Regional Differences In Media Usage.

Interep Research released a report on regional differences in media usage patterns, including data on radio, television, cable, magazine, newspaper and on-line media. The marketing regions analyzed include the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, North Central, South Central and Pacific zones. In addition, radio format shares by market are listed for the top 25 Arbitron metros.

Report Highlights:

While heavy usage of a particular medium varies by individual, certain geographic regions show heavy patterns for certain media.

– Radio shows fairly even usage in all regions

– Television shows heavier usage indices in the East Central and Southeast regions, and below normal usage in the New England states

– Heavy magazine and newspaper readership shows the highest indices in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions
– Internet usage peaks in the New England, Mid Atlantic and Pacific regions.

Clear regional differences in magazine genre preferences are evident. For instance, Epicurean, Travel, Beauty/Fashion are index well above average in the New England, Mid-Atlantic and Pacific regions. Boating/Yachting books are popular in the Southeast, and Automotive magazines do best in the East Central states.

Cable Networks also show regional variances. Is it the cold New England winters that make residents 35% more likely to tune in to the Weather Channel? Does the Sopranos New Jersey locale boost the Mid-Atlantic’s HBO’s viewing up 41% above the norm. And what makes Lifetime 23% more attractive to Southeast dwellers?

According to Mediamark Research, the top five reaching television programs across all regions collectively include Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, 60 Minutes, Frasier, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, ER, and The Simpsons. Only Friends and everybody Loves Raymond makes the cut across all regions. Frasier makes 6 of the 7 regions while both Law & Order and 60 Minutes makes 5 of the 7 regions.

For total cume radio listening, CHR, Adult Contemporary and Country stations swap places for first, second and third place in five out of the seven regions analyzed. In New England, News/Talk and Alternative join AC in Top 3. In the Mid Atlantic, All News replaces Country.

A ranking of the top indexing radio formats by region shows much more variation. In this case, index is a measure of the percentage of listeners in each region who listen to a format each week, compared to the percentage of listeners in the total U.S. who listen to that same format.

News/Talk has the highest index of all formats in the New England and West Central regions; All News is the highest in the Mid Atlantic region; Country is tops in the East Central states, All Talk in the Pacific, Urban in the Southeast and Hispanic in the Southwest.

Formats that appear most often among the Top 3 formats based on share within the Top 25 metros include News/Talk, Urban, Spanish, Country, AC and CHR in alternating order – although specific markets do show variation.

For more information at http://www.interep.com