Who reads, listens and watches what?

I started to read the press release from Deloitte’s research “State of the media democracy” and nearly lost the will to live. I went to Deloitte’s web site to look for more details. No luck there.
Fortunately Chuck Nyren persevered and wrote a good blog posting about the research.

The next e-mail I read was from Bain and detailed their research Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan. If this is your bag then this is an excellent report and well promoted. Deloitte’s you could learn a lot of lessons from Bain. Dick Stroud

Radio 4 and the 50-plus

The BBC’s Radio 4 channel added more than 750,000 listeners in the space of a year, according to Rajar.

Radio 4 is now listened to by 10.22 million people every week. The Today programme helped bolster the numbers as the recession prompted a rise in demand for in depth news. It attracted 6.6 million listeners, a record 16.8 per cent share of the audience.

Woman's Hour and You and Yours also posted record results.

According to "industry commentators" the popularity of the station, which has an average audience age of 55, has benefited from older audiences moving away from “youth obsessed” television.

The Head of Public Policy at Age Concern and Help the Aged said: “TV has become out of touch with the tastes of an ageing audience, reflecting our society’s obsession with youth.” He went on to say, “As shown by separate reports from Ofcom and our charity, older viewers are being increasingly put off by programming that not only doesn’t meet their tastes but is also reluctant to show grey hair on screen.”

I think much of the commentary mixes up two things. One thing is the BBC’s fear of having too many oldies on the screen and so it seems to have this policy of despatching older presenters to wherever old presenters go when they give up their earphones. To be honest I don’t think that really concerns that many older people.

The other factor is that a lot of BBC TV does assume its viewers have the intellect of a slug. This, unfortunately, might be right about a lot of its viewers, but not all.

Radio 4, for most of time, has moderately adult (not in the sexual manner) programming so I guess it really is the last resort if you are in need of a little intellectual substance. Just think if you could persuade the BBC to take advertising - a readymade channel to the bright 50-plus. Dick Stroud

Why this daft 55+ age group

OFCOM publishes a mountain of research. All too often it uses idiotic age ranges when reporting the how behaviour changes with ageing.

The chart is taken from a recent OFCOM report about media consumption showing how the 55+ is the only group increasing its time listening to the radio.

You might think that understanding a bit more about how this group divides into finer age ranges would be useful. No way.

The 55+ represent 34% of the UK population aged 15+, yet OFCOM reports four younger sub groups, none of which represent more than 18% of the adult population.

Come on OFCOM get real and start reporting your results so we can get an insight into what is happening with the older market rather than this obsession with reporting the fine granularity of the sub-34 year olds. Dick Stroud

Older radio audiences increase (some of them)

Saga radio (radio aimed at the 50-plus) was acquired by Guardian Media Group and renamed Smooth Radio. As the blurb says : “Smooth provides a broad mix of easy listening music from the last five decades and intelligent, entertaining speech for the mature 40-something adult”. Smooth has six stations across the UK.

RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), which is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK, has just published for the first quarter of 2008. It found that one of the best performing commercial networks was Smooth Radio, which increased its share from 1.9% to 2.1% and grew its reach from 2.19m to 2.38m. Now I wonder why that is? Might it have something to do with demographics?

In truth it also has something to do with Smooth's programming and the marketing campaign to promote the station But of all the commercial radio stations Smooth was the only one to show any significant increase in listeners. Dick Stroud

Mr Zoomer – Moses Znaimer

According to Digital Journal, Moses Znaimer is becoming Canada’s "Mr 50-plus media”.

Here are some of his acquisitions
Classical 96.3 (a radio station he bought in August 2006)
AM 740 (acquired in Sept 2007)
CARP magazine (the 50-plus publication with a circulation of 200,000 copies)

The guy has an amusing take on life as shown by the above image. Under the lightheartedness I am sure there is a sound commercial mind that has seen an opportunity to cheaply acquire a position in what he sees as 50-plus media.

The big question is whether the 50-plus in Canada also see these acquisitions as their media. Anybody from Canada with a take on this development? Dick Stroud.

The Baby Boomer Media Consumption Study - 2007

If you are interested in radio consumption habits of US boomers then this is a must read news release from Bridge Ratings. It has lots of charts and analysis. Since I have absolutely no interest in the subject I will say no more. Dick Stroud

Research into monetizing the 45 + commercial radio listener

A guy called Paul McCartney (yes, yes I know all of the jokes) is doing an MBA research project to understand how to monetize the value of the 45+ commercial radio listening audience.

If you work in the client or agency world and can spare 5 mins he would really appreciate you completing a short online questionnaire. You might also win a DAB radio.

The questionnaire is on this Web site. Thanks. Dick Stroud

C4 radio consortium promises to deliver youth audience

Can you imagine the above headline with the word ‘youth’ replaced with ‘old’? Nope, neither can I.

The UK’s Channel 4 is biding for the second national digital radio multiplex and has said the group will: “secure radio's future by wooing back listeners under 45 with a 'level of marketing never before seen in commercial radio”. Well that’s great, I can sleep safe in my bed tonight.

I get the feeling that radio has a pretty good future without the good graces of C4. So what has C4 got on offer?

E4 Radio (interactive music) for 15- 29 year-olds.

Channel 4 Radio (contemporary speech-based) for 30- 54 year-olds.

Pure4 (for music lovers) with a “mission to identify new talent”. Sounds young to me.

Talk Radio (opinionated presentation) No age defined.

Closer (current and classic chart music) women 30 and over.

Sky News Radio (rolling TV news to radio) No age defined

Sunrise Radio (music-dominated) for Asian audiences

Virgin Radio (fun-loving, fearless women) 15 and 30 year-olds

Original (album-led) for 40- 59 year-olds

Radio Disney (kids stuff) for children

I think we can safely say that any advertiser with a remote interest in the 50-plus might be best advised to look somewhere other than C4 Radio. Dick Stroud

The over-50s favourite songs – NO

Smooth Radio, the newly relabelled Saga Radio stations; has conducted a survey of their listener’s favourite music (Sample size 3,760). The age profile of Smooth Radio’s audience is predominantly 50-plus.

These are the top ten songs.

1. John Lennon - Imagine
2. Chris De Burgh - Lady in Red
3. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
4. Ben E King - Stand By Me
5. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
6. Lou Reed - Perfect Day
7. Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
8. Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
9. Katie Melua - Closest Thing to Crazy
10. Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love

The trouble with this sort of survey is that you are really measuring the preferences of a very distinct group of people. Firstly, they listen to Smooth Radio (which says something about them – I am not sure what) and secondly they are the type of people who can be bothered (and have the time) to pick up the phone or text the radio station.

All in all a pretty meaningless exercise. Dick Stroud