The ratings company released some new data on the two formats Monday. Nielsen says, in 2015, the Urban Contemporary format gained 0.1% each month in Nielsen’s PPM ratings. The News/Talk format is also having a banner year, thanks to the election. At the persons 6+ level, News/Talk now represents a 10% share of all radio listening – a level it hasn’t seen since the last presidential election in 2012.
Urban Contemporary moved 3.5%-3.6%-3.7% from January to March among all listeners (6+). The format has also been climbing among adults 25-54, growing from 4.2% in January to register an all-time high of 4.4% in March. The biggest change since February occurred among Urban Contemporary’s core audience of adults 18-34, where the share jumped three-tenths of a point to a 6.9% share in March.
Urban Contemporary has catapulted into No. 4 on the list of most popular formats among Millennials, pushing Adult Contemporary down to No. 5 in the March 2016 National PPM Format Trends.
The excitement around the U.S. presidential election in 2016 continues to drive the audience of News/Talk. Nielsen says that among adults 18-34 this year, News/Talk rose from a 4.1% share in February to a 4.2% share in March. In News/Talk’s “money demo” of adults 25-54, the format climbed from a 6.9% share in February to a 7.0% share in March.
