The Holiday Hits Just Keep On Coming....

A/C Format Holiday Shares: Copyright 2019 The Nielsen Company, All Rights Reserved

According to Nielsen, this most-recent holiday season turned out to be yet another record breaker for Adult Contemporary (AC) stations broadcasting the “all-Christmas” format.

The release of Nielsen’s holiday book portable people meter (PPM) ratings, covering the period from Dec. 6, 2018 to Jan. 2, 2019, confirms that the appetite for holiday music—particularly on AC stations, which tend to go “all-Christmas” more than any other format—keeps growing each year.

The AC format, now the second-most-listened-to format during the balance of the year across the PPM markets (behind News/Talk), set a record in 2017 for share of audience during the holiday survey (13.9% AQH share among listeners 6+).

AC then followed up that performance in 2018 by setting another new record in 2018, hitting a 14.3% share, which is the highest number on record for the format under PPM measurement.

Change In 6+ Audience Share For Other Music Formats

At the same time, the start of holiday music on the radio (which normally happens around Thanksgiving) affects all major music formats as listening habits and consumer tastes shift. Historically, AC is the format that gains the most audience share during the end of the year, while other formats stay flat or even see declines as radio audiences migrate to and from holiday programming at that time of year.