I might have 40 years ago in similar situations.

Beyond that, I think a lot of people age voluntarily. The warning sign is the first time they write off art, music, fashion or thought as "crap" and start defaulting to what they already know or "how it's always been".

There are people I know who are 80 that aren't that way. I know 30-somethings who are.

 

[davideduardo]

Reading your response, the question that comes immediately to my mind is how good was the methodology and how trustworthy were the numbers coming from the methodology used for that sales research. I mean, back in the 1950s, we didn't have today's sophisticated research techniques nor as much knowledge of statistics so it seems, to me at least, that any numbers from that era could be considered suspect by today's standards.

That 50's, 60's and earlier 70's music "research" was done directly by stations themselves. It was not done by trained researchers at professional research companies.

Each station had its own "system". I ran several Top 40 station in that era and here is what we did:

First, we had an "intern" (go-fer) call a variety of record stores and ask what songs were moving. This was informal, and we often found record store employees who had been rewarded by record promotors to report songs. So we rotated the stores and tried to use independent stores and not big store record departments.

Second, where available, we got jukebox play data. That was better than the sales data, as the jukebox operators tabulated plays to make sure they loaded the boxes with money-making songs.

But in both cases, we did not get data on age and gender of the record users or buyers.

We also tabulated requests, although we did not play requests. This was helpful in detecting "breaking" new songs.

Every week, we met and looked at the data we had and then talked about our own feel about the songs. Often we had our "in demo" receptionist and sales secretary participate to get reactions, too.

After all of that, we considered things like how many songs of each subcategory, like slower ballads or rhythmic dance ones, we had on the list and in what rotations. We tried to keep the tone of the station consistent.

Like today, this is part research and part a programmer's feel for songs and for the station and for "fit" between them. The numbers are not "suspect" as the only reason to do any kind of audience-reaction based music research is to find out what to play to attract and keep listeners.

 

[K.M. Richards]

In a way, the AAA format is a currents-based format that appeals to over 55s. Same with Americana. There are a lot of seniors who are still interested in new music. What they don't want is new music that sings mainly about issues that affect people in their 20s and 30s. A lot of AAA music is more mature.

I have very little experience with the format, and the AAA stations I have heard were very gold-based and close to what AOR sounded like in the 1970s and 1980s.

I could use examples of currents to form a more complete opinion.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Like today, this is part research and part a programmer's feel for songs and for the station and for "fit" between them. The numbers are not "suspect" as the only reason to do any kind of audience-reaction based music research is to find out what to play to attract and keep listeners.

Which is why, once again, I continue to believe that there is an "instinct" factor to good programming. It's easier today with better access to research and playlists of stations in other markets that have similar formats. but the PD still has to make the judgement calls.