Now that Nielsen has issued the first monthly PPM reports that incorporate the “three minute rule”, everyone involved in PPM markets wants to know how the estimates changed. Let’s take a look.
First, Pierre Bouvard, with help from “legendary” Westwood One VP-Research Scott Anekstein, released a solid compilation of year-over-year data combining all PPM markets except the delayed West Palm Beach.
West Palm is small enough that it could barely affect the totals. And while Scott may not be “legendary”, I’ve worked with him, and you can take his work to the bank.
Last Thursday, I watched a webinar with Mike McVay and Steve Allen hosted by Radio Ink editor and WKU alum Cameron Coats. Steve sees the data in his work with Research Director Inc. and Mike always has some solid insight (full disclosure: Mike hired me at Cumulus in 2016, but I’d say good things about Mike anyway as would most of you!).
No data was shared, but Steve noted that the results were all over the place. Mike suggested that there were some market-level effects, for example, the Eagles in the Super Bowl could have an effect on Philadelphia estimates separate from the three-minute rule. If you missed the webinar, here’s a link.
As this column is released on Tuesday morning, I expect to be part of the Radio Rendezvous with Jon Miller of Nielsen later today. Hopefully, Jon will have some data to share with us, but in the meantime, I thought I’d prevail upon some friends to see how the results turned out.
The change increased the numbers, but not the percentages you may have expected. The simple reason is that what Nielsen showed the industry was a specific month comparing the three minute rule to the five minute rule. We don’t have that option, so the best comparison is year over year, in other words, comparing January 2025 to January 2024, but this is not the “apples to apples” that Nielsen presented.
Another twist in comparing the two years is that the January 2025 survey period started later. Every number of years, Nielsen adds a week to the Holiday survey to keep the monthlies relatively close to the named month. Holiday 2024 was one of the years with five weeks. The January 2024 survey period was January 4-31. The January 2025 survey period was January 9-February 5. The difference is probably small but worth noting.
Nielsen’s initial data using “apples to apples” masked the fact that radio listening has been on the decline for years. In other words, if Nielsen says that the three-minute rule will increase AQH by 20-25%, deduct some percentage points from that figure to account for the year-over-year attrition in listening.
The runs I requested covered one daypart (Monday-Friday 6AM-7PM) and broke the demos down by 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54. The last two are not standard Nielsen weighting cells, but using five year age ranges (45-49 and 50-54) was just too tight for my taste.
Listening was up as expected. Persons 18-24 was up over 14% year over year, while P25-34 increased by 7.5%. P35-44 was up 16.2% and P45-54 increased 11.8%. That’s based on actual people, in other words, New York and LA carry much more weight than Memphis and Hartford. When you look at the average of increases which makes every market equal, the gains are four to five points higher. In all, this is good news.
But if nothing else changes, we’ll see declines start again when the January 2026 monthlies are released. The industry has a year to convince current listeners to spend more time with our medium and to cajole those who have left to come back before listening levels decline again.
You know the issues that hold back any potential rebound for our medium. Let’s fix (lower) the spot loads, make sure the streams sound as good as on-air, promote and market, and instead of cutting personnel, let’s add people! During last week’s webinar, Mike McVay said it’s time to try something new.
It’s easy for me to spend someone else’s money and I don’t have to answer to any shareholders, but as I write this, iHeart (IHRT) stock is under $2, you can buy a share of Cumulus (CMLS) for just a bit more than two quarters, Beasley (BBGI) is down over 60% year over year, and Urban One stock is around $1.40. Saga and Townsquare stocks are both in better shape compared to the others, but would you invest your money in these companies today? Apparently, financial success is not rampant for the current stewards of broadcast radio licenses.
If Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is right that the AM bill will be signed by President Trump, that’s far from a cure-all for radio’s problems. The NAB might push through more ownership deregulation, but will anything change? Will owning even more stations in a market bring our medium back to prominence or will this be an opportunity to spend even less? More broadly, is it too late to save US broadcast radio?
The industry has been given a short window to invest in the medium. That’s no guarantee of success, but if we don’t, we know the outcome. Thank you, Nielsen Audio, for the opportunity.
Let’s meet again next week.
