Wake-Up Call: Morning Radio’s Sweet Spot May Not Be So Early.

Morning drive teams may not like the idea, but there is case to be made that drive time begins too late at many stations—especially when local television stations are on starting their morning news programming at 4 or 4:30am. Newly released data from Edison Research shows that during the first quarter, more than three in ten (31.3%) Americans aged 13 and older are awake by 6am.

Despite the early-birds, Edison say the two most popular half hour increments for getting up are the 6am to 6:30am window, when 14.5% of people roll out of bed. And the 7am to 7:30am window, when 13.3% get up.

The pandemic has had a lasting impact on sleeping habits. Edison reports most Americans are waking up slightly later than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted routines and schedules to spend more time in the home. It says 4.7% of the people it surveyed don’t wake up until the 9am hour.

Mark St. John, President of Zapoleon Media Strategies, tells Inside Radio that because many stations already begin at 5am—or recycle content in that hour—he thinks a morning show’s focus should be on the impact of content in the 6am hour, rather than starting their show at an earlier hour. In short, don’t ease into the show, he says, come on strong.

“There isn’t room for show opens or ramp-ups,” St. John says. “Start with A-level content out of the box at 6am as Edison’s research shows listeners are up and starting their day. This will engage the audience right away and encourage them to stay with the show as their day progresses.”

Consultant Alan Burns says his What Women Want studies have also researched what time female listeners woke up on a typical day. The results were eye-opening, so to speak.

“When we averaged all the responses we saw that heavy radio users got up a little earlier than the average woman, employed women got up even earlier, and working moms got up earliest of all,” Burns says. He says the results are logical, considering many employed persons have early report times and things to do before they can leave home. There are also the characteristics of people who are big radio listeners. “Heavy radio users tend to be employed and listen to radio at work,” he points out.

Similar to St. John, Burns also believes that a focus on improving the early hours may be better than starting a show an hour earlier “Far too many morning shows ‘wake up on the air’ and take 30 to 60 minutes to hit their stride. They need to be at full function by 6am,” he says.

Burns also sees another argument to be made to not to get the morning show rolling earlier. Instead, he points out that many stations want to carry the morning show and its fans later in the morning—not earlier—because there’s more average quarter hour listening in the 9 to 10am hour than the 6 to 7am hour. And the 5 to 6am hour has even smaller numbers. Burns says his number-crunching shows that in a typical PPM market the AQH is 55% higher in the 9-10am hour than the 6-7am hour.

“On balance, I’d run a morning show 5:30 to 10am, and that 5:30 start is especially important in markets like Washington and Los Angeles where morning traffic is horrible,” Burns says.