With 300 stations across the country, Regional Mexican continues to be by far the strongest format among Hispanic listeners across the board, according to Arbitron’s newly released “Hispanic Radio Today — 2010 Edition.”
The study, which uses audience data from Spring 2010 culled from 103 markets with a “significant” Hispanic population, found that Regional Mexican attracted an average of 11 million listeners weekly, more than double that of the No. 2 format, Spanish contemporary. And surprisingly, Regional Mexican was popular among both English-dominant and Spanish-dominant young adults, particularly men.
Overall, regional Mexican is the 13th most-listened-to format in the United States (country is the first), with more listeners than alternative, for example. The second most-listened Spanish language format remains Spanish contemporary, which can be described as adult contemporary radio with a Spanish presentation, playing a very broad range of music, with some stations offering a heavy dose of English language hits. The format had a 9.3% audience share, up slightly from 9.1 in the Fall of 2008.
However, if one were to add up audience share for all pop formats, including Rhythmic Contemporary Hit radio (7.8%) and Pop Contemporary hit radio (7.7%) pop as a whole would outpace Regional Mexican in terms of listenership.
Overall, radio’s reach remained strong among Hispanic listeners of all ages and language preferences, with Hispanics aged 12 and over spending nearly 14.5 hours per week on radio and radio reaching between 94-96% of all Hispanic listeners, a number that’s remained constant since Hispanic Radio Today’s first study in the 1990s.
This is the second Hispanic Radio Today report to include PPM data, and perhaps as a result, it found several English language formats growing in Average Quarter Hour ratings among Hispanics. They include Pop CHR, AC and Soft AC, Classic Hits and country.