Katz Media: Spring 2002 National Format Averages.

The Katz Media Group concluded the report of Spring 2002 National Format Averages and Share Trends.

According to the study’s author Lisa Chiljean, “Radio continues to keep pace with America’s changing lifestyles and demographics while maintaining strong audience impact. The study strongly suggests that radio formats have evolved as the population has become more diverse. A greater number of ethnic formats are now the top formats in popular markets.”

The latest edition of Katz Media Group’s National Format Averages report for Spring 2002 shows that radio remains on target with its audience, meeting the challenge of new media competition. Perhaps most importantly, the study illustrates how ownership consolidation has contributed to radio’s ability to satisfy the listeners’ desire for new formats and programming approaches.

While the shifts in demographics of the U.S. population have certainly affected radio programming and formats, ownership consolidation has also played a major role. Contrary to the beliefs of some, the evidence suggests that common ownership has actually helped accelerate the pace of program development.

Station formats are designed to attract listenership and generate advertising revenue. Prior to duopoly, when owners could control only one station on each band in a specific market, stations had to be programmed to appeal to the widest possible audience. As a result, many competitors sounded alike as they battled for the biggest share. Common ownership and cluster selling has made it possible to target different audience with each station, or to point each station toward different segments of a broader audience or format. The Katz National Averages clearly show that new, more targeted formats have appeared since duopoly took effect.

Highlights of this spring’s report include:

· Ethnic formats – both Black and Hispanic – continue to grow and now account for three of the top ten most popular formats across the country. The number of stations in the Urban Contemporary, Urban A/C, Rhythmic CHR and Hispanic formats has exploded over the past five or six years. Shares for Urban A/C, Rhythmic CHR and Hispanic all show increases this spring. In fact, the audience share for Urban Adult Contemporary is at the highest level to date.
· Despite experiencing share erosion in recent years, Country remains the number one format in the U.S., garnering a 13.1 share this spring.
· “Niche” formats such as 80’s, Rhythmic A/C and Modern A/C have contributed to the attrition of stations bearing the pure Adult Contemporary (A/C) name – but the format continues to perform well.
· Adult Alternative Rock continues to grow. This spring marks the format’s highest shares to date.
· Audience shares of Classical stations have more than doubled since 1985, perhaps showing the influence of “mainstream” broadcasters who have taken over many Classical stations across the country over the past 10-15 years.
· Generational formats such as Classic Rock and Oldies have aged right along with their core listeners, but their popularity has not waned as seen in the share strength exhibited by both formats.

The Katz Media Group analyzed 3059 radio stations in 283 Arbitron markets to produce the figures for this study. We include figures for 34 format classifications – some separately for AM and FM stations. Each analysis includes:

· The raw number of stations across all markets, shown for each year.
· 12+ AQH composition by age cell, trended for past Spring Arbitron reports. Many formats include ten to fifteen years worth of data, allowing us to examine long-term changes in audience skew.
· Average weekly listening times, tracked for Men and Women of the target demo as well as specific age cells.
· The recycling of cume audience between Monday-Friday time periods, showing the extent to which specific formats circulate their listeners throughout the broadcast day.
· Graphs for age cell composition, weekly listening times, average market format share and median age trends.

Additional notes:

· Effective with Spring 2002, the “Churban” format has been re-named Rhythmic CHR. Historic numbers included in this report reflect the Churban format name.
· Beginning in Spring 2001, the Katz Media Group added a Gospel format classification. Many stations previously classified as Religious or Black were re-classified as Gospel. Any station attrition in these two formats is likely due to this new format.