Summer-summer-summertime is right around the corner. How will the warm weather affect your station’s listening? In this week’s Programming To Win column, the Nielsen Audio Programming Team takes a close look at summer listening trends for the past few years and analyzes what factors could lead to a ratings spike in the upcoming months.
Bill Rose and Tony Hereau
By Nielsen Audio Programming Team
Bill Rose and Tony Hereau
Everywhere you look – and listen – the sights and sounds of summer abound. Memorial Day is fading in the rearview mirror, meaning white pants are now officially ‘in’, while barbeque grills everywhere are being dusted off and fired up. It’s no secret that we take summertime very seriously in America, and that the season has an impact on our lifestyles and, by extension, our media habits.
For radio listeners, summer represents an opportunity to match the moods and experiences of warm weather vacations, outdoor concerts and any number of summertime pursuits with the soundtrack of choice. Those kinds of influencing factors have played out in a variety of ways with formats such as Country, Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) and Hot AC seeing the largest increases in popularity during the summer months over the past three years.
Today we will examine not only the recent history of summertime listening for America’s major formats, but also dive into how summer measures up against the other seasons when it comes to radio listening trends. The burning question that inspired this column asks “is summertime radio listening significantly different than other times of the year?” You may be surprised to find out that, with a few notable exceptions, the answer is “no.”
Summertime Consistency
Last year, Nielsen put together a study looking at the top 20 portable people meter (PPM) markets by season (Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall) across all major dayparts and demographics. The purpose of the analysis was to put summer listening in context with the rest of the year and shed light on the differences in radio listening by season. Since summer tends to be the time of year when Americans change their daily routines compared with other times of year, we wanted to find out how much of an impact this has on radio listening as a whole. We know through years of audio measurement that working and radio listening are directly tied together; the more likely a consumer is to work (and do so outside of the home), the more likely they are to use radio.
The overall headline from this analysis was that on a broad level, radio listening in summertime is very similar to the rest of the year. The differences between summer and the other three seasons were in the single-digits percentage wise judging by the total Average Quarter-Hour (AQH) rating in the top 20 PPM markets.
Now, there are caveats to this when it comes to morning drive usage and younger listeners (more on both in just a minute), but the takeaway for programmers is that outside of holiday weeks where listening may dip lower than normal due to the working/listening connection – summertime radio usage as a whole is remarkably consistent across most major demographics. It should not be considered the least important of the four seasons for radio listening, because it’s very similar to the rest of the year.
The two exceptions to this are morning radio usage and younger listeners. Not surprisingly, with kids out of school, more liberal work policies and adjusted lifestyles in the summer, morning drive is the one daypart where radio usage dips across each of the demos we examined. And speaking of kids (6-11) and teens (12-17), listening increases dramatically, particularly in the middle of the day; also not a surprise since summertime offers young listeners an opportunity to tune in when they would normally be in the school. Consequently, the overall ratings for both of these demos nearly doubles in the mid-day daypart (M-F 10a-3p) compared to the rest of the year.
Which Formats Could Win the Summertime Sweepstakes?
Based on the monthly format trends in Nielsen’s PPM markets, the last three summertime “winners” have been Hot AC, Pop CHR and Country, respectively. In the chart below you’ll see a comparison of ten major formats during the ‘summer’ (defined for our purposes as the June, July and August monthly surveys) compared to the preceding months of the year (January through May).
We compared the AQH share (for all listeners 6+) of these formats during the full week daypart (Mon-Sun 6a-Mid) for the run-up to summer and then during those three summertime months themselves, and noted the percentage increase each format saw in the summer during each of the past three years. The chart highlights the formats that had the largest share increase when summer rolled around for the past three years.
Source: Nielsen PPM Markets 2011-2013
What’s clear is that it will be hard to predict exactly which formats will see the biggest spikes this year, because so many factors go into determining a summer hot streak…and things don’t necessarily remain consistent year-to-year. That’s what jumps off the page when analyzing the chart; one year’s summertime success may be followed by a relatively modest gain the next.
The summer of 2013 saw Country lead the way, which made a lot of news at the time. America’s number-one format has seen consistent summertime growth in each of the last three years. But not far behind last year were a handful of rock formats, some of which spiked during the summer for the first time in several years.
As the summer of 2014 heats up, it will be as hard to predict which formats will excel this season and set the mood for your summer as it will be to keep your charcoal burning at the optimum temperature. Happy grilling (and listening)!
Reach the Nielsen Programming Services Team at ProgrammingServicesTeam@nielsen.com and follow the latest insights on Nielsen Wire at www.nielsen.com/newswire
