Spot Load Dampens Enthusiasm For Country Radio, Says Net Study

While country radio partisans were still losing enthusiasm for the current music over the past year, they experienced an even sharper decline in their satisfaction with country radio, and spot load is probably to blame, according to a new Internet survey.
For the second year, country programming veteran Bruce Clark used his Web sites southeastradio.com and CountryRadio.net to poll more than 2,000 listeners in the 18-54 demo who were qualified by their record-buying and listening habits. Clark also found that listeners want more tempo, are listening to more top 40 radio than last year, and are more Web-savvy than most country PDs might expect.
In last year's study, Clark found that nearly 53% of his respondents thought "today's country music" was better than it was a year ago, while only 8.6% thought it was worse, with the remainder saying it was about the same. This year, those numbers have slipped, with less than 50% saying the music is better and 10.7% saying it's worse.
Last year, respondents' satisfaction with country radio trailed their happiness with the music only slightly: 45.6% thought their favorite country station was better than a year ago, and 8.6% thought it was worse. This year, there's a sharp drop. Only 34.2% think their favorite country station has gotten better, while 17.6% think it is worse-more than double last year's number. That tends to confirm the view of many of the group broadcasters interviewed for this week's "View From The Top" of country radio that the format's issues stem from what's between the records, not the music itself.
Unfortunately, what's between the records these days is a lot more commercials, something that Clark believes explains why country radio is getting lower scores from partisans than country music. Respondents were asked about spot load several different ways and showed increased concern about spot loads no matter how the question was asked: 82% cited commercials as what they'd like to hear country do less of, up from 73% last year. Nearly 74% asked for more music vs. 67% last year. And when asked what they disliked about country radio, more than 93% cited commercials, up from 87% last year.
While you'd expect commercials to be a perennial complaint for listeners, the increased dissatisfaction parallels the increased spot load of recent years. And on all three questions, complaints about commercials far outpaced any other dislike that listeners had. (The No. 2 dislike was traffic reports, which bothered about 28% of respondents.)
Here are some other findings from Clark's survey, published exclusively in Country Airplay Monitor:
- Almost half of the format's partisans are now listening to top 40 radio as well. Asked what other types of music they listened to, 48.7% cited top 40, up from 45.2% last year. The format's No. 2 sharer is album rock, off slightly from 40% to 38%. And nearly half (48%, up from 45%) are now watching VH1, although that's far short of the 90% who watch CMT.
- More than 65% of respondents say they'd like "more fast songs" on country radio, up slightly from 63% last year. Clark believes the tempo issue and the sharing issue are linked. "People are saying that some radio stations are becoming background music with too much slow material. You can see that there seems to be more sharing with pop stations-look at the tempo on those stations."
- There's an increase in requests for front-announcing (39% to 42%) and back-announcing (62% to 65%), as well as a 62.8% demand for "more information about the artist" (up slightly from last year).
- About 15% of respondents showed interest in a "yesterday and today" cluster, featuring artists who aren't commonly heard on country radio. That's up from about 12% last year but still far short of the 81% who voted for a cluster of country's current core artists. Only 4.5% expressed interest in a country gold cluster.
- While there's still a tendency by some country PDs to think of Internet users as not being their audience, 89% of respondents had visited an artist Web site, and nearly 50% had bought music on the Net. While you might expect high numbers from an online study, both figures were up from last year. When asked what would make them visit an artist site even more, the majority again cited "more current information about the artist."
Clark's study also asked respondents what they wanted to see most at country concerts. Far and away the greatest demand was for more autograph opportunities, up from 69% to 72%. Again, one might expect online country partisans to have a greater-than-usual interest in this area, but Clark sees this as symptomatic of how the artist/audience relationship declined after country's early-'90s boom. "The audience is starting to sense this, and this is something they want back," he says.
More of Clark's study is available at southeastcountry.com and CountryRadio.net.