We surveyed nationwide again this year for a snapshot of CCM and related formats. The 2023 Finney Media Why Listen?® Survey has almost 15,000 respondents, over a million data points, from three different formats including, Music stations, Music/Teaching stations, and All-Teaching stations/programs.
There’s much discussion about focusing our radio stations on people beyond the nuclear family; a husband/wife both married for the first time with natural born children. In 2023, more friends are listening than just men and women who are married for the first time. Here are the Top Five Marital Statuses for CCM listeners ranked in our recent nationwide survey:
| 1. Married First Time | 46% |
| 2. Re-married | 21% |
| 3. Divorced | 14% |
| 4. Single/Never Married | 10% |
| 5. Widowed | 8% |
Here’s a way to think about this: If you’re talking to your listener as if she is married for the first time, you’re talking to less than half of your listeners. And if you assume she is married, for the first time or more often, you’re still talking to only 7 in 10. One-third of the CCM listeners in the Why Listen® survey are not currently married.
We’re coming up on the holidays and, for many of your listeners, that means blended families sharing time (35% are either re-married or divorced) or some form of spending it alone (almost 20% are either never married or widowed). It’s time to be empathetic to how complicated it is.
