Garber Disputes Story On Young People & Radio
LOS ANGELES -- July 21, 2009: Southern California Broadcasters Association President Mary Beth Garber has written to the writer of a story for the Boston Globe's Boston.com on young people and radio that quoted young people who, reporter Joseph Kahn said, find radio "somewhere between irrelevant and are-you-kidding me?"
The story quotes a 23-year-old bank employee who says he relies on bloggers and other Internet sources to find out about music, and a 16-year-old high school student who says he has 6,000 songs on his iPod. The story says these comments have a "distinctly funereal ring" for broadcast music stations.
Garber's response:
Joseph, to support your thesis, you noted in your online article for the Boston Globe "Young listeners tune out radio in search of new music" that many stations in 2005 switched from music to talk. What you failed to note was a recent switch in Los Angeles (April 2009), when CBS took its FM talk station and switched it to a young, hot music station. The listenership went from somewhere around 650,000 to about 3 million people in less than three months. And the majority of those listeners are ... young people.
As one of your interviewees said, if you give young people what they want to hear, they will -- and do -- listen to radio.
You are writing a doomsday report for a medium that is still used by about 9 out of 10 young people every week, if Arbitron and Scarborough (ratings services) are at all to be believed. In any given week, about 235 million people over the age of 12 will listen to radio. You don't even want to know how few will read a newspaper. And only about 160 million people are online in any given week (according to Nielsen and ComScore). It's pretty obvious that radio's reach is still enormous by comparison.
Granted, younger people have iPods/MP3s (about 7 out of 10, although the number goes down as the age goes up over 17, according to Edison Research), most use the Internet, and many have cell phones with texting capabilities. But radio still outreaches all of that.
"Real music," to tens of millions of young people, is on the radio. As long as its content remains relevant, radio is likely to remain the leading choice of audio entertainment for young people. It's free and it's remarkably easy to use. It airs tens of thousands of new songs and new artists every year. With the right app, it's even available on your iPod or MP3 player and it doesn't require hours to download and program songs in order to listen to it.
The dude with 6,000 songs and hours to search for new music isn't likely to be a regular listener to radio. Fortunately, the other 9 out of 10 young people are.
Please, tell it like it really is.
Thanks,
Mary Beth Garber
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(9/10/2009 11:02:55 AM) Looks like Mary Beth was correct in saying that everyone listens to radio. Even Apple realized this as they just added a FM transmitter to their new IPod. http://www.rab.com/public/rst/article.cfm?article=1&id=1800&view=email |
| - Dean Boeh |
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(7/24/2009 4:45:17 PM) I do not believe that 9 of 10 young people listen to the radio. If that is true, then we here in the mid-west are a different breed, it would seem. I am 52. My children, 25 and 23 listen rarely to radio and the majority of their friends act the same. If you want to speak of a 9/10 penetration ratio, speak of MP3 players, the iPod being predominant. I'm not saying that "young" people don't listen, because circumstances--like riding in a car--make the radio more appealing. But when someone can buy a $300 consumer device and stuff 4000+ songs on it, they have the equivalent of a deep library radio station in their pocket, with better sound and no commercials. The writing is on the wall. --STeve Andre' Ann Arbor, MI |
| - STeve Andre' |
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(7/23/2009 10:41:18 AM) I would like to ask; how many people who read Radio Ink and subscribe or contribute, work in and have a long term attachmnet to the radio industry, " Have been eating of the business for the last decade or two"? it's much like a member of your family, you just do not want any harm to come to them from outside sources. Think about it. L J |
| - Larry Jackson |
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(7/22/2009 7:35:16 PM) About waking up. I speak at about a dozen different college classes each year. First question: who here listens to radio. Nearly all of every class says they do. They list them. They praise and complain about them. But they listen to them, still. I was at a small AMP Radio event -- along with hundreds of young people. At KIIS's Wango Tango? Tens of thousands of them. Try to get a ticket to KROQ's Weinie Roast. Trust me, plastic surgeons did not create these people. They are genuine young people. Who listen and respond to radio. |
| - Mary Beth Garber |
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(7/22/2009 5:55:16 PM) Thank you for saying what we were all thinking!!! |
| - Lauren LaRocque |
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