CLASSICAL MUSIC RADIO REMAINS POPULAR AFTER A CENTURY ON THE RADIO

It was almost 100 years ago that Classical music was first heard daily on the radio. In 1921 WRR-AM in Dallas aired the first regularly scheduled Classical program. Now almost every major city in the country has a station dedicated to Classical music.

Today we explore one of our research questions: Will Classical music stations keep defying demographic gravity by adding new listeners and/or maintaining their current listening base?

We are pleased to say the answer is YES!

According to Nielsen Audio, Classical music on the radio continues to reach the second highest number of weekly listeners – 4,315,900 – on 27 full-time stations in Nielsen PPM markets. Only NPR News/Talk stations reach more people each week in PPM markets.

Our look at the performance of public radio’s four major programming formats continues with a close-up view of listeners and listening to full-time Classical music stations.

NOTE: Tomorrow will report on 56 full-time NPR News/Talk stations. Then, on Friday we will at how well NPR News/Talk stations are doing compared to commercial News/Talk stations.

There is good news and not-so-good news when the PPM data from Fall 2018 is compared to Fall 2016. 

First the good news:

As you can see on the chart on the left, of the stations with an AQH share above 1.0%, 65% increased their AQH share between Fall 2016 and Fall 2018. 

WETA had the biggest AQH share gain and the largest AQH share percentage (3.5%) of all of the Classical stations in PPM markets. 

KDFC, WBJC, KUSC, KING and WCLV also had significant gains in AQH share.

The not-so-good news is that the number of estimated weekly listeners to the 27 full-time Classical music stations fell 5% in Fall 2018 compared with Fall 2016. 

Only 38% of the Classical stations in Nielsen PPM markets had more weekly listeners in Fall 2018 as they did in Fall 2016.

Some of the stations that lost estimated weekly listeners are icons of Classical music radio: WGUC in Cincinnati lost 32%, KXPR in Sacramento lost 27%, KQAC in Portland and WFCL in Nashville both lost 26% of their weekly listeners in Fall 2018 compared with Fall 2016.

But there were stations with big increases in estimated weekly listeners. KCNV in Las Vegas was up 44%, and small-but-proud WJMC in Providence was up 37% and WSMR in Tampa was up 30%.

The Top 10 stations have 78% of the listeners to full-time Classical stations.  The ten stations combined lost 4.6% of their estimated weekly listeners between Fall 2016 and Fall 2018.

WETA illustrates a trend we are seeing with stations of all formats: 

AQH shares are up while the number of estimated weekly listeners fell. 

This means fewer people heard Classical music on WETA in Fall 2018 than Fall 2016, but the people who did hear WETA listened longer and/or more often. This is “new normal” for radio.

In the top ten stations, WCRB, KING, KQAC and KBYU all lost estimated weekly listeners at a double digit pace.

The same pattern is occurring with stations in the 11 – 20 group. 

WCPE in Raleigh-Durham lost 17% of its weekly listeners and WDAV in Charlotte lost 12%.

The bottom two stations in group three show what a tough road it is to air Classical music on HD-2 channels without a translator to get the programming on the FM dial where the listeners are.

Readers might wonder who KVTI in Seattle is. KVTI repeats Northwest Public Radio’s 24/7 Classical format and originates in Pullman, Washington, 350 miles to the east.

Of course, the most important  statistic about Classical music on the radio  is the age of the listeners. The chart on the right, courtesy of Classical Music Rising, shows the reality of the format’s demographic challenge. Most listeners to Classical music on the radio are in there 60s and 70s. But still, the resiliency of Classical music radio shows the format is nowhere near a "tipping point."