Three Vying For Summer's Top Format

July's Hot Formats 6+

Labor Day is right around the corner, which means August is the last lap for viable formats to get consideration for Format of Summer 2015 Honors.

Nielsen this week pointed out 2015 saw Pop Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) and Classic Rock jump out to an early lead in March, with Hot Adult Contemporary (AC) and Country closing the gap in April and Urban Contemporary and Classic Hits joining the race in May. In June, however, Classic Hits, Country and Hot AC began to pull away from the field, and that trend continued this month with the release of Nielsen’s July potable people meter (PPM) data.

July's Hot Formats 18-34

With just one month left to go in the race, one of these three remaining contenders should be crowned the 2015 summer winner unless a dark horse makes up some significant ground in August.

Hot AC is currently the hottest of the three formats in contention overall, setting continuous listening records this year. But based on the rules of this race—comparing the average of January through May to June, July and August—Classic Hits is the current leader (with overall audience shares up 9% in June and July compared to the beginning of the year) followed by Country (up 6%) and Hot AC (up 4%).

July's Hot formats 25-54

And during July month, Classic Hits continued its seasonal upswing by increasing audience share among listeners 6+ (trending 5.4%-5.5% from June to July), 18-34 (3.4%-3.5%) and 25-54 (4.7%-4.8%). These results are the best for the format since last August when Classic Hits charged through the field to win the 2014 summer format race. Another strong showing next month could secure the first back-to-back winner in this race since its inception in 2011.

Keeping pace is Country, which started slowly rebuilding its audience shares in January after a brief downtrend at the end of 2014. Since then it's risen by more than half a share-point among both audiences 6 and older (from 7.5% in January to 8.2% in June and July), as well as the 25-54 crowd (from 7.5% in January to 8.1% in June and July). But the real story for Country this year has been in the 18-34 arena. There, the format has jumped a full share point (from 8.6% in January to 9.6% in July) and sits just off the pace of 2013’s summer results when Country went home the winning format.