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RELENTLESS RADIO |
| Author: | Jerry Williams |
| Published: | August, 2000 |
| Since kindergarten or earlier we've been taught that sharing is good. The ability to share our toys, our time, the credit for a team effort have all been seen as admirable. But there is one area in which sharing can be hazardous, that's the sharing of your listeners with other stations. Arbitron recently released a study on shared listening. The study was done in two parts: 1)Where Do My P1s Go 2)Where Do My P2s Come From Arbitron compiled information from the top 25 markets, measuring the Metro Persons 12+, Monday through Sunday, Midnight to Midnight. The results from the study can be extremely helpful, if somewhat alarming, especially for those of us in Contemporary Christian radio. It's been a longstanding belief that the more niched your format (to some degree) the smaller your Cume, but the higher your TSL and Exclusivity. This study casts some serious doubt on that premise when it comes to Contemporary Christian radio. Contemporary Christian P1s, those people who spend the majority of their listening with a given station, have an average TSL (Time Spent Listening) of 12 hours and 45 minutes per week (12:45). While that may sound like a healthy amount of time, it ranks near the bottom for the formats studied. Southern Gospel P1s had a TSL of 18:45. Ethnic P1s had a TSL of 16:15, and Urban AC P1s had a whopping 20:15 TSL. Now those formats may be considered somewhat niche. But mainstream formats also did significantly better in the TSL area. News Talk Information P1s had a TSL of 16:15, Country P1s did 17:00, and AC P1s listened 17:15 per week. Contemporary Christian P1s 12:45 seems rather small in comparison. The format fared much better with the percentage of listening our P1s provide. Of the time Contemporary Christian P1s listen to radio, 77.2% of that is spent with their Contemporary Christian station. Only Gospel P1s, with 77.4%, and Country P1s, at 78%, spend a greater percentage of their listening time with their P1 stations. So where are our listeners going when they tune away from us? According to the study, Contemporary Christian stations share 15.4% of their P1s with Religious stations, 15.1% with News Talk Information stations, and 12.4% with CHR stations. (The full chart for Contemporary Christian P1 sharing is below.) It's interesting to note that while 15.4% of Contemporary Christian P1s listen to Religious (talk and preaching programming) stations, only 6% of Religious P1s listen to Contemporary Christian stations. That would indicate that while music listeners occasionally want to hear a program like Focus on the Family, talk listeners are less likely to want to hear music. With the large percentage of Contemporary Christian stations that air some talk programming, it might be safe to say that the only time Religious P1s are tuning in is during those programs. Check it for yourself. Look at your hour by hour, or quarter hour by quarter hour listening. See if you don't have a sharp decline in listening immediately after a block of talk. My argument is that your P1s are leaving during the talk blocks (maybe that 12.4% who listen to CHR) while the Religious P1s are tuning in then. After the talk block the Religious P1s go back to their Religious stations, but your P1s aren't returning to you, at least not right away. One other disappointing note, while there are eight other formats that Contemporary Christian radio shares at least 5% of their P1s with, only two other formats share any measurable amount of their P1s with us. 6% of Religious P1s listen to Contemporary Christian, and 13.7% of Southern Gospel P1s listen to Contemporary Christian. No mainstream formats had any measurable sharing of their P1s with Contemporary Christian radio in this study. So what are our P1s looking for when they tune to another format? According to the study the top two formats Contemporary Christian shares with are talked based, Religious and News Talk Information. Does that mean that you should add a program block or beef up your information package? Not necessarily. You wouldn't program 5% classical music simply because 5% of your P1s are also listening to Classical stations. We can turn that question around when it comes to our P2 listeners. Those are the listeners who spend a significant amount of their listening time with us, but we're not their favorite station. According to this study Contemporary Christian radio is sharing at least 20% of their P2 listening with six formats, News Talk Information (you don't think those guys would consider adding Steven Curtis Chapman based on this study, do you?), CHR, AC, Religious, Oldies, and Country. The full chart is below. Each market is going to be different. A study like this will give some broad trends, but before you make any major programming alterations, check what stations you're sharing with. That information is available (if you subscribe to Arbitron) in the Programmer's Package, Report L. If you're sharing 50% or more of your listeners (that's all listeners, not just P1s) with any one station, you are at war. If you share 30% to 40% with a station you really need to be studying them, plotting their clocks and library, showing up at their events. If you share over 20% of your listeners with any station, you need to be aware of them and what they're doing. Under 20% sharing is actually not a big deal. The biggest challenge this study presents for Contemporary Christian radio is to stop being so good at sharing! We must become more astute at attracting listeners from other formats (and other media). The high percentage of our quarter hours that come from P1s shows that if people listen to us they like us, a lot. We must discover new ways to gain sampling and convert those samplers to P1s. And we need to do it now.
The full report is available on the Arbitron website. |
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