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Ideal Demographic

S

semoochie

Star Participant
Based on pure numbers, since there are more people, the older you go, it seems to me that the ideal target would be 42-54. This is based on 55 being the end of the line and 1972 being equal to the peak of the millennials birth year. For anyone born after 1972, the millennials have the edge in population. Any thoughts?
 
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semoochie said:
Based on pure numbers, since there are more people, the older you go, it seems to me that the ideal target would be 42-54. This is based on 55 being the end of the line and 1972 being equal to the peak of the millennials birth year. For anyone born after 1972, the millennials have the edge in population. Any thoughts?
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Semoochie: For starters, you're way off on milennials. That group is generally agreed to have been born between 1980 and 1995, with the peak coming in 1990.

People born in 1972 are part of "Generation X", generally agreed to be 1965-1979. Peak birth year was 1972.

There are more millennials than Baby Boomers (1946-1964...peak birth year 1956), by about a million, and far more of either than there are Gen Xers, who were born during a "baby bust".

If you're saying 42-54 is the ideal demographic for Soft AC/EZ Listening/Adult Standards, you're aiming too young. Again, it's like archery. Shoot for the middle and the ripple outward covers the edges. So your middle here is 48. That person was born in 1966 and is a young Gen Xer. (S)he graduated high school in 1984, and college in 1988. His/her mom was likely a Soft AC listener. Easy Listening or Adult Standards was likely his/her grandmother/grandfather.

For Soft AC, a realistic demo is probably 50+, with most of your listeners actually 65+. It's not going to be an easy sell for advertising.

For either Easy Listening or Adult Standards, you can call it 65+, but the reality is your audience will be much older. One of the last of the format in a large market, KOY in Phoenix, had an average listening age of 82 near the end. And they were spinning a great deal of 1970s and 80s AC oldies in their mix, with a popular morning DJ who'd made his name in the market on oldies and classic hits stations.

An average of 82 means half the audience was older than 82.
 
michael hagerty said:
Semoochie: For starters, you're way off on milennials. That group is generally agreed to have been born between 1980 and 1995, with the peak coming in 1990.
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Another issue regarding Millenials is ethnicity. Since both the African American and Hispanic communities are much younger... 10 years on average for Hispanics... than the general population, more Millenials are members of these ethnic groups and fewer are non-Hispanic white.

This affects formats aimed at Millenials, particularly in the markets with larger ethnic populations. In fact, in several markets the differences in median age of Asians can also skew populations. And that will affect the results of formats in markets based on composition. And in many markets, it changes the kinds of songs played on many formats.
 
michael hagerty said:
One of the last of the format in a large market, KOY in Phoenix, had an average listening age of 82 near the end. And they were spinning a great deal of 1970s and 80s AC oldies in their mix, with a popular morning DJ who'd made his name in the market on oldies and classic hits stations.
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One of the things greatly affecting KOY in its last days was its very poor signal on 1230 and the fact that it reached the older part of the Valley and not the younger parts. I live in Tempe and was only able to listen to it via the Internet. When KOY was on 550 it had one of the best signals in Arizona and should have remained there if there was any hope of it being successful on Soft AC. And Danny Davis, like some of his predecessors on KOY, was one of the best radio voices we've ever had.

michael hagerty said:
An average of 82 means half the audience was older than 82.
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No, that would be the 'mean' or median, not the average.
 
landtuna said:


One of the things greatly affecting KOY in its last days was its very poor signal on 1230 and the fact that it reached the older part of the Valley and not the younger parts. I live in Tempe and was only able to listen to it via the Internet. When KOY was on 550 it had one of the best signals in Arizona and should have remained there if there was any hope of it being successful on Soft AC. And Danny Davis, like some of his predecessors on KOY, was one of the best radio voices we've ever had.



No, that would be the 'mean' or median, not the average.
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http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/mean-median-average/

As for KOY's signal on 1230, it actually was weak in the two most populous senior communities, Sun City and Sun Lakes.

The fact is that somewhere in the 80s is about what you should expect for an average, median or mean age for an adult standards station in this day and age. Music Of Your Life came along about 35 years ago...someone who's 85 was 50 then.

Yes, MOYL and its competitors have broadened their music since then to include what we're calling AC Oldies of the 70s and 80s, but with nothing appealing to an audience older than Adult Standards still on the airwaves, it becomes the least objectionable alternative and will draw listeners in their 90s and even 100 and above.

And since AC is music for 40-year-olds, a 1974 AC Oldie is a familiar record for...an 80-year-old.
 
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landtuna said:
No, that would be the 'mean' or median, not the average.
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When all the listeners are over 65, and the main cause of cume loss is death, the mean, median and average are going to be quite close to each other.[/SIZE][/FONT]
 
michael hagerty said:
Semoochie: For starters, you're way off on milennials. That group is generally agreed to have been born between 1980 and 1995, with the peak coming in 1990.

People born in 1972 are part of "Generation X", generally agreed to be 1965-1979. Peak birth year was 1972.

There are more millennials than Baby Boomers (1946-1964...peak birth year 1956), by about a million, and far more of either than there are Gen Xers, who were born during a "baby bust".

If you're saying 42-54 is the ideal demographic for Soft AC/EZ Listening/Adult Standards, you're aiming too young. Again, it's like archery. Shoot for the middle and the ripple outward covers the edges. So your middle here is 48. That person was born in 1966 and is a young Gen Xer. (S)he graduated high school in 1984, and college in 1988. His/her mom was likely a Soft AC listener. Easy Listening or Adult Standards was likely his/her grandmother/grandfather.

For Soft AC, a realistic demo is probably 50+, with most of your listeners actually 65+. It's not going to be an easy sell for advertising.

For either Easy Listening or Adult Standards, you can call it 65+, but the reality is your audience will be much older. One of the last of the format in a large market, KOY in Phoenix, had an average listening age of 82 near the end. And they were spinning a great deal of 1970s and 80s AC oldies in their mix, with a popular morning DJ who'd made his name in the market on oldies and classic hits stations.

An average of 82 means half the audience was older than 82.
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This idea was not strictly for a Soft AC format. I just thought it might fit the demographic. What I was trying to say was that 1972 was the last year that the Gen-X birthrate was as high as the peak of the millennials in 1991, so there would be more of the latter. At some time, when those born in 1972 approach 55, the Millennials will be a better advertising target than what is then left of Gen-X. My main point was pure numbers under 55, which lets out all but five years of the boomers. There's another issue here: I show that after the end of the baby boom, the birthrate just continues going down and down, a brief uptick, peaking in 1972 and then down some more until bottoming out about 1977, before slowly climbing again. It seems to me that the peak of Gen-X should be right after the end of the baby boom in 1965. Since you mentioned Baby Boomers, it seems to me that the baby boom should have ended in 1961 because the level there is the same as where it started, not 1964, where it continued to plummet!
 
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semoochie said:
This idea was not strictly for a Soft AC format. I just thought it might fit the demographic. What I was trying to say was that 1972 was the last year that the Gen-X birthrate was as high as the peak of the millennials in 1991, so there would be more of the latter. At some time, when those born in 1972 approach 55, the Millennials will be a better advertising target than what is then left of Gen-X. My main point was pure numbers under 55, which lets out all but five years of the boomers. There's another issue here: I show that after the end of the baby boom, the birthrate just continues going down and down, a brief uptick, peaking in 1972 and then down some more until bottoming out about 1977, before slowly climbing again. It seems to me that the peak of Gen-X should be right after the end of the baby boom in 1965. Since you mentioned Baby Boomers, it seems to me that the baby boom should have ended in 1961 because the level there is the same as where it started, not 1964, where it continued to plummet!
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Okay, I see where you're coming from now.

Ending the Baby Boom in 1961 would have made it 15 years, which all the subsequent generations have been, but demographers set it at 1964 a long time back. We're stuck with it.

The problem with 42-54 is that half your audience is in its last six years of relevance to advertisers. And, as each year drops off, you're dealing with a declining birth rate. Going 25-54 allows you to move that center 15 years back from the brink. It also allows for the gradual arrival of that huge wave of milennials, the first of whom turn 25 next year, in your audience.

The opportunity adult stations have in cycles like this, where there's little difference between CHR and AC, is that they are listenable for younger demos, who may grow out of CHR and into AC. A 25-year-old in 1984 would have been unlikely to swap Cyndi Lauper, Van Halen and Michael Jackson for Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Air Supply, but it's far less of a leap between formats today.
 
michael hagerty said:
Ending the Baby Boom in 1961 would have made it 15 years, which all the subsequent generations have been, but demographers set it at 1964 a long time back. We're stuck with it.
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I'd imagine the demographers set it there because potential fathers of the next generation started shipping out to Vietnam the following year. Was there an appreciable bump in the birth rate in 1976?
 
The thing that got me interested in tuning in to Soft AC during my late teen years and early 20's in the mid-to-late 1990s was that the format played lite hits by current artists of the time, such as, Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, LeAnn Rimes, Seal, Sarah McLachlan, to name a few. I liked that I was being exposed to current artists without having to hear all the raunchier stuff that CHR was playing. As a bonus, my parents enjoyed hearing artists they grew up with in the 60s, such as The Beatles, The Supremes, The Mamas and The Papas, to name a few.
 
CTListener said:
I'd imagine the demographers set it there because potential fathers of the next generation started shipping out to Vietnam the following year. Was there an appreciable bump in the birth rate in 1976?
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No.

Looking it up, I see I was in error earlier. The peak birth year for Boomers was 1957, not 1956. We topped 4 million births per year in the U.S. in 1954 and stayed there through 1964. In '65, there was a dip to 3.7 million and we floated between 3.5 and 3.7 through 1971. It fell to 3.2 in 1972, then to 3.1 through 1976. From 1977 on, the trend was generally up, but very gradually...cracking 4 million in 1991 and never falling below 3,882,000 in all the years from then til now.
 
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michael hagerty said:
A 25-year-old in 1984 would have been unlikely to swap Cyndi Lauper, Van Halen and Michael Jackson for Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Air Supply, but it's far less of a leap between formats today.
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I was 23 and that second group was certainly my preference.

Michael did some good songs too, but I didn't like a lot of what he was doing by that time.
 
michael hagerty said:
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/mean-median-average/
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Yes, technically there is a difference but it is usually only important to math geeks. Ordinary people use the terms interchangeably. In any event, both are different than 'average'.

michael hagerty said:
As for KOY's signal on 1230, it actually was weak in the two most populous senior communities, Sun City and Sun Lakes.
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I am not an expert on either Sun City or Sun Lakes but my FIL lives in Sun City and would listen to KOY or KAHM. Both came in less than a booming signal but listenable. I cannot get KAHM where I live (South Tempe) at all and KOY came in loaded with static in the best of times. In addition, there are a ton of seniors living further out east and south of me who, I assume, cannot get either signal as well. KOY should have remained on 550. 550 and 620 are the only two really good signals on AM any longer.
 
CTListener said:
I'd imagine the demographers set it there because potential fathers of the next generation started shipping out to Vietnam the following year. Was there an appreciable bump in the birth rate in 1976?
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I can't speak for the demographers but big shipments of cannon fodder for Vietnam began in 1965 and lasted for the next 3-4 years. 1964 (August) was the infamous "Gulf of Tonkin" fiasco which, thanks to LBJ and hundreds of idiots in Congress, got us into the war on a much elevated basis. The first really big invasion of U.S. troops happened in 1965.
 
A comment was made earlier (by Michael Hagerty I think) as to 'advertisers' as if they were one solid block. Does no one consider that advertisers are selling vastly different products and, as such, might have an interest in people of different ages?

Wouldn't an advertising campaign for toothpaste be far different than one for Buicks?
 
landtuna said:


I can't speak for the demographers but big shipments of cannon fodder for Vietnam began in 1965 and lasted for the next 3-4 years. 1964 (August) was the infamous "Gulf of Tonkin" fiasco which, thanks to LBJ and hundreds of idiots in Congress, got us into the war on a much elevated basis. The first really big invasion of U.S. troops happened in 1965.
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That's what I said. "The following year," that is, the year after 1964 -- the final year of the baby boom as anointed by the demographers -- was 1965. I wasn't even in my teens then, but I became quite aware of the war through the evening news the whole family would watch after supper. None of this shielding the kids from unpleasant sights for us.
 
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