Radio listening is down across the board, but there’s a difference in just how much one socioeconomic group has been tuning out: “Over the last decade, college graduates ages 25-54, who make up an increasingly large portion of the population, have abandoned radio eight times faster than nongraduates. Today, they listen to 15 hours and 45 minutes of radio a week, while their peers without degrees listen to 21 hours and 15 minutes weekly.” Why is that? One expert thinks that the spread is a result of the types of jobs college graduates have, and not the notion that they’d be fleeing to Internet or satellite radio–or that current formats are less to their liking: “In part, it’s the nature of the work that people do,” Mr. Rosin said. “Nongraduates are more likely to have jobs that allow them to listen to the radio. If you think of teachers, for example, that’s a huge category of college-educated people in an environment where it’s entirely impossible to listen to the radio.” [NYT]
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Thanks Captain Obvious. People are working more than ever and have no time to listen to the radio. What a revelation.
If you graduated college, chances are you aren’t retarded. Hence, 80-90% of radio is fundamentally insulting to you. Also, you have a better chance of being able to afford an ipod. Finally, there are way better odds that you work in an environment where having Steve The Wacky Wizard of Rawk screaming at you about aftermarket car accessories between godawful songs is not encouraged.
In other words, how long until we slaughter commercial radio and start figuring out a way to use that part of the spectrum to either make wireless faster or control bird migrations?
None of this surprises me. Once radio learns to push their listeners with a diverse musical catalog and an extensive play list then they will languish in marketplaces like this. I was driving through Connecticut listening to 104.1 - a station that was Modern Rock switched to hip hop and now is back to a coffee house 90’s nostalgia with new Rock format - and got really aggravated because they were playing it safe. Stop playing safe then you’ll get the listeners.
I’m iPod all the way in the car, these days. I tried listening to the radio at work a couple of months ago, but the same playlist every day and the intrusive commercials got to me after a month or so. Play 30-40 minutes of straight music, limit the stupid morning shows and vary the playlist and maybe I’d come back.
It would be one thing if the commercial breaks were 1 or 2 ads in a row, but it’s more like 5 or 6, which really turns me off and then I switch back to the cd/iPod.
@TheFortHillBlues: You have not heard safe, in re: CT radio until you’ve listened to The River 105.9. I’m calling for an immediate resolution calling for grievous bodily harm to be inflicted on anyone programming a station targeted at whoever’s trapped at work. I’ve probably memorized their entire playlist, which admittedly doesn’t take THAT long, but that really, really doesn’t bode well.