Country radio grapples with shifting demographics
By Ken Tucker Sat Jan 27, 6:17 AM ET
NASHVILLE (Billboard) - When Los Angeles country music station KZLA changed format last August, alarms sounded in the country music radio and record communities.
The nation's No. 2 market joined New York, which has lacked a country station since 2002, and San Francisco, which bowed out of the country game in early 2005, as the third among the top five markets with no FM country outlet. (Two Los Angeles-area AM stations recently switched to country.)
Among the reasons for the KZLA switch: It's increasingly difficult to succeed with country radio in a market where Caucasians carry less and less sway. A 2006 Arbitron report estimated that only 5.4% of country radio's nationwide audience is Hispanic and 2.3% is black, while 92.3% of country listeners fall into Arbitron's "other" category (which includes Caucasians and Pacific Islanders). But in recent years, U.S. Census figures show, the Hispanic portion of Los Angeles County's population (which grew to 44.6% in 2000 from 37.8% in 1990) has passed up the county's non-Hispanic white population (which slipped to 31.1% of the total in 2000 from 40.8% in 1990).
At the annual Country Radio Seminar, to be held February 28-March 2 in Nashville, Edison Media Research and industry trade group Country Radio Broadcasters will present results of a collaborative study of the relationship of Hispanics with country radio and music. And meanwhile, with demographics shifting across the United States, country radio will have to adapt if it hopes to maintain its role as radio's top format. (As of December 2006 there were 2,047 country stations in the United States, according to M Street Journal. News/talk was second with 2,007 stations.)
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By Ken Tucker Sat Jan 27, 6:17 AM ET
NASHVILLE (Billboard) - When Los Angeles country music station KZLA changed format last August, alarms sounded in the country music radio and record communities.
The nation's No. 2 market joined New York, which has lacked a country station since 2002, and San Francisco, which bowed out of the country game in early 2005, as the third among the top five markets with no FM country outlet. (Two Los Angeles-area AM stations recently switched to country.)
Among the reasons for the KZLA switch: It's increasingly difficult to succeed with country radio in a market where Caucasians carry less and less sway. A 2006 Arbitron report estimated that only 5.4% of country radio's nationwide audience is Hispanic and 2.3% is black, while 92.3% of country listeners fall into Arbitron's "other" category (which includes Caucasians and Pacific Islanders). But in recent years, U.S. Census figures show, the Hispanic portion of Los Angeles County's population (which grew to 44.6% in 2000 from 37.8% in 1990) has passed up the county's non-Hispanic white population (which slipped to 31.1% of the total in 2000 from 40.8% in 1990).
At the annual Country Radio Seminar, to be held February 28-March 2 in Nashville, Edison Media Research and industry trade group Country Radio Broadcasters will present results of a collaborative study of the relationship of Hispanics with country radio and music. And meanwhile, with demographics shifting across the United States, country radio will have to adapt if it hopes to maintain its role as radio's top format. (As of December 2006 there were 2,047 country stations in the United States, according to M Street Journal. News/talk was second with 2,007 stations.)
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