Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

One thing we are outstanding at in radio is targeting male and female audiences.

Over the decades we have contoured formats and sub-categories of formats to appeal to these audiences with precision so great advertisers trust our ability to service their needs.

Now, the discussion about male and female and other options has led to political battles over bathrooms, gender and other changes that are becoming significant.

I’m not saying stop doing what you’re doing and start programming to specific subsets of LGBTQ, but the evidence is clear that our audiences are changing and we will want to learn as much as we can since so much of our success depends on it.

The National Center for Transgender Equality did a survey of 28,000 respondents to discover that one-third chose “nonbinary/genderqueer” when given a choice of the terms that best describe themselves.

I don’t know about you, but that is major.

Perhaps more startling is a 2015 survey of 1,000 people in radio’s money demo 18-34 conducted for Fusion Media finding that only 46% of the respondents replied that there are only two genders – male and female.  Some 50% said that gender can be described over a wide array of other choices as well.

That’s half the sample!

To be sure, I am not saying our stations need radical change tomorrow.

But radio has had a habit since consolidation in 1996 of falling behind our audiences (Millennials, digital, streaming music, etc.).

It is prudent to embark on some modifications that would not scream out “this radio station does not identify with your gender”.

And what is remarkable – done right – these adjustments can fine tune the buy in on audience identification with radio stations that too frequently are being seen as outdated or not cool.

So how far do we go and where do we begin?

An aircheck of the average radio station contains shockingly offensive things to people who identify as something other than male or female and the research shows you’re looking at 50% of your audience in today’s terms with likely expansion tomorrow.

Morning shows are so gender specifically male that they could be problematic without making some adjustments.

In an industry where radio is criticized by listeners as not sounding like them stations run the risk of furthering that impression if it doesn’t take some immediate steps.

A male-female morning show or a female only morning show is the future but just the voices are meaningless without conveying the changing attitudes of audience.  This is trickier than it seems although very doable with the right understanding of audience beliefs.

On-air personalities that sound robotic or should I say voice tracked are often insensitive to varying genders because they lack warmth, emotion, connection and are often judged on the gender that they sound like.

In other words, the sound of the voice is only one component in considering programming to gender fluid audiences. 

It’s what they say that matters just as much and we don’t have to look past too many stations before we have male gender bias built into everything.

We’re going to discuss the evidence of gender fluidity and its impact on radio as well as the solutions to take prudent steps to stay ahead of the trend at my upcoming Radio Conference in 6 weeks.