Radio's Formats Of Summer: Adult Hits, Classic Rock, Country, And Classic Hits Grow The Most

 Story by Inside Radio

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COVID may be (mostly) in the rear-view mirror, but the nostalgia effect felt by Americans during the pandemic lingers on, judging by radio's biggest growth formats during this past 'masks-off' summer.

With a rise in social activities where music plays a large part, radios were more likely to be set on the hits of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Nielsen PPMs' persons 6+ shares for adult hits, classic rock and classic hits gained 7%, 6% and 5%, respectively, when comparing averages for the summer months (June-August) to the previous five surveys (January-May).

Nielsen's Formats of Summer report, exclusive to Inside Radio, does show one current-based format, country, in the same league as the above three, with 6+ share up 5%. Country and classic rock stand out among these summer growth formats, due to the unrivaled 0.4-share-point gain for each from Jan.-May to Jun.-Aug.

"While past summer listening patterns have sometimes favored hot AC or CHR, over the past few years classic rock, classic hits and now adult hits are getting more of the seasonal upswing,” Nielsen VP, Audience Insights Jon Miller says. "Country, meanwhile, is consistently a top performer in the summer and benefited from a hot music cycle this year as well."

Compare the above to the summer of '22, when classic rock's growth was +9%, with country at +5% and adult hits at +4%, while classic hits was up by just 1%. The biggest growth format of that summer? Alternative, with an 11% gain, vs. its 3% drop this summer. Third-ranked among summer 2022's gainers was urban contemporary, up 6% vs. flat this time around. Clearly, current music had a larger draw during the summer of 2022, although CHR's change during Jun.-Aug differed little over the past two summers, down 2% for the summer of '23, and -4% a year ago.

For the rest of the field of stations with average PPM shares of 2.0 or higher, urban AC, news, Spanish regional Mexican and the aforementioned urban contemporary were flat from Jan.-May to Jun.-Aug. 2023, while sports and Spanish contemporary fell the most, off by 10%. While news/talk was down 4%, it should be noted that its 6+ share steadily gained from June to July to August (9.5-9.7-9.9), perhaps due to the additional indictments of former President Donald Trump.

There were notable differences in key demographics, especially persons 18-34, where the summer gains were larger for adult hits (12%), country (8%), and classic hits (7%). Leading them all was Spanish regional Mexican, up 13% from the first five months of 2023, likely driven to some degree by the popularity of Peso Pluma, who landed several songs on Billboard's Hot 100, including the top-10-ranked “Ella Baila Sola,” which crossed to several CHR stations.

Adult hits' growth was also in the double digits this summer among persons 18-49 (12%) and 25-54 (13%). Although unable to break the 2-share barrier 6+ and with no key growth there, rhythmic CHR made gains in all three of these demos, up 6% 25-54, 5% 18-34, and 2% 18-49.

Radio Seen As Solution To ‘Broken’ Pay TV Ecosystem

Story by Inside Radio

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A high-stakes standoff between Disney and Charter Communications that could have prevented 15 million subscribers from watching last night’s highly anticipated NFL contest between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets (with their new quarterback Aaron Rodgers) was settled Monday afternoon. But resolving the latest carriage dispute hasn’t solved what some are calling the collapse of the pay TV model, where penetration has dropped to less than half of U.S homes. Radio is being positioned as a way for marketers to recover audiences lost to cord cutting.

The media analysts at Moffett Nathanson have coined the phrase “doom loops” to describe two distinct trends conspiring to cause a significant erosion in American pay TV. “Media firms with sports rights keep raising the affiliate fees for cable distributors who pass these costs onto consumers. This causes entertainment viewers to defect from pay TV to streaming,” explains Pierre Bouvard, Chief Insights Officer at Cumulus Media/Westwood One. “The erosion of the pay TV business model forces media companies to move their best shows to their streaming services rather than their linear networks. This in turn causes entertainment viewers to defect from traditional pay TV to streaming.”

As a result, some investors are calling for pay TV distributors to stop offering TV services, which would make them more profitable while freeing up a massive amount of bandwidth for broadband internet.

Before patching things up with Disney on Monday, Charter Communications appeared to be contemplating an exit from the pay TV business. “The video ecosystem is broken,” Christopher Winfrey, Charter’s President and CEO, told investors last week. “We’re either moving forward with a new collaborative video model, or we’re moving on.”

Bouvard says the pay TV “doom loops” mean advertisers will see “stunning erosion in cable audiences locally and nationally” during the next several years. “Auto dealers who have relied heavily on spot cable, as have the auto brands, will need another media platform to build their brand and drive sales effect,” he writes in this week’s Westwood One blog post.

During the roughly 11-day blackout on Charter’s Spectrum cable service, the reach of Disney networks, which include ESPN, ABC and Fox, declined by 13.6%, representing 22.3 million viewers, according to MRI-Simmons. Had the blackout not been resolved, ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” would have lost 2.2 million viewers, a 13% audience loss. The impact for local advertisers would have been more significant, ranging from a 57.5% reach loss in Honolulu and 44.9% in Raleigh-Durham to 5.2% in Atlanta.

Reallocating a portion of TV budgets to broadcast radio can generate “significant incremental reach, “according to Bouvard. Based on Nielsen Commspoint research, a $1 million national TV buy reaches 14% of persons 25-54. The same $1 million invested in AM/FM radio reaches almost three times as many people – 38% of 25-54s.

To buttress his case for advertisers to use radio to fill in the gaps in TV’s eroding reach, Bouvard looked at a $15.1 million network TV campaign done by IBM in September 2022 where the majority of the investment (58%) was run on ESPN/ABC. Allocating a modest 9% of the total plan to AM/FM radio would increase reach from 44.5% to 71.5%.

“Radio can come to the rescue,” Bouvard says in a 10-minute video companion to the blog post. “It can recover lost TV audiences due to the collapse of pay TV and generate significant incremental reach. And with a 10 to 20% reallocation, you can see reach you've never seen before in your media plan as we saw in the example of IBM.”

Court strikes down Alabama congressional map for diluting the power of Black voters

Court strikes down Alabama congressional map for diluting the power of Black voters© Provided by NBC News
Story by NBCNews.com * Written by Summer Concepcion and Jane C. Timm  

Federal judges on Tuesday struck down a new congressional map created by Alabama Republicans that includes only one majority-Black district, defying a Supreme Court order.

“We are disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy,” the judges wrote in a 217-page filing Tuesday. “And we are struck by the extraordinary circumstance we face.”

“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” they added.

Judges said a special master will be appointed to redraw a "remedial map to ensure that a plan can be implemented as part of an orderly process in advance of elections, where the State was given an opportunity to enact a compliant map but failed to do so."

State Republicans in June approved a new map that contained just one majority-Black seat and a second district that is approximately 40% Black. The new map came after the GOP-controlled Legislature called a special session to redraw an earlier map after the Supreme Court reaffirmed a federal court order to include two districts where Black voters make up voting-age majorities, “or something quite close to it.” The court found that the newly drawn congressional map likely violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act.

The bill passed the House in a 75-28 vote after the Senate voted 24 to 6 in favor of the revised map.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the redistricting map into law in July. Her office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment in response to the federal judges' ruling Tuesday.

“Following the U.S. Supreme Court order, I called the Alabama Legislature into a special session to readdress our congressional map,” Ivey said in a statement in July after signing the measure. “The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups, and I am pleased that they answered the call, remained focused and produced new districts ahead of the court deadline.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com