COMM 150: Radio formats, slicing and dicing the audience

Since the latest edition of John Vivian's text doesn't really say much about the economics of radio, let's fill some of the blanks in class today.

Even though the world is changing, and Vivian has very interesting things to say about some of the changes, radio is still mostly financed by advertising. And it gives us a very good example of how advertisers target their messages to specific audience segments they want to reach.

They do this by paying attention to demographics. So let's start with a definition.

Demographics. Wikipedia has this definition: "Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology (and especially in the subfield of demography), public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Demographic trends describe the historical changes in demographics in a population over time (for example, the average age of a population may increase or decrease over time). Both distributions and trends of values within a demographic variable are of interest.?"

How can advertisers use demographics?

http://www.newsgeneration.com/radio_resources/formats.htm"target="_blank">Guide to radio station formats - News Generation Inc.

Radio formats in the Springfield market - who listens to which stations? Which stations would you want to advertise on if you wanted to sell hybrid corn seed?

Springfield audience share stats complied by Eastlan, Spring 2008.

Radio formats by age - an online survey, but the demographics look pretty typical. I think they'll apply to land-based radio, too.

Radio formats - most commonly played artists - what does this tell you about the genres? What does this tell you about the demographics - i.e. who listens to them?