I listen to music more working from home, not less. No real difference in the source other than during what would have been my commute. Working from home to the extent it exists is not killing radio. š¤£
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WCBS #1 18-34
- Thread starter Theater of My Mind
- Start date
It depends on the format, but what we're seeing is that radio listening now is mostly at pre-pandemic levels.
Regardless of how it's done.
Right.
Thats why he says what he plays in the greatest music of the last 1,000 yrs.
If you go back further its not as good as the 4 i mentioned.
I canāt think of anything worse than having to work from home every day and never see different scenery than when I leave the house on my own free will. Thereās something to be said for having to get up and leave every day.
As for radio listening, I was still listening to my radio stations of choice when working from home or in the office.
As for radio listening, I was still listening to my radio stations of choice when working from home or in the office.
I saw the exact same āsceneryā (and that is a most charitable term) commuting. Same damn stretch of jammed roadways. Same bland office buildings indistinguishable from one another. Same boring, sterile offices.
Thereās something to be said for thatā¦none of it good, none of it repeatable here for fear of being censored.
Thereās something much more positive to be said for a commute that takes 30 seconds. And has the music of my choice in any given moment and mood, without requiring headphones.
I vote for the theory that a lot of WCBS-FM listening by the 18-34 demo is incidental listening. It's a station that many in the office can agree on. As someone stated above, WROR Boston, also Classic Hits, is #2 in 18-34. And KTWV Los Angeles is also in the top 5 in 18-34. The Wave may have the oldest playlist of any large market station. KTWV sometimes plays Aretha Franklin, The Temptations and The Spinners.
But the reason Classic Rock stations do well in younger demos is different. When we listened to Album Rock stations in the 70s, 80s and 90s, they always played a lot of library material. On the other hand, Top 40, Country, Urban and Hispanic stations played almost all current songs and maybe went back, up to five years, once or twice per hour. You really weren't exposed to oldies in most formats.
Album Rock was different. You might only hear one current or recent song in each set. The rest was from the library. You were exposed to music recorded years earlier, maybe before you were born. It was standard fare on Album Rock stations. This is why today's Classic Rock stations, at least at this point, don't see the need to retire their older titles and artists.
But the reason Classic Rock stations do well in younger demos is different. When we listened to Album Rock stations in the 70s, 80s and 90s, they always played a lot of library material. On the other hand, Top 40, Country, Urban and Hispanic stations played almost all current songs and maybe went back, up to five years, once or twice per hour. You really weren't exposed to oldies in most formats.
Album Rock was different. You might only hear one current or recent song in each set. The rest was from the library. You were exposed to music recorded years earlier, maybe before you were born. It was standard fare on Album Rock stations. This is why today's Classic Rock stations, at least at this point, don't see the need to retire their older titles and artists.
You've posted this before and it wasn't true then. Album Oriented Rock, as consulted by Burkhart Abrams, would never play music before its target was born. Doing something like that is what got Jonathan Schwartz fired from WNEW-FM.
Read this:
BigA negated this opinion with his post from Record World.
I get the feeling you are referring to the progressive rockers of the late, late 60's and early 70's which were decimated by the Lee Abrams Superstars format with just a few exceptions. Guys with Zig-Zag packets in their pocket picking songs that "sound cool" did not last against tight playlists of hit rock songs mostly by name bands.
The remnants of that sort of radio lived on in a couple of markets at stations like KBCO in Denver and a new name of AAA or "Triple A". Most of the commercial AAAs died off by the 90's with just a few markets like Chicago, Portland, Seattle keeping such stations much longer. And they were exceptions, not rules.
I saw on RadioInsight yesterday the commercial AAA station in Indianapolis just earned a 5.8, setting a record high for the station. It now ranks sixth in the market in the published 6+ numbers.
Spanish language stations historically have played lots of gold.
WSKQ in New York plays back 40 years with over 50 songs in rotation that are from before 1990 and it is 51% gold. WAMR in Miami has nearly 40 songs from the 80's. KLVE goes to 1981. Regional KLAX goes back to 80's with a lot of songs and even has a dozen from the 70's and is 54% gold. Regional / Talk KLTN in Houston goes back 32 years in its library and is 40% gold.
In Puerto Rico Top 40 KQ-105 goes back 22 years. Salsoul has 20 songs from before 1980.
In Urban, a leading station like The Box in Houston is 40% gold and plays back to the 90's with a few songs and loads of 2000-2005 songs.
Country goes back two decades easily even with the most modern approaches.
CHR KIIS goes back to 1995 although 80% of spins are from the last 2 years. That is what Top 40 has always done.
Every so often, that station gets a very good book, but then settles back to being around 13th or 14th in the market and maybe 15th in 25-54. We see those wobbles due to the problems Nielsen has had with the PPM markets.
There are only two AAA stations billing just over $10 million Denver and Chicago. The next, at under $5 million is in the Boston Market. Then comes the Hudson Valley and Indianapolis at around $2.5 million. There are nearly 830 stations in the US that billed over $2.5 million last year and only 5 are AAA. In most markets where there is a commercial AAA station the audience is mostly 55 and over.
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Thatās fair enough. I worked for a while in a job where I had to drive 50 miles to the office and work from 9pm to 7am every day. It was awful. When I was allowed to work from home I couldnāt tell if it was better or worse. While it was nice to not ruin my car with the ridiculous amount of miles I was putting on it, I literally fell asleep on my desk every time I tried to work.
KINK bills less than $2.5million now!?! Or does MK register their format as something else now?
Yes. It is reported at less than $2 million and in 25-54 it averages between 15th and 18th.
Whoa! I remember less than a decade ago, you shared that they were a top five biller in Portland. Crazy how quickly things can change!
18-34 is such a wide demographic as to be almost meaningless. I'm right at the upper end of the demographic (š) and work at a university full of 18-20 year olds in my day job. My music and audio tastes are almost completely different from theirs - I have zero interest in the vast majority of music in the Top 40, or the latest viral hits from TikTok (which I've never used in my life). Given a free choice of radio station, I'll tend to listen to 80s/90s/00s hits. An 18-year-old probably isn't listening to the radio at all.
So the vast majority of radio listening among 18-34 year olds is likely to be very heavily skewed towards the top end - say, 28-34. What we're seeing, in my view, isn't vast numbers of teens suddenly deciding they love WCBS, but lots of teens not listening to the radio at all and the 18-34 figure actually being mostly made up of 30-somethings. Within that age band are two, possibly three, almost completely separate social and cultural "generations".
So the vast majority of radio listening among 18-34 year olds is likely to be very heavily skewed towards the top end - say, 28-34. What we're seeing, in my view, isn't vast numbers of teens suddenly deciding they love WCBS, but lots of teens not listening to the radio at all and the 18-34 figure actually being mostly made up of 30-somethings. Within that age band are two, possibly three, almost completely separate social and cultural "generations".
You're viewing a Nielsen demographic as an indication of behavior, and that's not what it's meant to measure. It's strictly a sales and marketing target. There are other ways to measure behavior, and usually you'll get that from Edison Research.
On the other end of the scale, you have stations such as WINS getting good 6+ numbers, while the majority of listeners are over 55.
Reading your post makes me wonder where is your college? Is it near a major urban area or an isolated rural area? Because its location will determine how 18-20s listen to music.
WDAS-FM is one of the leading station in A18-49 in Philly. And their playlist spands decades. They play a lot of classic urban music
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However, when they play older songs (70s-80s), it's usually only once or twice, and usually either in mid-days or evenings.
For the most part, they're a black AC, playing currents 40-45 spins a week.
i think there is truth in what Gregg said about Album Rock always playing lots of older music during the peak of that format.
I was in high school in the early 1980s which was a low period for CHR. Some markets didnāt even have real top 40 stations at the time and many others were very KVIL AC like. AOR, though targeted older, won non ethnic teens in many markets by default in those years.
Rock 103 in Memphis, a Superstars station, was exactly like Gregg described. They would play one current per set, a recurrent and a classic rock song. So most of my friends became very familiar with the late 1960s/early 1970s classic rock catalog even though we graduated high school in the mid 1980s. They were not at all familiar with the pop side of the 1960s.
The CHRs did not play the pop side of that era, nor did the Urban stations go back that far. Even the country stations of the 1980s didnāt play library over a couple of years old.
I was in high school in the early 1980s which was a low period for CHR. Some markets didnāt even have real top 40 stations at the time and many others were very KVIL AC like. AOR, though targeted older, won non ethnic teens in many markets by default in those years.
Rock 103 in Memphis, a Superstars station, was exactly like Gregg described. They would play one current per set, a recurrent and a classic rock song. So most of my friends became very familiar with the late 1960s/early 1970s classic rock catalog even though we graduated high school in the mid 1980s. They were not at all familiar with the pop side of the 1960s.
The CHRs did not play the pop side of that era, nor did the Urban stations go back that far. Even the country stations of the 1980s didnāt play library over a couple of years old.
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