Nielsen: Sports Radio Listening Up 30% Since June

RADIO ONLINE | Friday, December 8, 2017

Nielsen

With the release of Nielsen's November PPM audience trends, Sports radio outlets are seeing the annual upswing during the most important stretch of the calendar for sports listening. It happens each year when football moves back to the top of the fandom food chain and the major league baseball season concludes after a month of playoffs. Since June, the audience shares for sports-formatted stations have risen more than 30%.

Both the National and American League Championship baseball series took place during the November survey (which ran from October 12 to November 8), as did the World Series, which went to a deciding game seven for the second year in a row. Nielsen reports that these contests had a notable impact on sports radio listening, especially since the teams hailed from major markets. In each of the past two years, major market teams have played in the World Series, and fan attention has been enormous.

The following chart details the average in-game audience share for the local-market flagship broadcast stations, including both the English and Spanish-language affiliates.

But radio listening didn't just spike in markets where there was local interest. Sports radio across the U.S. saw upticks this month, and the World Series was clearly a factor. However, the size of the audience share for the specific flagship stations in the local market varies year-to-year due to many factors, including the size of that market's total radio-listening pie, start times of the games due to time zone differences, TV viewership and fan passion.

On the music radio fron, November offers a look at how preferences have changed in the past five years. When assessing the audience share among Millennials (those aged 18-to-34), Nielsen says there are three formats which share a significant amount of audience, depending on the music cycle: mainstream CHR, which is the top-ranked format for Millennials, it's rhythmic-leaning cousin Rhythmic CHR, and of course Urban Contemporary which often identifies as hip-hop.

Since 2012, Urban has moved from being the seventh-most popular format among Millennials to the fifth-most popular today (rising from a 5.0% share to a 6.5% share). At the same time, Rhythmic CHR has declined from the third-ranked format to the sixth-ranked format now (falling from a 7.2% share to a 4.9% share). Nielsen reports CHR has maintained the top spot and is one of the largest radio formats overall, but over the past 18 months the format has trended flat to slightly down. This final chart tracks the 18-34 shares for each format since the start of 2012.