PPM: Beginning Of The End For Talk Radio Fromat

That's what media pundit/critic Jerry Del Colliano believes.  In a posting on Inside Music Media, he gives the talk format on radio,  as we know it, another seven years.  The reason: Arbitron's new PPM rating system and shorter attention spans.  After that, we apparently can expect the talk format to start disappearing from terrestial radio much like Smooth/Cool Jazz formats.

Del Colliano cites how the average talk or news/talk station saw a dramatic decline from 4.6 (12+ average quarter hour) in its four final diary surveys to a 4.0 in April-July People Meter ratings – a 13% audience loss. Some 40 stations in 18 markets were in the study.

He writes:

Older listeners – the kind talk radio still delivers in great numbers --- have nice long attention spans the better to sit through rants, raves, stop sets and promos. It’s all worth it to them to hear their favorite talk show host.

But young demographics have other alternatives.

Facebook has for the first time surpassed Google as the online place where Internet users spent most of their time according to a comScore research findings.

In August, online users spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, or about 9.9% of the total time spent online compared to 39.8 million minutes (9.6%) for Google.

Del Colliano notes PPM is forcing radio to cover more topics per hour, sometimes 4 to 5 topics instead of 1 or 2.

He quotes TRN's Phil Boyce, former PD at WABC in NYC “In focus groups where dial testing is used to measure talk topics, listener interest wanes after about three minutes on a good topic and after about 30 seconds on a poor topic."

The myth of Gen Y is that they have short attention spans and the reality is that all of us have increasingly short attention spans.

In a nutshell, Del Colliano writes:

Older listeners continue to gravitate to longer radio listening sessions in traditional listening locations guaranteeing an older skewed demographic.

The People Meter does not provide the drive-by listening advantage that hit radio stations get when they are played in public and their encoded signal is picked up by meter wearers who may or may not actually be listening to the station their device is recording.

Attention spans have deteriorated in the general population providing an extra challenge to a format that always did well in attracting long listening periods.

Read more here.