Talk Radio: Old, Male, Conservative and Dying

In 2006, almost exactly 4 years ago I wrote a post predicting the migration of AM talk radio to FM. I predicted that the aging demographic is dying off, creating a need for change. I  predicted that there would be more centrist and left wing talk because of the younger demographics of FM radio. I think that radio will adapt to the audience, because historically it's something that radio has always been good at. You can read it here.

Because of the effectiveness of search engines I got an anonymous comment on it only recently. Inexplicably the response was railing against the perceived left-wing tilt of NPR I am not sure that the troll actually read my post, but that's only because their comment had almost nothing to do with it. It is possible that they were deeply offended by a single offhand comment. I wrote that AM talk radio was "wildly conservative, politically."

That comment was, and still is factually true.  It's been a few years so I thought I'd revisit the topic and cite my sources. I'll start anecdotally. Rush Limbaugh is the biggest name in AM talk radio. He makes an estimated $58 million dollars a year, and just recently was topped the Newsweek "Power List." [Source Here.]  As of September 2010 he has the number one most listened to talk program on the radio.  [Source Here.] Despite that his listenership is down. Rush Limbaughs audience peaked in 2003 at an impressive 14.5 million. It's all downhill from there. According to Talkers Magazine, Limbaugh only reached a weekly audience of 14.25 million in 2008 and only averages 13.5 million in 2007 and 2006.It's called a rough plateau and it's what happens before the drop.

His audience isn't turning off the radio. They're just dying. He is still delivering the same quality program he always has and to 600+ stations. But the median age of a Rush Limbaugh listener is 67. A full 72% of Limbaugh’s audience are male adding to the early fatality rate (women outlive men). [Source Here] This data is not an outlier. The Fox News audience has a median Age of 65.  [Source Here] This is a big problem. According to a recent actuarial table (below) almost 20% of Americans do not make it to age 67. If you look past 67. It's a cliff.Check out the actuarial chart below:

Listeners of AM talk radio are not a random cross-sampling of America. Only 5% are between the ages of 18 and 24, and 80% are over the age of 35. They are more likely to be male than female (64% vs. 37%). [Source Here]  According to the Pew Research Center self-identified "conservative Republicans" make up 28% of talk radio’s audience, compared to only 17% of the general public. As for registered voters that regularly listen to talk radio, 41% are Republican and 28% are Democrats. [Source Here.] 

Extrapolating this as an industry-wide trend isn't difficult. The top 10 talk radio show audiences according to Talkers Magazine are as follows: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Dave Ramsey, Dr. Laura,  Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham and Jim Bohannon.  Of that set, Boortz is a Libertarian, and Bohannon is more or less middle of the road. The other 8 are solid conservatives. [Source Here.] So as the whole AM radio talk audience "ages out" it will have a disparate effect on conservative talk programs.

"Up until 1978, half of all radio listening was done on the AM dial. Now that share has dropped to about 17 percent, according to the FCC...  AM radio accounts for only about four percent of listening among the 12-24 set, with FM making up the remaining 96 percent. Only nine percent of listeners aged 25-34 still tune in."

This is not a reflection of programming quality, or a political change in the general population. It's a result of the vagaries of AM radio itself. AM radio stations have been dropping like flies. Back in 1990 there were 4,987 AM stations and 5,832 FM stations. In the 20 years since, the number of AM stations has dropped by 200+ and the number of FM signals has nearly doubled. [Source Here] In 10 years there will be nothing left on the AM radio band but Spanish, Religion, and Spanish-Religion. Political conservatism is not going extinct. But it definitely is going to lose it's domination of AM radio and therefore specifically— AM talk radio. So where will conservatives go to get their media?  Some will go to FM radio, some to TV, and the rest, doubtlessly to the internet, but the diaspora appears to be inevitable.

The Migration of Talk Radio

In the 1980s talk radio programming began to move from FM to AM. Today the AM dial is largely talk and younger people tend to think of it as all-talk. Which for us more "experienced" radio men seems kind of silly. Talk moved to AM because music sounded better on FM. Music on FM took off, pushing out the talk programming. It left FM to skew demographically (in general) for younger listeners.


So twenty five years later we see three trends in talk.

1. Ratings are down. (duh)
2. It's moving back to FM
3. It's wildly conservative, politically. (I promise not to be rude)

In Phoenix recently Bonneville moved 620 KTAR-AM to the FM dial. they bought KKFR from Emmis to do it. But previous success is what propelled the plan forward. In Washington D.C. their FM simulcast of WTOP-AM was a ratings winner. Then in Salt Lake City they made a similar move with KSL-AM. Their programming is strong, the listenership is there, but it's moving. The AM dial is slowly, almost imperceptibly draining. And the youngest listeners aren't interested in radio AT ALL... which is terrifying to some of us.

Those same younger listeners that have been listening to the FM dial for music programming are now older. They're older and entering the age bracket where we'd expect more talk format listener ship and we're not seeing the growth from this generation. The reason is that they don't listen to AM. They like the programming, and in fact NPR has been very happy to scoop them up, but if Mohammed won't go to the mountain...

Currently the primary approcah seems to be to add FM simulcasters. Buy a workable FM signal over the metro, adjust branding statments slightly and try to keep the current listeners and add yonger ones. The long-term problem with a demo that skews old is that they die. You need to continually transition in new listeners. With ciggarettes they call them "replacement smokers" but talk radio, while addictive rarely kills. The above pic is from a killer Orlando Weekly article on this here. The big gap in talk radio is not just between left and right. The gap is also between men and women. Older, conservative men listen to AM talk. While younger, more liberal men (like me) listen to FM talk. Notice the "older" factor here in the demo relating to the replacement-smokers theory above...

And Talk radio listener ship isn't 100% testosterone. Dr. Laura and a handful of other advice-type programs do score with middle-aged women, and NPR scores some high-income women as well. The truth is that most American women listen to the radio just for music. So where does this leave talk radio?

It leaves it trying to keep it's older core audience but also trying to reinvest itself in the low end of its demo. It's smart, and it's going to work. The downside is that Air America is still competing with NPR and losing. But that's been said and said and said. Logo on left stolen from Tom Paine, another funny lefty bastard.

Demographic adjustment

My reader ship drops on weekends predicably, and I expect to see it in my reports. But last week, when women in radio week began, readership slid every day. It is sexism? statistical randomness? Or is it some kind of demographic miscalculation? I may never know, but we see the same thing in radio.

When you change format, your ratings can immediately go up. When KTLK went liberal talk in 2005 their book jumped. At the same time conservative talker KFI-AM dropped. duh. there are more liberal News/Talk fans in California. But that instant (1Q) gratification is rare.

Your ratings also can drop initially in a period we kindly refer to as adjustment. It could be just that I changed format, and the readers I appeal to shifted, and a recovery period would be required to see a return. I will return to regularly sheduled programming tomorrow, where as a radio station will probably wait a quarter or two before making a panic-driven flip back to their original format. But usually they will tough out a year or more before trying something else. But the change makes sense.

Under format A. your listeners we're primarily female, white 25 - 45 in age. Under format B. They are male hispanic and under the age of 30. There is certainly a common listenership, but they are small and you cannot market to fractions. The ad dollars are in big groups generally. And allowing multiple staitons to fight over the same demo in a market benefits NO ONE. (but it happens)

In Philadelphia, WSNI despite a very stable and respectable book, (averaging a 2.8) they dropped Soft AC and went Tropical last week. Philadelphia is one of few top 20 cities that do not have a latin-focused FM so the change was not entirely unexpected. Philly has a big latino population, but it's 2 generations or more old and very americanized. The decision to go Tropical is a long term decision in this city. WEMG-AM has been running a similar tropical format for years and they haven't had much better than a one share in years. The bet is that WSNI will steal 50% or more of it's listeners from WEMG-AM and then also gain new listener. (If all other things are equal, an FM will outperfrom an AM.) WSNI probably will recover quickly and be back to a 2.5 share by xmas. But is our hispanic population big enough to support two latin outlets? No. WEMG will go Spanish Oldies, Reg Mex. or pick up the Air America programming that didnt' work out on WHAT-AM. (I'm hoping for the libs of course)

As another example: WCBS New York. They dropped oldies and went "Jack" They lost almost their entire audience and dropped two points. They even had picketers It was a gutshot. They've spent a year recovering and WBZO-AM (oldies) in Long island has managed to gain a point in their book (average) in the same period. I wonder where those listeners came from... but they're gambling. They're betting long term that the aging of their demo will eventually result in ratings death. They decided that now was the time that their high operating costs outweighed losses in their ad book. They may lose short term. But long term they will win.

On the other hand ...KZLA flipping from country was just dense. Los Angeles certainly wasn't short on Rap or CHR outlets. I cant' explain that at all.

So will my readership return to normal over the next two weeks? We shall see.