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August 19, 2006
Not enough choices?
This NY Times article passes along the news that the last remaining area-wide radio station in the Los Angeles market playing country music has changed its format, so the second-largest radio market in the country joins New York (the largest radio market) and San Francisco (the fourth largest) as big markets that no longer host a radio station with a country music format. Inasmuch as such a development seems unthinkable in a country-music hotbed such as Houston, the Times article provides the following explanation:
“Country is a tough format to do in a market that is an ethnic melting pot,” said Rick Cummings, Emmis’s president of radio. “The appeal of the format is fairly limited when it comes to ethnicity.” In Los Angeles, he said, stations that cater mostly to white listeners are “playing for less than 25 percent of the marketplace on a good day.”And while country music may draw a more diverse audience in cities like Houston, he added, it simply does not in Los Angeles, where Latino listeners have a wealth of choices for entertainment in both English and Spanish.
So, Latinos are forced to listen to country music more in Houston than in L.A. because they lack the variety of entertainment choices of the Los Angeles area?
My sense is that the Times reporter has not checked out the Houston radio market recently.
Posted by Tom at August 19, 2006 04:51 AM
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