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Newspapers not alone in watching audience age

Michael Wolff writes in Vanity Fair all about his lunch with an unnamed billionaire who, "doesn't have a clue" and wants to buy one of the major newspapers now on the block.  Wolff says the desire is fueled by the idea of a really, really big vanity printing press, and a failure to understand that, at 63, or more, everybody's not like them.  They may read papers, but nobody else does.

"Newspaper readers (as well as broadcast-news audiences) are old and growing ever older (on an actuarial table, you can plot the newspaper's last day)," Wolff wrote.  He concludes, "There are, effectively, no new newspaper readers."

So when I saw the winter Arbitron radio ratings for a Top 5 market, I shouldn't have been surprised.  But I was.  While the news and talk stations were in the top 10, thanks to morning drive, it appears there are few listeners under the age of 35. Among 18-to-34-years old, no news or talk station ranked higher than 16th.

Can this be fixed?  NPR wants to try, launching in September a Morning Edition-like show aimed at 25-to-44 year olds. A major market all news broadcast executive said this was a smart strategy, perhaps looking at his own station’s audience makeup.  Tellingly, its programming includes lots of commercials for high-end cars, concert pianos, and furniture stores; no movies, clubs, or concerts.

Another report by Arbitron shows that all news stations don’t attract a young audience. At all.  Just 1.5% of the listeners to all newsers across the country were between the ages of 25-44. Truth be told, this number has not changed a smidge since 1998.

Wolff says newspapers are simply run out of readers.  Could news/talk radio could run out of listeners?

NPR sets younger morning show for September

Agreeing that the best way to beat the competition is to attack your self, National Public Radio announced plans for a new morning news block aimed at 25-44 year olds.  Ken Stern, CEO of NPR, said, "One size doesn't fit all," said Stern. "This ... group is underserved by the media seeking smart, thoughtful content relevant to their lives.  This is a logical opportunity."

The news and information service will be carried on broadcast stations, HD Radio multicast channels, Web sites, and via satellite. 

A number of major market news and talk station program directors agreed during e-mail exchanges with me.  One colorful commercial broadcaster said, "The 'evil empire' finally does something right."  Another, in New York City, said, NPR’s catering to a younger market just makes it even tougher for his legacy operation.

Stern said NPR will hire hosts and staff for the new project which will be produced from the network's New York bureau.  Multimedia will be an integral part of the project, Stern said, suggesting a strong Web presence which will include video.

NPR said its “Morning Edition” newsmagazine is the to-rated morning radio program in the U.S.  with 13 million listeners weekly.

Xm-irius?

Over the holiday, The New York Times warmed up the speculation about a Sirius/XM Radio merger. 

Every time this story gets rehashed, I'm amused at the enthusiastic quotes from the Sirius side.  This time it was the CFO saying, "Clearly, a merger makes sense from an investor's point of view to reduce costs."  XM is observing radio silence on the subject.

Both services are losing lots of money. One radio industry analyst suggests the problem is, "There are not as many people willing to pay for radio as these companies thought there would be in the '90s" when the FCC was allocating licenses.  Allen Sniffen, who is Webmaster of a New York City radio message board, also has a suggestion: sell the razors, give away the blades.

"Give away a chunk of programming for free," he wrote.  "Make people buy the radios ...give them a chunk of (channels) ... put commercials on those channels."  Advertisers won't object.  As Holland Cooke, a radio programming consultant wrote in his latest client newsletter, it's all 'radio' to the sponsors ... AM, FM, HD, satellite. If there's an audience, they will come.

Then Sniffen says, after people have gotten use to sat radio, since they have the receivers, they'll want some of the premium stuff, like maybe the NFL, or Howard Stern, or Oprah.  "In the end," Sniffen says, "I think you’ll have more subscriptions than you have now and an additional revenue stream from the free channels with commercials."

No question that free works.  Over the holidays I began listening to XM because its holiday music was available as part of my DirecTV subscription.  I kept listening New Year's eve, when Wolfman Jack played 60s tunes for our party.  A modest number of commercials would not have been unacceptable.