As much as people complain about radio in this market, plenty of it justifiable, I'm fascinated how "empty" these stations are during periods where people are actually listening!
Well, #1, people complain I think in part DUE to how empty Tulsa (and almost any national market's) stations are.
#2, While live radio means the MOST to me in the evenings, overnights and weekends, radio stations don't particularly care about much more than not driving the audience away during these times... for several reasons:
First, the believe is that people are paying more attention during daylight hours, and at night radio is more likely to be background noise. I don't find that to be accurate, but perhaps research indicates otherwise.
Second, with Arbitron focusing on the 6am - midnight numbers, overnights were an easy target.
3rd, research DOES indicate listener peaks at about 7:15 weekday mornings and trails off from that point all day and night to a bottoming-out around 3 or 4 AM. Meaning, with every hour past 7:15 AM, it makes less and less financial sense to have a warm body in the chair.
Weekends may be weaker than weeknights... haven't seen recent data.
MOST importantly to stations & their shareholders is that the majority of the money-demo (adults aged 25-44) are at home in front of the TV. In other words, they DON'T have the radio on. While your whole audience drops some at night, your money demo is nowhere to be found.
(I have to wonder if DVRs & Netflix are changing this "fact," or if people are just moving to watching on-demand during "prime time.")
At work and in the car, your entertainment options are pretty limited, and a 3 minute song works perfectly if you're in and out of your vehicle or dealing with a day of distractions.
At home, there are DVDs and X-Box 360s and the internet and Kindles and 300+ TV channels and on and on and on... radio has a hard time winning against all of the other entertainment options available.
...Sadly, instead of fighting to get and keep their audience against all of these other options, it seems radio took the easy way out, threw up their hands, and gave their audiences over to other choices.
I'd say the exception continues to be the 12-24 yr old targeted stations, in particular K-Hits & The Edge but also The Beat, who all work pretty hard to build night shows to attract those at home texting friends or out and about.
