September 14, 2020, Issue 722
Country Rides Out The Cume Storm
While a cursory glance at Country Aircheck’s August 2020 PPM Scoreboard (here, pg. 14) shows a drop in overall cume – down 1.37% (359,800) compared to the previous month and 21.66% year-over-year – a review of Country and all-format cume data shows a slight rebound occurring from the earlier pandemicladen months of 2020. Rewind and revisit an in-depth analysis of the early coronavirus cume crater in the May 26 Country Aircheck Weekly, then read on for a look at how the format has performed in recent months. Wave On Wave: Taking a wide-angle look at cume numbers for all formats in PPM rated markets, including HD and streaming stations where monitored, radio listening as a whole was off 31.34% from Nov. ’19-Aug. ’20 – 477,823,000 to 328,063,200. Country’s fall-off was notably less severe, dropping 20.03% from Nov. ’19-Aug. ’20 – 33,758,800 to 26,996,900. Breaking down the all-format cume numbers into AM/FM terrestrial, HD and streaming silos, terrestrial-only decreases match the aggregated totals, showing a 31.33% decrease from Nov. ’19-Aug. ’20 – 470,600,700 to 323,167,200. Taking a look at HD-only cume numbers, the dip was less severe than terrestrial, showing a 26.65% decline from Nov. ’19-Aug. ’20 – 5,063,400 to 3,713,800 – while the segment showing the largest cume erosion is streaming, which saw a 42.96% decrease from Nov. ’19-Aug. ’20 down to 1,231,400 from 2,158,900. The long-term trend for streaming cume is far more telling than earlier views, where results from March to April showed a 2.8% increase, up from 1,683,100 to 1,729,800. Moving into 2020, radio listening as a whole was off 25.14% January-August (438,224,200 to 328,063,200). During the same period, Country formats only experienced a 12.43% dip, 30,828,200-26,996,900 compared to all other formats, which cumulatively dropped 26.10% from 407,396,000 to 301,066,300. A high-level look at all-format totals in terrestrial, HD and streaming cume numbers show 25.10%, 25.62% and 31.29% declines, respectively, from January to August. Of note is an increase in cume for terrestrial (15.24%) and HD (8.35%) (continued on page 5)
Sweet Streams (Are Made of This): Columbia’s Tenille Townes and BMLGR’s Riley Green were surprised with their ACM New Male Artist and New Female Artist trophies Saturday (9/12) during The Opry Livestream. Watch here. Pictured (l-r) are the Opry’s Dan Rogers, Warner/WMN’s Ashley McBryde, Townes, Green, Opry member Mark Wills and the ACM’s Damon Whiteside.
Updating The Interview: Tim Roberts
When he spoke with Country Aircheck for The Interview (in the September print issue here), Entercom Format Captain & VP/ Country Tim Roberts was in early planning for a format-wide restructuring (Breaking News 9/10) and didn’t broach the subject. With his programming team announced earlier today (9/14), Roberts offers this supplement to The Interview. CA: How did this reimagining of Entercom Country unfold, and was it in response to audience changes brought on by the pandemic? TR: No, it’s not at all related to the pandemic. Tim Roberts We thought it was time for a really different way of looking at the business and how it’s changing. People are consuming media differently and we wanted to adapt to what listeners want. This was all targeted to the listener.
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