An interesting study.
Now having taught college kids for two and a half years I can tell you that they DO NOT CARE AT ALL ABOUT AM/FM RADIO and these are students that signed up for a course about radio!
About a year ago I really changed up my curriculum and spent a lot of time talking about the various streaming services, and also a lot of time talking about royalties (since the economics of streaming are so different than your AM station in 1995).
American Teens now spend more time with streaming audio services such as Pandora and Spotify than they do with AM/FM radio including both over-the-air and the online streams of AM/FM stations, according to the fall 2014 “Share of Ear” report, new research from Edison Research.
via Streaming Audio Now Bigger than AM/FM Radio among US Teens – Edison Research.
Now one thing I like to do with the class is ask them how old they are. They are 18-22. Let’s call it 20.
And in five years how old are they?
And in 10?
And in 15 – which is the same distance we are away from the millennium which feels like yesterday.
So in 15 years your’e going to have a 35 year old who DOES NOT CARE AT ALL ABOUT AM/FM RADIO. It’s not part of their life, and I will bet you a dollar they’ll have a connected car by 2030.
Very very interesting.
I know radio has been dying since the talkies came to the movie theater, but audio is audio, and the kids don’t care about your metal tower in the swamp, nor the 22 minutes of commercials that pays for it.
Maybe it’s time to reevaluate the sales department and ask yourself it is really worth running all those ROS spots to fill time, or do you need sports updates every 20 minutes, or is anyone actually coming to you for traffic reports (in some cases yes, in many NOOOOO) – reduce the clutter and give yourself a fighting chance?