Thursday, September 26, 2013

Ross On Radio: “The End Of ‘Us’ And ‘Them’

From Sean Ross On Radio, Billboard:
 It was a question that the industry could have asked at any time in the last five years. Instead, it finally came in a study presented by my Edison Research colleagues on the panel "What's Working at Work" at the National Assn. of Broadcasters/Radio Advertising Bureau Radio Show. 
Out of more than 1,000 full- and part-time workers who were surveyed, 28% listened to some form of Internet-only radio (as opposed to AM/FM broadcast radio, whether streamed or over-the-air) at work. Those listeners were asked where their time with Internet-only radio at work was coming from. 
For years, many broadcasters have contended that time spent with Pandora, Spotify and the like was mostly replacing time spent with a listener's own music collection. And indeed, 28% of respondents said that was the case. Twenty-two percent of respondents said that their listening to Internet radio was "new time" that took away from neither broadcast radio nor their own collections. But 50% of those surveyed said that their time spent listening to Internet radio was "mostly replacing time spent with AM/FM radio." 
In other words, 14% of the workforce are consuming Internet radio and listening to broadcast radio less as a result. It’s not the bloodbath that radio's detractors—industry or civilian—portray it as. Internet radio evangelists often believe wrongly that their friends and family represent the entire world. But it’s also not hearing that AM/FM radio has to lose—especially in tandem with the quarter-hours appropriated by satellite radio or TV. 65% of the workforce listened to any radio at work when Edison first surveyed it in 1997. That number is now 49%.

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