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Radio TSL Falling, Satellite TSL Plunging!

S

SirRoxalot

Radio & Records reports on a multiyear study from Bridge Ratings that shows declines in TSL for terrestrial radio. Surprisingly, TSL is also declining for satellite radio.

"For the first time, we are seeing satellite radio consumers who have been subscribers for longer than six months actually spending less time than they were six months ago with their satellite service of choice," notes Bridge Ratings President Dave Van Dyke.

In fact, weekly satellite TSL dropped about 20% - much more than weekly radio TSL.

Gee, is the poor, overcompressed audio taking its toll? Or is the generic content just not that appealing?

Internet radio listening was also down, while MP3 player listening was up.
 
> Internet radio listening was also down, while MP3 player
> listening was up.

<a href=http://www.nab.org/xert/corpcomm/newsletters/radiorave/radiorave7-4-05.asp
Bridge Study: iPod Users Return to Radio Within 3 Months
</a>

<blockquote>"There's a new toyness with iPod. And the younger the user is, the more severe an impact there is on radio," Dave Van Dyke, president of Bridge, told Radio Rave. "But after some time - 60, 90, 120, maybe as much as 180 days, they began drifting back to their habits with traditional radio. What we found is that people in the whole group are building a whole new relationship with radio. They are listening to radio for slightly different reasons. - listening for new music, even if it's oldies or 'Jack' type stations."</blockquote>
 
Reprinting the quote from Bridge, since the way the OP posted it left it unquotable for replies:

"There's a new toyness with iPod. And the younger the user is, the more severe an impact there is on radio," Dave Van Dyke, president of Bridge, told Radio Rave. "But after some time - 60, 90, 120, maybe as much as 180 days, they began drifting back to their habits with traditional radio. What we found is that people in the whole group are building a whole new relationship with radio. They are listening to radio for slightly different reasons. - listening for new music, even if it's oldies or 'Jack' type stations."

Three comments:

Radio doesn't program to listeners under 18 anyway, so it would have been more useful if Bridge had clarified what they meant by "the younger the user is". Obviously, if a high percentage of those iPod users are teens, there is not going to be any real level of concern by the radio industry. Ditto a significant lack of concern about iPod users in the 18-34 demo, since the study would indicate they will likely be back within six months.

I would suspect that the reason for iPod users "drifting back" to radio listening habits would be the one that has been discussed on the various R-I boards previously. It becomes tedious to constantly update an iPod, either by ripping tracks or downloading, and there comes a point where the user decides he or she doesn't have time to spare for that process. After that point, once the user becomes tired of their playlist, back they go to radio. The Bridge report statement about returning to radio for new music or oldies bears that out, if you think about it, and Jack-type stations are an iPod-like experience anyway.

I would think, from reading the report, that aside from the various flavors of CHR, music radio will likely become more oldies-oriented. We already see this in Classic Rock, AC, and the like (and Variety Hits stations are very gold-based), and we'll likely see more "flavors" of oldies formats, just as we saw more variations on AC in the 90s.<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
He didn't do anything to refute the results, just said "I don't believe it".<P ID="signature">______________
"Your right to know supersedes your right to exist"..Gary Burbank</P>
 
Re: BS study from Bridge

> Radio & Records reports on a multiyear study from Bridge
> Ratings that shows declines in TSL for terrestrial radio.
> Surprisingly, TSL is also declining for satellite radio.

From Radio Marketing Nexus... a blog by Mark Ramsey.

"There's another study out by Bridge Ratings and another news release has been issued, dutifully reported at length in the radio trades.

I, however, am going to ignore it.

Here's why, from the Bridge Ratings website:

Markets measured: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Nashville, Boston, West Palm Beach

Now I don't know about you, but I'd rather not make global conclusions about trends in radio listening from six markets, let alone these six, highly unrepresentative, markets.

While Bridge Ratings did not hide the fact that its sample frame was so limited, you'd never know it by reading the radio news.

Expect more from your news sources, folks."
 
> He didn't do anything to refute the results, just said "I
> don't believe it".

Mark Ramsey is one of the best interpreters and producers of research. He says that a small, six market sample is BS. And it is.
 
Thanks David, for posting a blog that was already linked to further down in this thread

Subject title says it all...<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by randrewsIII on 04/08/06 09:51 PM.</FONT></P>
 
Re: You are welcome.

> Subject title says it all...

Thanks for the "ready, fire, aim" response.

Like many firewalls, I am on one that prevents many links out of "unknown" sources. I generally do not click through, even when out of office, to links. It is easy enough, and legal, to post an extract of the content rather than making people click through to unknown and potentially dangerous pages.

Further, I did not recognize the URL of the blog itself as I am on Mark's e-mail list and had never visited the site itself.
 
Margin for Error

> Mark Ramsey is one of the best interpreters and producers of
> research. He says that a small, six market sample is BS. And
> it is.

Let's take a look at the markets sampled:

Markets measured: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Nashville, Boston, West Palm Beach

So, we have major markets in the West, Southwest, Midwest, Bible Belt, South, and East.

Depending on the sample size in each market, that's not a bad cross-section of the country IMO. At the very least, it should be valid regarding listening trends, even if the margin for error is relatively high. Even if the satellite TSL number only drops 15% instead of 20%, it's still an interesting number.
 
Re: Margin OF Error

> > Mark Ramsey is one of the best interpreters and producers
> of
> > research. He says that a small, six market sample is BS.
> And
> > it is.
>
> Let's take a look at the markets sampled:
>
> Markets measured: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Nashville,
> Boston, West Palm Beach
>
> So, we have major markets in the West, Southwest, Midwest,
> Bible Belt, South, and East.

As Mark ramesey said, the markets are not particularly typical. Two of them have, respectively, 2 and 3 times the Hispanic population of the nation as a whole, and none of the others creates a big enoug sample in total to reflect the total USA.

Bridge uses an ATU (Awareness, Trial, Usage) model for its "ratings" and the sample sizes are, typically, less than 1/20th of an Arbitron sample. When you are testing something as limited as satellite (less than a 0.4 share of national listening) a sample that size is going to miss most satellite users.

Aboout the only valid sample of satellite users would be one drawn at a random number interval from subscriber lists of satellite subscribers. Using a total universe sample to find satellite users who are so few will not produce a valid sample of that subset under any circumstance.

So, the entire project is suspect and probably of more curiosity value than anything else. As I said, if Mark Ramsey said he would not even bother looking at it, I would tend to concur 100%.
>
> Depending on the sample size in each market, that's not a
> bad cross-section of the country IMO. At the very least, it
> should be valid regarding listening trends, even if the
> margin for error is relatively high.

It is not a good sample of satellite listening. There is no way the stated methodology could produce that.

It also ignores the fact that satellite listening, today, is still about 90% or more in car, where only 30% of total listening takes place and where most people do NOT have their iPods connected. This makes the study a true apples to oranges irrelvancy.

> Even if the satellite
> TSL number only drops 15% instead of 20%, it's still an
> interesting number.

Given the methodology, the sample, and the other things stated, the number could be 95% and it would still be irrelvant. bad research does not ahve a margin of error. It is just wrong.
 
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