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It is changing, David. While you are right, the older part of the demo is set in its ways, the younger end is not nearly as established in its ways.
I will try one more time - there is gold in them thar hills and the business that figures it out first will make a fortune! Why ignore 40-million potential customers? The average business only needs 1/100th of a percent to reply to make a lot of money!
Of course, it is not just retail that needs to be advertising to that group and the radio station with a decent sales staff can make a lot of money with an updated oldies format.
XTalker said:
Again, when the agency clients tell the agency to buy demos that do not include 55+, there is no opportunity in the markets where agency business is critical. While you could say, "forget the agencies," that does not work if a significant portion of business in a market is agency based. Most retail (direct) business gets lower rates, too.
The analogy is beer advertising, which is essentially 21-44 men. Beer companies know exactly who buys 95% of the beer, and it is this group. Trying to develop a female beer target yields no returns, and all this kind of thing has been test marketed extensively. Same goes for 55+... it does not represent profits for advertisers, so they ignore the segment and will until things change.
J
Julius Leonard Marx
Guest
XTalker said:
Mike, maybe you're both right.
You are saying businesses should court older demos. They don't but they should.
David and others are saying radio can't sell older listeners to those businesses (because those businesses don't court older demos). Until those businesses decide to go after older customers, it is pointless for radio to program to capture the attention of older customers.
Why try to sell somebody something they don't want (rightly or wrongly) when you can just as easily sell them something they do want?
You also seem to assume that oldies radio is the best or only way to reach older consumers. Actually a lot of money is spent to do just that. Some of it goes to talk radio or AC, which includes older listeners but not exclusively. A bigger part of the ad budget for seniors goes to cable and print. Even businesses that want older customers have decided there are better/more cost-effective ways to advertise to them.
Julius Leonard Marx said:
This is an excellent point that has not been made in recent posts.
I looked at one market where I have Maximiser numbers and where there is a well-performing classic hits staiton, Dallas and KLUV.
The 50-64 shares show that oldies, on KLUV, has just 10 shares in that demo. While it is definitely #1 there, the next 9 stations in the demo have nearly three and a half times the audience of the #1 station, and KLUV only has one of every 10 listeners on the average.
The other formats represented in the top 10 in 50-64 have formats like talk, country, news, AC, Christian and classic rock.
As you say, oldies is not the only format that reaches this group. In fact, if an advertiser only uses oldies, they miss most of the market here. The advantage of many of these formats that also deliver 50-64 is that they are generally strong (except for all news) in 25-54 and allow an advertiser to get a "bonus" of 55+ when buying 25-54.
Since stations price based on the cost per point in the demo the advertiser wants, not on 12+, an extra "free" bonus audience really helps some formats get on buys because they add useful listeners with no extra ad investment.
Julius...and David:
Thank you for making that point clear. It's the point the "oldies fanatics" don't get.
It's been said "young programmers who don't know the music", "big corporations", and "radio" in general are the enemies. They are not.
The reason oldies radio (in its' original form) is dying is because: the advertisers don't buy it!
It's not radio's fault. We can talk to advertisers until we're blue in the face about the "buying power" of the 55-64 year old audience. But, if after showing statistic after statistic, the advertiser still comes back with "So...when are you gonna add 80's music? I need a younger demo here." what can we do?
I once programmed a radio station a few years back that was #1 25-54...and #1 35-64. We lost 50 cents on a dollar, because the audience was too heavily concentrated in the "upper demos". (45-64). It was a college town...ratings didn't matter. The advertisers wanted the college crowd. Game over.
If you want to complain about it...stop complaining here. Complain to your local businesspeople.
Thank you for making that point clear. It's the point the "oldies fanatics" don't get.
It's been said "young programmers who don't know the music", "big corporations", and "radio" in general are the enemies. They are not.
The reason oldies radio (in its' original form) is dying is because: the advertisers don't buy it!
It's not radio's fault. We can talk to advertisers until we're blue in the face about the "buying power" of the 55-64 year old audience. But, if after showing statistic after statistic, the advertiser still comes back with "So...when are you gonna add 80's music? I need a younger demo here." what can we do?
I once programmed a radio station a few years back that was #1 25-54...and #1 35-64. We lost 50 cents on a dollar, because the audience was too heavily concentrated in the "upper demos". (45-64). It was a college town...ratings didn't matter. The advertisers wanted the college crowd. Game over.
If you want to complain about it...stop complaining here. Complain to your local businesspeople.
TheFonz said:
Radio can't sell agency advertising for "that group" because agencies don't buy it.
Radio has very successfully sold today's 55+ when they were 20, or 30 or 40. Today's first boomers grew up on Top 40 or R&b or country in the late 50's and 60's and those later boomers on AOR and AC and such in the 70's.
These are heavy radio users. The issue is that agency advertisers don't want to reach 55+ via radio.
Remember, most of newspaper advertising in the 60s to the 90s came from classified and price item advertising. Classified is no online, and there are more retailers not using price item today or mving it to lead items on TV; radio and other media.
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