Nielsen: Classic Hits Could Regain Summer Format Crown

As the "format of the summer" continues, Nielsen's July PPM results show Pop CHR, Country, AC and Urban are the top formats in July among Millennial listeners, based on share of audience.

The "format of the summer" is an annual accounting of how radio format audiences change during June, July and August compared with the first five months of the year.

Over the past six years, Pop CHR, Country, Classic Hits and Classic Rock have won this race, with Classic Rock doing so each of the last two years and Classic Hits the two years prior to that. But past history is not a guaranteed measure of future success.

Pop CHR, Country, AC and Urban are the top formats this July among Millennial listeners, based on share of audience. But look back just four short years and the landscape looked significantly different.

• Pop CHR since 2014 has seen its share among listeners 18-34 decline by nearly 20% (from 12.4% in July 2014 to 10.3% this year). 
• Country has rebounded in 2018 but is still down from its peak in 2013 and 2014 (2013 was the summer that Country won the "format of the summer" race).
• AC is enjoying a multi-year run of success both on a global basis and with Millennial audiences; the format's share among listeners 18-34 has increased 28% since 2014.
• Urban Contemporary has also risen steadily-particularly in the summer-going from the sixth-ranked format among Millennials in July 2014 (5.6% share) to the fourth-ranked this July (6.5% share).

As for Classic Rock and Classic Hits, Classic Hits had its best July book ever in PPM measurement, both with Millennial listeners and among the broader audience (age 6+), where it registered a 5.7% share.

This is ahead of the historical July pace for the format and ahead of where Classic Hits was in both 2014 and 2015, when it finished as the top format of the summer.

Classic Rock, on the other hand, dropped back slightly during the month, after seeing audience growth in both May and June. The format dipped back to pre-summer numbers across all three of the demographics Nielsen tracks regularly. Among all listeners 6+, Classic Rock went from 5.2% in June to 4.8% in July; among Millennials 4.5% in June to 4.2% in July; and with 25-to-54 year-olds 5.1% in June to 4.9% in July.

With only the August results still to come in, Nielsen is looking at the four formats that have positioned themselves for the home stretch in the format of the summer race. The Format of the Summer is based on the format with the most uplift in audience between June and August, compared to the first five months of the year.