So What About Radio?

The past few essays have focused on the profile and consumer habits of heavy TV viewers. The fact is that, in most local markets, TV viewership is dominated by an older, lower-income portion of the population. Using both Media Heaviness (essay 8) and Quintile Analysis (essay 12), a story can be built to show that those who consume the most broadcast TV are not ideal candidates for many advertisers.

It is easy to point out the weaknesses of other services. However, negative selling by itself is just that – negative. Radio needs to show that its heavy listeners are the right profile for advertisers. As in the previous essay, we will focus on quintile analysis. What is the profile of the 20% of the 18+ population who are the heaviest radio users? In most cases, they are demographically and socioeconomically more desirable than the heaviest TV users. Below is an example that compares radio’s heaviest listeners to television’s heaviest viewers.

Clearly, radio delivers the 25-54 segment of this market’s population while heavy TV viewers are concentrated in the 55+ demo.

This like-to-like comparison can also be done for any qualitative category, like annual household income.

In this case nearly one-third (32.6%) of all heavy TV viewers have an annual household income below $50,000. Conversely, nearly one-third (31.5%) of all heavy radio listeners have an annual household income of $150,000 or more. And, over half (53.0%) have an annual household income of $100,000 or more. Only 43.2% of heavy TV viewers fall into that category.

Does this valuable comparison work in your market?