Demographics are important in the radio industry in two ways. First, advertisers use demographics to describe their customers and to buy audiences for commercials. This practice is the basic revenue transaction supporting commercial radio. Second, radio stations are programmed to produce audiences with the demographics their advertisers seek.

     Core consumers of any product or service account for the day-to-day, year-to-year success of a consumer company. The core consumer spends more or purchases more units in the product/service category in question and is particularly important to the survival of companies providing such goods/services. For instance, Campbell's Soup identifies its bedrock offering as its condensed soups sold in red-and-white cans. The core consumer of this product purchases a case or more of these soups every month. The demographics of Campbell's core consumers are important to the company, and its advertising must reach them as well as additional consumers who use their condensed soup less often or seasonally.

     These additional consumers are an example of special advertising opportunities for radio. For many years Campbell's has observed that more soup is purchased during the cold seasons and in areas most affected by cold weather. They also know that the typical seasonal purchaser of their soups is a mother with children at home who feels that adding soup to a child's diet in cold weather will improve resistance to colds. As a consequence, Campbell's regularly purchases additional advertising time on radio stations in geographical areas most affected by cold weather and on stations high in the demographic group comprised of women aged 30 and over, which presumably includes mothers with children at home.

Origins

     In the 1930s, the early years of radio audience reports, the principal demographic of interest to advertisers was the number of households in the audience of particular programs. It was assumed that each household would own one radio receiver and that every member of the household would hear the programs broadcast through the household receiver. The result was that information about the programs tuned in by the household set was the prime information sought by researchers, and advertisers based their strategies on appealing to the product-purchasing decision makers in the household.

     Demographics were so unimportant during radio's Golden Age that the Nielsen Radio Index (NRI) became the principal national radio ratings service in 1950 (right at the end of the period) without having the capability of reporting demographics. The NRI used audimeters attached to respondent receivers at home (and eventually in cars). These devices could only report which programs were accessed by which radios; they could not determine who was listening or whether anyone at all was listening.

     The rise of television in the late 1940s marked the rise of demographic information's importance in selling radio time. By 1975-the year before its demise-The Pulse included these demographic categories in its reports: (1) Gender: male, female, total; ( 2) Age: teens, 18-24, 25-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65 and over, total; and (3) Ethnicity: Black, Hispanic, other, total. In the same year, Arbitron Radio reports included these graphics: (1) Gender: male, female, adults (male and female) and (2) Age: teens, 18-24, 25-34, 35-49, 50-64, 65+. Special weighting and interviewing procedures were in place for African-American and Latino listeners.

     In the mid-198os Tapscan had become an important selling tool for radio. Tapscan of Birmingham, Alabama, was a provider of radio sales software. The service was available only to full-service clients (stations that purchased all of the regularly scheduled Arbitron surveys of the market in question) of a radio rating service. One of the displays produced by Tapscan analysis was a ranking report that showed which stations in a market had the highest numbers of listeners in each of the demographic categories included in the rating report. If an advertiser wished to sell jeans in a given market, in-house research would reveal that the core jeans consumer was a person in the 18-24 age group, that males were more brand loyal, and that females made more purchases and were more sensitive to price. A Tapscan analysis of the stations in each market would reveal which stations could provide the most young male and female listeners and thus should be included in the campaign buy for a jeans campaign.

     The greater availability of radio listener demographics and increased use of sales analysis software made possible an important media buying strategy-Optimum Effective Scheduling (OES) or "optimizers." The idea behind OES is that advertisers are best advised to purchase a combination of advertising opportunities from whatever stations in the market are necessary to deliver every listener in the demographic category sought by the advertiser. The software's calculations during data analysis take into account two factors called recycling and sharing.

     Recycling refers to the tendency of some proportion of an audience to listen during more than one daypart or to more than one program on a given station or network. For example, 25 percent of a radio station's morning drive time audience is recycled to evening drive time. This means that only one out of four listeners in the morning will be present in the evening; hence, an advertiser determined to reach the optimum number of target listeners should buy commercials in both morning and evening drive time.

     Sharing refers to listeners of more than one station, which may also be referred to as their having a "duplicated audience." Sharing also implies that there will be some members of the advertising target demographic groups who listen to one station only, so those members' favorite stations must be included in the OES calculation for advertisers who wish to reach them. OES software routines determine how many spots on which stations must be purchased to reach a designated percent of all radio listeners in a particular demographic group.

     Optimum effective scheduling has become very important in national and regional media buying. It is also important in planning programming for a radio station. If an important audience listens exclusively to a particular radio station, then advertising from that station must be included in the advertising media plans of any business aiming for the demographic audience delivered by that station.

     The need for OES presents some dilemmas to radio programmers. Should a station design its programs for homogeneous audiences from a relatively narrow set of demographic groups, increasing the likelihood that exclusive audiences will be included in buys made using the OES rationale? Or should the station attempt to appeal to a wider range of demographic groups, hoping that each group delivered will be useful to the campaigns of different advertisers? Contemporary radio stations programmed under either of these philosophies are usually prosperous.

     One of the most important radio program consultants since the 1980s, Ed Shane, wrote the following while discussing station audiences that are not core to the station:

An essential, of course, is to be able to judge whether there are others in the general audience. A jazz or new age station, for example, may have not only a loyal core, but also may have all the jazz or new age devotees in the market. More than one station has been bitterly disappointed to discover that there was no growth beyond their initial impact (Shane, 1991).

     The situation is even more complicated for station clusters, which are now the norm in the major markets of the United States. Large radio groups today may own stations providing every major radio format, perhaps with five or six or more formats in the same market. The issue of which demographic groups a particular station should target with its programming must be answered by program executives and consultants who are responsible for stations with the same format in many cities, even when that format is failing to deliver its assigned demographics in one market served by the group. At the same time, a cluster of stations in any market attempts to use OES strategies to sell combinations of its stations whenever possible. Sales are often the responsibility of an integrated sales management team charged with selling all of the stations in the cluster.

Demographic Factors

     Programmers must look at the demographic characteristics of the market as a whole in light of station formats and audiences already present in the market. The economy of the market is another important consideration. For instance, if the market is characterized by rapid home construction and high levels of home buying, the program planner will recognize that sales of products related to home improvement, major appliances, lawn and garden items, furniture, and interior design are likely to be important sources of revenue in the market. If the community hosts a rapidly growing number of small businesses, business-to-business advertising and ads that direct the attention of business managers to office supply websites will be potentially rewarding.

     Various radio program materials produce different demographic patterns among listeners. Most music listeners, for example, gain their music listening preferences during the years in which they are becoming aware of popular music, their teens and young adult years. Although their tolerance for other music may increase over the years, they tend to retain favorites acquired in those formative years. As a consequence, oldies (music no longer in current release but popular with demographic groups socialized to it at a young age) are a major component of popular radio programming. The latest hits tend to be preferred by young audiences, other types of music appeal more consistently to women, and still others are the choice of blue-collar workers.

     A programmer's experience will suggest one or more formats that will attract the desired demographic groups in the market. The station will then conduct studies, perhaps by focus group, to determine listener attitudes about these formats and about the lack of certain music or other radio programming in the market. The focus group discussion may explore the preferences of potential demographics for different parts of the day. Listeners to some formats, although enthusiastic about hearing more of their favorite music, may also wish to hear traffic and weather reports at some time of the day. If talk formats are being studied, popular topics for discussion and the behavior of talk show hosts may be explored in focus groups. Increasingly there will also be discussions about the role of commercials in these formats. Should the commercials be concentrated in a small number of breaks in programming? How many commercials in a row are tolerable?

Format Approaches

     The radio station program format will consist of a set of principles or rules for assembling programming. Sometimes these rules are relatively simple: (1) three musical selections should be played in uninterrupted succession; (2) a hit should be heard in this musical style four times per hour; (3) an oldie harking back to the birth of this style should be played at least once per hour; (4) titles and performers should be announced both before and after clusters of musical selections; (5) during early morning hours the time should be announced four times per hour; (6) during commuting hours traffic highlights should be presented twice per hour; and so on.

     When the programmer has defined the format, a model tape of the format will be produced in which the music to be played is represented by brief excerpts. This makes it possible for potential listeners to hear all elements of a format in a short space of time (perhaps five minutes) while getting a feel for the music to be included. These model tapes are then played to potential listeners in focus group or auditorium settings. The researcher will also play excerpts of programming from competing stations to measure the competitive appeal of the proposed radio format. The same session may also include examples of promotional materials for the station so that those attractive to the station's target demographic groups can be identified.

     When a new station format is broadcast, station management will pay close attention to the demographic groups delivered by the station. An important analysis from audience research reports will be the number of minutes an average listener in a target group listens to the station. This statistic is called "time spent listening" (TSL). The programmer hopes that the station's target demographic groups' TSLs are relatively large and that they will grow after a change in format. It is also significant that exclusive audiences (audiences that tune to only one station) will be apparent in the station's target demographic groups. The exclusive audiences will guarantee the station a place in OES advertising plans. Station promotion will be designed to increase the number of listeners in the target groups, and improvements in programming will be intended to increase time spent listening for these demographics.

     Many stations use satellite or other syndicated sources for their programming. There is some cost associated with acquiring programming in this way. For an indicator or satellite music service to remain profitable, a similar sort of demographic research is essential.

     Although demographic research was not important in the early days of radio, the role of demographics in both contemporary radio programming and advertising sales has become crucial. Commercial radio stations must command audiences in the demographic groups important to their advertisers in order to ensure their own survival.