“Talk radio?” sniffed one Democratic digital native, “Why are you focusing on that? The only people who listen are seniors and cab drivers, right?”
Wrong, as a report from the media monitoring firm Nielsen has just shown. In fact, within ad-supported media, the reach of broadcast radio is second only to live television.
The Nielsen analysis of media use found that 77% of adults are reached by broadcast radio on a daily basis, second only to television at 95%. This study, in which consumers were physically observed consuming media throughout the day, found that Web/Internet (excluding email) reached 64%, newspaper 35%, and magazines 27%.
In sum, the study concluded that broadcast radio continues to play a major role to all ages — not just seniors — and almost 80 percent of those aged 18 to 34 listen to broadcast radio in an average day.
“There are a lot of critics out there who want to write off broadcast radio, but this analysis of real-time media consumption shows that it continues to play a very strong role,” said Dr. Michael Link, VP of Methodological Research at The Nielsen Company.
Nuff said?
