If, while going about your day, you’ve bothered to gaze at scenery other than your shoelaces, you’ve seen increasing numbers of people with headphones jammed in their ears. According to a Bridge Ratings & Research study, it’s a good bet that those headphones are playing something other than terrestrial radio.
This study—the Bridge Ratings Audience Erosion Study 2005 – Q4 Update —confirms what most of us would surmise: The Youth Demographic is tuning out of terrestrial radio and into alternative audio entertainment sources (read: their iPods), for some listeners podcasts are supplanting traditional information radio broadcasts, people listen to their iPods a lot during the first months of ownership, and the boatload of iPods (and other MP3 players) sold over Christmas didn’t do traditional radio any favors in the first quarter of 2006.
[Oh, and we all tend to watch way too much TV (5 hours per day on average) and spend way too little time reading books and magazines (23 minutes per day on average).]
And why does radio fare so badly when compared to the competition?
Look, you can read the study yourself. Allow me to provide the attitude.
The 12 – 24 demographic tells us:
- iPods rock! — 27%
- iPods especially rock while commuting, sitting in a dull class, or working at my dead-end job — 25%
- Radio sucks — 22%*
* Youth’s disapproval of radio is exceeded only by the Cranky Demographic — 35 – 64 year olds — 31% of which claim “that gol-durned radio hasn’t played anything worth a spit since Toto broke up.”