EDISON RESEARCH & NPR DEBUT ‘SPOKEN WORD’ AUDIO REPORT • TEN MARKETS WHERE ‘SPOKEN WORD’ IS STRONG • MORE OCTOBER PPM RATINGS

Ken Nordine

“Spoken Word” is term that has several meanings. At its core, Spoken Word is a vocal performance rather than words on a page.

The term is used to describe an on-stage poetry performance, the message of rap and hip-hop tunes, and an oral history interview on C-SPAN or NPR news and as an art form like the late Ken Nordine’s creation Word Jazz.Nordine described Word Jazz this way:

 “Word Jazz is like morphing word-pictures into something that looks like it was done under the influence of LSD.”

See our January 2019 tribute to Ken Nordine here.

In a less trippy, more conventional use, Spoken Word is used to describe radio programs and podcasts that use little or no music and relies on talking voices for most of the content. 

On radio, most often news, talk and sports programming are classified as Spoken Word.

Next week, Edison Research and NPR are sponsoring a webinar where the findings of The Spoken Word Audio Report will be presented. The webinar is happening on Tuesday, November 12 from 2pm to 3pm ET. It is free. More information and registration can be found here.

The presenters are Meg Goldthwaite, Chief Marketing Officer at NPR and Megan Lazovick, VP of Edison Research.

SPOKEN WORD PROGRAMMING ON RADIO

The popularity of Spoken Word programming on radio is different from market to market. Last September, Mike Kinosian, Managing Editor of TALKERS [link], compiled a list of PPM markets where Spoken Word performs the best.

Kinosian added the AQH shares for commercial and public stations with news, talk and sports formats from the August 2019 Nielsen PPM ratings to get a Spoken Word AQH in each of the 48 Nielsen Audio PPM markets.

TOP MARKETS FOR ‘SPOKEN WORD’ RADIO PROGRAMMING

1. Washington, DC Spoken Word AQH share 24.9

2t. Boston 23.2

2t. Minneapolis-St, Paul 23.2

4. Long Island 18.1

5t. San Francisco 18.0

5t. Milwaukee

7. Raleigh-Durham 17.5

8. Philadelphia 17.4

9. Cincinnati 17.1

10t. Kansas City 17.0

10t. San Jose 17.0

OCTOBER 2019 NONCOM PPM RATINGS: KOPB RACKS UP BIG NUMBERS

KOPB is a great station and Portland is an NPR kind of city.

KOPB’s 9.1 AQH share makes it the number two NPR News/Talk station in the nation.

Classical KQAC is having significant growth in listeners and listening.

NPR News/Talk KUER has a solid market lead in AQH share but Classical KBYU is the top noncom station in estimated weekly listeners.

These are tough days for KNPR. In addition to financial difficulties, KNPR is dealing with anemic Nielsen PPM ratings.