After writing the Streaming Radio that doesn’t work post, I added additional measuring into the web site – to capture data about visitors who come here, and then go directly to the station web site rather that using the convenient links here.
Counting someone who visits a station web site equal to someone who clicks a Listen button is a little bit Apples and Oranges. There are many reasons a person might go to a web site not related to streaming (maybe looking for a phone number or registering for a contest). But some data is better than no data.
So what did we find out? The additional data found a few interesting things, but no huge surprises. News/talk is 75% of all the traffic, and of that 80+% is Conservative Talk.
Live Conservative Talk Radio during the day
People want to listen to Rush, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage and to a lesser degree Sean Hannity and Mark Levin. Savage and Levin are on at 6 PM Eastern, which is only 3 PM in California… but starting with Hannity, the audience starts drifting away. Shows on before 9 AM (Eastern) don’t see much of an audience – people with jobs (or on the West Coast) are busy doing other things.
People will listen to their favorite shows on delay if they listen to two shows that are on at the same time – but there is a strong preference for hearing the shows as they happen. That might be a bias introduced by the choice here to “show only live shows”. When listening to Over the Air radio, people are probably less likely to know when a syndicated show is actually live.
When a host is on vacation, it typically cuts the audience by 20% or more, even without an indication on the web site of a guest host.
Doctor Laura
Doctor Laura is something of a “Special Case”. For the most part, her shows are what people in the Radio Biz call Evergreen – meaning that most of the content of the show gives no hint as to the date of broadcast. A call about a wife having problems with her mother-in-law could be 10 years old or 10 seconds old – the answers are generally going to be the same. Dr. Laura does make an effort to tie shows together from day to day or make references to current events – that’s probably smart long term so her syndicator doesn’t replace her some day with her own reruns.
One thing that is incredibly clear – the people who come here have an extreme preference for Dr Laura over Dr Joy Browne. While Dr Laura gives callers a kick in the butt, Dr Browne typically says that any behavior is acceptable and people shouldn’t worry so much about what other people think and your problems are all someone else’s fault.
Dr Browne is very direct that she’s a feminist and a liberal – exactly the polar opposite of Dr Laura. Dr. Laura typically encourages people to figure out what they did to contribute to their problem – since in the end, it is only your behavior you can change. She strongly encourages people to live a moral life, based on the lessons learned by the 100s of generations of humans who went before us and learned what worked and what didn’t. She refuses to accept “I don’t know” as an answer to deflect an uncomfortable question.
For the past week, Dr Laura had 2,285 listeners, and Dr Browne had 187 – giving Dr Laura a 12:1 listener ratio. That’s right in line with Conservative vs Liberal talk radio in general.
Jim Rome
I don’t know enough about Sports to be an authority on the topic – but Jim Rome -is- the only sports talk show host on streaming radio with an audience. 73% of all people streaming a specific sports talk show are listening to Jim Rome’s show. He’s 10:1 above the next closest show – which is Steve Czaban in the mornings on Fox Sports. Dan Patrick on Fox is in 3rd place.
Jim seems to have a very strong recall of everything that has ever happened in sports – including things before he was born. He can get important people to come on the phone and talk with him. Most of the time, Jim is looking at the “big picture” of sports and what it all means and the long term – not arguing with a 12 year old about a bad call in last night’s baseball game. Content matters – National sports talk is not just local sports talk put up on a satellite. Programming content is not something manufactured in a factory using a formula.
Summary
If you follow radio syndication at all, one thing jumps out at you about the above list – 5 of the top 10 individual shows are syndicated by Premiere (a subsidiary of Clear Channel) – Rush, Glenn Beck, Hannity (joint with Citadel/ABC), Dr Laura and Jim Rome. Talk Radio Network has Laura Ingraham and Michael Savage, Mark Levin is Citadel/ABC, Dennis Miller is Westwood One, and Neal Boortz (#10) is Dial Global.
For the rest of this list, the population is the 20% of visitors who aren’t listening to News/Talk. Percentages are of that 20% – not of the the entire population – to keep the numbers so they aren’t “point zero something”.
Oldies/Classic Rock/Classic Hits
The people listening at work at a computer are probably professional, white collar type people with enough value to their employers that they are allowed to listen to radio and listening doesn’t interfere with their work. Many of those people work for the federal government.
So it’s probably not a big surprise that “Baby Boomers” music is popular. Baby Boomer music is fairly safe workplace music and not terribly distracting. Classic Rock/Hits is 11.2% of the non-talk, and Oldies is 8.3%. Soft Lite/Rock is 4.0%.
Young people are much more likely to bring in their own music to work on an iPod or other MP3 player and more aware that what they do on their computers is being monitored by their employer and might be used against them some day. iPods are private. So are Cell Phone that stream.
County Music
During the buildup of the War in Iraq, a lot of traffic arrived from military related places – coming directly from military bases or from cities with bases. People had been “called up” and were away from home. A lot of those people were searching for Country Music radio and were temporarily where it wasn’t readily available – radio stations in the Middle East don’t generally carry Lee Greenwood singing “Proud to be an American”.
About 10% of the non-talk listeners are listening to Country Music
(Country does not include folk/bluegrass stations the way I count things)
Hard Rock
I’m a Rock N’ Roll illiterate – so cut me some slack. I’m sure I don’t put stations in the the “Right” categories – that’ what radio consultants and programmers get paid the big bucks to do – but here goes.
People “in the biz” call this a number of things (or I lumped them together) – Hard Rock, Alternative Rock AAA (Adult Album Alternative), Real Rock, Active Rock. If I had to describe it, it’s music targeted mostly at young males full of angst, the sound is loud, and the rhythms and eardrum bursting volume levels are much more important than the lyrics (if any). It isn’t about love and relationships, it’s about drugs, sex, violence, anger and testosterone. It isn’t your dad’s Classic Rock (although we’re starting to see the first Classic Alternative Rock as we all grow older), it isn’t Top 40 “Contemporary Hits”, it isn’t a Mix of a little of this and a little of that, and it isn’t soft romantic “Chick Music”.
With the definition out of the way, Hard Rock is 7.8% of the non-talk. The other types are in the too small to care category (Mix is 2.8%, CHR/top 40 is 2.7%).
Urban Music
Music created by (mostly) African American artists – R&B/Soul/Old School 5%, Jazz 4.8%, HipHop/Rap 3.7%
The Doesn’t Work List
Putting some real numbers now on my list from the original post:
Classical Music – 3.4% (of the 20% that is non-talk)
NPR – 3.3%
Financial News/Talk 2.1%
Spoken Word Religious – 1.6%
Contemporary Christian Music – 1.3%
Community (Left Wing Hate) radio – 0.4%
Some additions to the list:
Nostalgia/Standards – 1.6% (Seniors are less likely to be online)
All News – 1.1% (All News Radio is formatted for people in Cars – it gets very boring after the first 15 minutes)