Apologies to the Kentucky Derby – known as the fastest two minutes in sports – for this headline. But with 90 days of data now available, it’s time to at least peek at the impact of Nielsen’s recent change in quarter-hour accreditation from five minutes to three.
Let’s start by reviewing the basics. This change only impacted PPM markets; diary methodology is unchanged. Previously, the standard to receive credit for a quarter hour of listening required a respondent to be tuned to a station for a minimum of five non-consecutive minutes within the quarter hour.
The five-minute standard, which had been around since the dawn of time, no longer reflected the reality of today’s media landscape. In comparison, YouTube counts a video view after just 30 seconds, and other formats are even quicker. So, in January, the change was made to credit a station for a quarter hour of listening after a respondent was tuned in for three non-consecutive minutes in a quarter hour.
Last week, Nielsen Managing Director Rich Tunkel and VP of Research, Jon Miller, held an online seminar examining the impact of the change so far. Probably the biggest takeaway for the industry overall is that audience levels in the first quarter were the highest since 2022 and approximately 15% higher than they were in the fourth quarter of 2024.
To be clear, this likely doesn’t mean more people are listening to the radio. It indicates that more quarter hours of listening are being captured. Meaning there was a large amount of listening that previously fell below the five-minute threshold and therefore didn’t qualify as a quarter hour of listening.
This is great news for your sales team, who now has more audience to sell. On average, according to Tunkel and Miller, most schedules will now deliver 19% more Gross Ratings Points and 15% more impressions than before, with increased reach and frequency that varies depending on the size of the schedule. That means the commercials are worth more, and hopefully, they can be sold at a higher price.
All that’s great, but what we’re here to talk about is what the change means for Classic Rock and Classic Hits stations.
Let’s start with the big picture. Comparing AQH for Persons 6+ from last fall to this winter, on average across the PPM-rated markets, Classic Hits saw an increase of 17%, Classic Rock was just behind at 15%, and Adult Hits grew 14%.
To put that in perspective, of the twenty-two formats Tunkel and Miller showed results for, five saw a smaller increase while eleven saw bigger jumps, ranging from 18-43%, with Contemporary Christian and All News seeing the biggest increases.
Drill deeper and the picture is rosier. Miller shared some additional data with me that shows the change in Persons 25-54 in prime time (Mon-Fri 6a-7p). Classic Rock showed an AQH increase of 20%; Classic Hits grew by 18%; and Adult Hits jumped 21%. That illustrates the draw of these formats in the money demo when listening audiences are bigger.
He also supplied me with format-specific vital signs reports, which show performance data that includes all the PPM stations in a particular format. Looking at Classic Rock, when you compare October of last year to March of this year, the notable change is in the number of occasions being recorded weekly, which jumps from 7.9 to 8.3. Classic Hits takes a similar jump, going from 6.6 to 6.9 weekly occasions.
That leads to growth in each of the two ratings building blocks: cume and TSL. Daily Cume Rating for Classic Rock is up 3.0 – 3.3, with weekly up 10.3 to 11.2, while weekly TSL jumped 1:56 to 2:07.
For Classic Hits, Weekly Cume Rating was up 13.2 to 13.8, with TSL going up by four minutes. P1 listeners to both formats showed similar increases. Weekly P1 occasions for Classic Rock improved from 15.2 to 16.5, and Classic Hits grew from 12.7 to 14.2,
Boiling it down to a more PPM-friendly summary, here are my takeaways from looking at this data:
While they didn’t see the largest gains from the three-minute rule change, Classic Rock and Hits certainly weren’t left behind; the impact on listening was somewhere in the middle of the pack.
The growth in the number of occasions being captured and the resulting impact on ratings only further heightens the need to recycle listeners across quarter hours, dayparts, and days.
The more times you bring listeners back to your station, the more chances you get to capture three minutes of listening. That will drive ratings more than trying to increase the duration of time a listener stays with your station when they tune in.
Diary markets shouldn’t ignore these lessons. Even if the measurement is different, people everywhere use the radio in the same way. Seeing how many occasions of listening last only three minutes should be a reminder that the emphasis on recycling and getting more occasions of listening is equally important. The more times they tune in, the more top-of-mind awareness and higher likelihood of being written down.
While this change is good for the radio industry overall, so far it’s not significantly better or worse for Classic Rock and Hits stations than most other formats. Miller reminds me that even three months of data isn’t a lot, so I’ll check back in on this periodically, but until then, let’s get back to work driving those occasions.
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Mike Stern is a Classic Rock columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. He has been with Jacobs Media consulting stations in the Classic Rock, Rock, Alternative and AAA world for more than a decade. Prior to that he programmed stations in Chicago, Detroit, Denver Las Vegas and other markets. He also worked as News/Talk Editor for Radio and Records, wrote about Top 40 Radio for Billboard Magazine and had his own radio talent coaching business called Talent Mechanic.
