Friday, February 17, 2017

Where is radio today, and where are listening levels headed in the future? Those are the big questions we addressed in yesterday’s webinar in which we and our partners Strategic Solutions Research released the first set of data from “What Women Want – 2017.” 

According to Nielsen RADAR data, radio's decline in cume and AQH rating, along with TSL, slowed in 2014 and may have stopped - or perhaps merely paused - in 2016. Where do we go from here? Will it be stability or just a slower slide? Based on what we see, the answer is in the hands of the radio industry – not pureplay streaming services or automobile manufacturers.

With women, radio's images haven’t changed over the last five years and they are stunningly positive:

-Women love their favorite radio station at a level that’s comparable to two of the world’s biggest and sexiest brands – Netflix and Amazon – and far more than they love Apple, or streamers like Pandora and Spotify.  

- They feel understood. More women feel understood by the radio station they listen to most than by two industries that spend millions of dollars trying to understand and predict women: cosmetics and fashion. Amazingly, these women scored their P1 radio station higher than their significant other on “understanding me.”

– And because they feel understood, they feel that radio station is a good or best friend. And the “best friend” vote is growing.

It would be greedy to ask for a better profile than that. There are, though, two caution flags on the road. The first is that “radio” now feels dated in comparison with other technologies (and it is; "radio" is almost 100 years old). The second is that young people – especially teens – feel less love and affiliation with radio. Being hyper – savvy technologically, six in 10 of them can easily imagine a day when they won’t need to listen to radio for music. And nearly a quarter of them tell us that that one of the main reasons they listen to radio is because they can’t get Internet in the car.

Radio must embrace new technology like NextRadio. And we need to care about what 15 to 19 year-olds are doing and thinking right now.  Even if they aren’t part of your current target, they are a big part of your future. It can be hard to attend to the future when the demands of today are as urgent and unceasing as they are in radio, but the future always arrives.

Advertisers are of course a giant factor in radio’s current and future health. Part of radio’s challenge in the revenue arena is that so many advertising industry folks are in love with the newest shiny object, and somewhat out of touch with the reality of how their target consumers behave. This is been shown repeatedly in research, including our own. Radio could be doing a much better job of reminding them of the facts, including the huge positives outlined above.

For example, good radio stations have consumer engagement that most brands and industries would kill for. It’s commonly agreed that the best advertising is word-of-mouth; that is, hearing it from a friend. When you hear something from a radio station you like, you’re hearing it from a good friend. Google, Pandora, or Eyewitness News as “a good or best friend?” No.

Let’s stop telling advertisers how cheap we are and instead tell them how great we are as a medium. Because we are. 

Next Thursday’s webinar will dive into some vital tech-related areas,  including what’s happening to radio in connected cars; what effects pureplay music streamers are having on radio consumption, and what radio’s best defense is; the use of headphones in listening to radio (prepare to be stunned by one number we will show); and what more than 100 actual ratings participants told us. Hope you’ll join us.