The baby boomers don't buy only Metimucil (actually that's one product I've never bought). I just bought a brand new automoble last year, a new stereo system last week, plus my wife enjoys buying clothes, we filled our 200 disk CD changer that plugs into our new stereo system in a year and a half,(so we regularly buy CD's). We travel, eat out at restarants on a regular basis. When any of our appliances die we'll be replacing those, just as younger families do. We fix up or make repairs to our house by buying stuff from Home Depot just as the younger families do. We buy groceries each week, buy gasoline, get our cars serviced, get hair cuts, my wife goes to the beauty shop, we bought a new radio/cd player for the kitchen a few weeks ago, etc. I guess my point is, that sure the boomers may not buy as much as the younger demos, but we buy and when we go to the store, that store owner has never said, I only want customers between the ages of 12 and 49. It seems that some of the stations in any market that are not doing as well as they might, could go for a niche demo like the boomers and rake in large audience share and a decent spot load, if the station sells it correctly. Philly has a boat load of stations and they all seem to be fighting over the same basic age demo, other than maybe WOGL. I find it hard to comprehend that some of those other lesser stations couldn't actually do better by targeting such a large audience and selling it. If JC Penny could be convinced that they could sweep the boomer market in a given town by buying spots on a couple of stations that appealed to the boomer audience, then I could envision a sales campaign on those specific stations that targeted boomers, etc, and a happy JC Penny store manager, etc.
I realize, from what many of you say this isn't a good business practice, but it seems to me that radio's longer term future is in trouble as they aren't pulling in the younger folks who see radio as passe' today. Yet, radio could carve a hugh niche for itself by targeting a part of its industry to serving the "older demos" of 45+. Because as the gen x, y, z'ers age they too will pass the magic age and then they'll not be targeted by ipods, online, satellite radio,etc and then terrestial radio would become more of an option for them and radio would be set up ready for them as they'd had already been serving the boomer group who'd then be in the geezer phase and not buying as much and really needing that bottle of Metimucil. I'm not a business person, but it seems crazy to throw away a large loyal group that would keep you in business for another 10-20 years, but I do see the point you are making, even though I don't quite understand it.
I'll have to go on line and try to catch those CC oldies stations you refer to below. Thanks !
> Oldies might do better on FM but Wilmington has a severe
> shortage of FM stations, half a dozen FM's in the market and
> half of those are rim-shots. 1290 might be a good option.
> Whoever programs Clear Channel's Real Oldies stations does
> an excellent job (IMHO). One example (if you can pick it
> up) is WKAP-AM 1470 from the Lehigh Valley.
> Other Clear Channel Real Oldies stations (streaming online)
> are WNNJ-AM 1360 in North Jersey.
>
http://www.oldies1360.com/main.html
> And WRLL Chicago:
>
http://www.realoldies1690.com/main.html
>
> Personally I'd love to see Clear Channel put their Real
> Oldies format on 1290. They might do better; they couldn't
> do worse.
>
> Many people on these boards seem to believe that marketing
> managers' and ad agencies' disinterest in targeting 50+
> consumers stems from their prejudices against older
> consumers. Radio is most effective for reminder
> advertising: Keeping consumer package good brands top of
> mind. Reminding potential shoppers about retail stores and
> any special sales. Consumer package goods are most heavily
> bought by younger adults - people building households and
> people with kids. Empty nesters need less stuff and they
> buy less stuff. And at some point people start to think
> about the future and they save or invest rather than buy
> more stuff. There are products for which the core target
> market is 50+ people. Some of these products or brands
> don't have budgets that allow them effectively to use radio.
> Others do advertise on cable, on the network evening news
> programs and on PBS; but for some reason, products like
> Metamucil don't buy much radio. To the extent they do buy
> radio, they seem to buy talk rather than music. Again the
> issue may be more limited marketing budgets for such
> products.
>
> An issue for station owners is advertisers will pay more to
> reach coveted target demos. So even if stations with a
> boomer audience sell spots, they end up selling them for
> less. The fact that boomers and geezers are heavily
> listeners actually works against them here. Because people
> in the coveted demos listen less, advertisers will pay a
> premium to reach them (law of supply and demand).
>
> It is ironic that music which first received exposure on the
> radio because advertisers wanted to reach young adults and
> teens 30, 40 or 50 years ago now is shoved aside because
> advertisers still want to reach young adults and teens. This
> is nothing new. It's just starting adversely to affect
> boomers, so they are just now starting to notice.
>
> These economic factors also apply to talk radio. It's
> audience skews older than the audience for Real Oldies (but
> not as Old as Adult Standards). Hence experiments in moving
> talk to FM and moving the content away from straight
> politics (like FreeFM and NJ 101.5). Radio now programs the
> music Gen X'ers grew up with and seeks to program talk radio
> with what they want to talk about.
> As Standards goes, so goes Oldies; As Oldies goes, so goes
> Political Talk.
>
