The Graying Of African America

They're Mellowing Not Fermenting - So Who's Beaming To The Boomers?

When the Fall Arbitron sweeps begin next week, a lot of stations will be weighing alternatives, examining under-performing dayparts, and asking questions. One of the questions the smart ones will be asking is, "Who's going after the upper demographics --he young baby boomers?"

One of the other questions they should be asking is, "How can I convert samplers to partisans?" In other words, how can we grow some new cume? Every station needs to invite new cume on an on-going basis. You've got to get some new people to listen to your station. You can't have average-quarter-hours (AQH) without cume.

Mathematically, attrition is a fact of life. So just where is this new cume going to come from? Well, one of the places it could come from is an often-ignored segment of the population -- the upper demographics, the young baby boomers. We spend so much time trying to figure out how to get the 18-34 year olds to listen that we sometimes forget their parents can swell those ratings and fix on our frequencies, too.

We're going to share a few thoughts and offer a couple of secrets that could bring a few more mature quarter-hours to your side of the board.

For the most part, urban radio in 2006 is still concentrating its efforts on a younger audience. Nervous executives seem convinced that advertisers want those demographics, and never mind that the over 40 set has more spending power than the 18-34's. The simple truth seems to be that radio is no longer very interested in that long-coddled generation known as the baby boomers, not to mention the baby boomers' elders. You would think sponsors would want those who have teenagers or grown kids, homes mostly paid for, and a little more paper in their pockets.

The companies who own our stations say they want to appeal to the masses, but the truth is, the masses have become very fragmented. And the older demographics are increasingly being lured to public radio, smooth jazz, satellite radio's special programming, or they're getting in their cars and playing their own iPods. Many are selecting programming from a variety of sources which can now be downloaded right into their cell phones.

Urban radio's rich past takes another hit as it goes about making itself blander, less idiosyncratic, and, with the abundance of syndicated programming (especially in morning drive), less local. But there is a generation that finds itself cut off from a mother lode of music and compelling programming in urban radio's often-futile attempts to be all things to all listeners. It's one more way we measure the changing of the generations.

While it's a known fact that tight focus can and often does bring about broad results, adjusting that focus to include music and programming that could bring back some of the audience that has gone to smooth jazz, public radio, and Jack (and may eventually find its way to "Movin'") should be the goal of every urban adult station.

The Forgotten Generation

In a future editorial we will examine how to re-focus even a straight-ahead urban station to make it more mass appeal. The key to both urban and urban adult formats is to take a good look at the needs and likes of the forgotten generation -- the baby boomers.

By sheer force of its numbers, this forgotten generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964 has created its own reality. Even though Arbitron tracks the age of its respondents right up through the 70's and 80's, the demographics that are most attractive to buyers are still 25-54. Smack dab in the middle of those digits are the baby boomers.

Baby boomers -- all 78 million of them -- trampled boisterously through every facet of American life, shattering convention, rewriting the rules, pushing, pulling and shaping things to their liking before moving on to the next stage.

Born between the first underwater test of the atomic bomb and the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, they defined their tumultuous times even as they were defined by them. Radio, music, fashion, sexuality, race, religion, rebellion, drugs, law, politics, gender, family, marketing, the media, the military and the workplace; for better or worse, boomers remade them all.

As the leading edge of the baby boomer continues to age even more gracefully, they don't stop listening to the radio; they just switch stations or turn the radio off. And let's not forget that this group often controls or influences others' dial choices. If those frustrated fingers are forced to find a new frequency, we are failing.

The generation that didn't trust anyone over 30 is suddenly crossing the threshold into senior-land. And, true to form, they're not taking it lying down. Members of this cohort see themselves as different from their parents at 50. They are healthier, in better shape and younger-looking, even without Botox. They'll also live longer, and tend to think and feel younger than the number 50 implies.

"When I think of my mother at 45, active, vibrant, very involved, that's how I feel now. It does seem like 60 [today] could be the new 45," said social worker Evelyn Savido, a western Pennsylvanian, who turns 50 next month and who recently began taking African drumming lessons.

"I think we're going to rewrite what retirement means," said nonprofit consultant Kate Dewey, who just celebrated her 47th birthday. "What we do and how we look will be very different than prior generations. It's not going to be a passive experience."

Some 3.4 million babies were born in the postwar exuberance of 1946, which 600,000 more than in the year before. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the year Dr. Benjamin Spock published his revolutionary parenting guide, "Baby and Child Care."

Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were born in 1946, along with a long roster of other famous people, from Candace Bergen and Reggie Jackson to Connie Chung and Danny Glover. That relatively high percentage says more about how few younger people live here than it does about how many boomers remain. Some areas of the country lost more than others.

Let's take a quick look at a section of the country where I grew up, Metropolitan Pittsburgh. It lost more population in the 1980s than any other urban area. The collapse of steel as well as the loss of Gulf Oil and other major corporations drove away thousands of people in their prime working years. When the boomers left, they took their future children and grandchildren with them. As a result, they now have disproportionately fewer people under 45, and only two urban stations to serve them. One, WAMO-FM, is a pure urban station and recently they took their AM station from black talk back to music -- targeting a more adult audience.

That could explain why 7 of the 10 out-of-state counties that picked up the most ex-Pittsburghers in the 80's have a lower percentage of boomers than this region. Another possible factor: Those places have more foreign immigrants who have more children, while immigration to Pittsburgh is continues to diminish.

As with any demographic, Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are not all of a piece. The Woodstock-era images of longhaired college students in fringed ponchos or dashiki-wearing brothers with huge Afros born into relative affluence, frolicking in the rain or protesting with raised fists, are big in the cultural mythology. But, in truth, the early boomers in their youth ran the gamut from straight arrow to hellion.

Some went to Vietnam. Others found ways not to. Plenty smoked pot and marched for a cause, while others went into the steel mills, factories or corporate America, started families or went to school at night. As they turn 50, they don't necessarily feel a kinship with each other.

A recently-retired African-American middle school guidance counselor put it this way. "When I hit college, I didn't know who Jack Kerouac was, or Sly Stone or even Jimi Hendrix. Some of my white friends wanted to go to Woodstock, or join the freedom fighters in the South and I said, 'What for?' "

Yet one thing many boomers share is a sense of having changed history. They basically said there's no issue that's not on the table. They saw themselves as change agents, not willing to accept things the way they were. And one more thing they share is the music and artists that remind them of past pleasures.

The advancements in human rights, civil rights, women's rights, the anti-war movement ... all of those changes were very positive and had lasting value.

"It was a great time to come of age," said a Catholic priest, who taught high school physics for several years before entering the seminary. "With the Second Vatican Council, things I never thought would happen were happening, almost overnight." The boomer vanguard is also marked by insistence on self-definition and by the music and artists that defined that generation.

"Being a woman of color, I was very aware that certain words were being handed to me," said Mrs. Sandra Robinson, a housewife with teenage children. "In the '50s, we were 'colored,' and in the '60s we were 'Negro.' But I identified myself as black or African-American and, for the first time, you saw others insisting on having that choice." She added, "Our parents followed the rules and were very much conforming to the prevailing culture we self-defined."

Where's Boomer Radio?

So who's beaming to these boomers? Very few. Why? Because somehow urban radio has been made to believe they're already doing the right thing. They think they're appealing to new listeners. And the truth is they're really not. They seem to have forgotten that the smartest way to grow sales is to find new customers. The best way to grow new cume is to find new listeners. Most people think it's better to protect what they've got. But you can do both by consistently presenting a fresh, focused, compelling product. And we've got to do one more thing.

We've got to begin reaching out. And niches of niches is not the answer. Reaching out takes guts and courage and it's hard work. Don't worry about losing what you have. To grow our audience in the future, we've got to figure out how to get new target occasions and new target listeners.

Beaming to the boomers doesn't mean that you sudden dig out all of early gold titles you once played. It means more selective screening and including a few more of these boomers in our auditorium music tests (AMTs) and perceptuals. It also means developing more compelling content and style. And it's not just the music that can make a difference. It's also content, presentation and style. Style without substance gets old quickly. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of young, ill-trained, "keeping it real" jocks get into trouble. These guys become caricatures of the street jocks they admire. Many are so laid back and in love with the sound of their own voices that they become boring or so raw and crude that only their "homies" can understand or appreciate them. The key is to strike a balance,

Finally, one way to beam to the boomers, boost our bottom line, and become much more mass appeal in the process, is to do the things that will cause our stations to stand out in the crowd. This means winning the top-of-mind awareness battle. It means accurately reflecting a little more mature part of the culture and lifestyle of the market. And as always, you must continue to look outside the margins.

Word.