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Surveys Track
Online, Broadcast Media Usage
Many (if
not most) radio broadcast engineers are responsible not only for
keeping a stations signal on-the-air, but online as well.
According to two recent surveys (discussed below) of online and
broadcast media usage, online streaming services are becoming
more popular with listeners, and consequently they are likely
to continue to play an ever-increasing role in broadcast engineering
activities.
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One of these
surveys was conducted jointly by Arbitron (Columbia, Md, www.arbitron.com)
and Edison Research (Somerville, N.J., www.edisonresearch.com),
who have been studying the impact that digital platforms are having
on radio and other media since 1998. Their 18th study in this
series, released in April of this year, is called The Infinite
Dial 2010: Digital Platforms and the Future of Radio. It
provides a wealth of information on consumer usage of digital
media including some interesting statistics on the use of social
networking sites, declaring social networking a mainstream
behavior and Facebook in particular an essential platform.
For the Arbitron/Edison
Research survey, a total of 1,753 persons in the U.S. were interviewed
from January 25 to February 22, 2010. Telephone interviews were
conducted with respondents age 12 and older, chosen at random
from a national sample of Arbitron's Fall 2009 survey diary keepers
and through random digit dialing (RDD) sampling in certain geographic
areas where Arbitron diary keepers were not available for the
survey. Some of the key findings pertaining to radio and digital
platforms include:
- Listening
to online radio according to the survey, an estimated
70 million people in the U.S. listened to online radio in the
past month. Shown in the graph is the trend for weekly online
radio listening since 2000, with 17 percent of people 12 and
older having listened in 2010 which represents approximately
43 million. Three in ten 12-to-24 year olds are "very interested"
in online radio in the car and on mobile devices.
- Listening
at work nearly one in four (23 percent) of people
who listen to the radio at work now do so using the Internet
(see graph), which is nearly double from the amount of people
who did so in 2007. Other statistics regarding online listeners
indicate that they are slightly more likely to be male than
female (55 versus 45 percent) and that they are more likely
to be upscale, well-educated and employed than those
who do not listen to online radio.
- Visiting
station Web sites shown in the figure at right
are the
reasons that people give for visiting a stations Web site,
with song title and artist being the most popular.
Consumers say radio station Web sites are improved compared
to a year ago but TV and print sites are leading the local battle.
Monthly visitation by persons 12 and older to radio station
Web sites (16 percent of those responding) lags visitation to
local TV (27 percent) and local newspaper (also 27 percent)
sites. Nearly half of people age 12 and older give credit to
radio for improvements in their Web sites. Forty-eight percent
say that radio station Web sites have gotten more interesting
compared to 17 percent believing them to be worse or less interesting.
- Greatest
total impact the survey asked respondents to indicate
which platforms and devices have a big impact on
their lives, and the resulting data was combined with the percent
who use or own those devices and platforms to create a measure
of the greatest total impact shown in the graph
at right.
Interactive
research and technology firm Vision Critical (New York, NY, www.visioncritical.com)
conducted a survey and released the results (also in April 2010)
in a report entitled Radio Futures 2010. Vision Critical
surveyed more than 3,000 adults in the U.S., U.K. and Canada and
found that while those in Canada and the U.K. are using applications
on their smartphone or iPod Touch to listen to AM/FM radio, U.S.
users are more likely to use their apps to listen to Web-only
radio and music streaming services. Among adults in the U.S. who
have listened to online-only radio in the past month (see graph
below), Pandora leads the pack as the favored online music service
(42 percent having listened in the past year), followed by Rhapsody
(6 percent), last.fm (5 percent) and Yahoo! (5 percent).
At the time
of the survey, nearly one-third (31 percent) of U.S. smartphone
and iPod Touch users said theyve listened to Internet radio
or a music streaming service on their device in the past week.
In contrast, just 19 percent reported listening to an AM or FM
station on the same platform.
According
to the Vision Critical study, listeners to Web-based services
expressed a clear preference for personalized versus one-way
broadcast streams. Online consumers who turn to Web-only music
or streaming service in the past month showed a particularly active
interest in services that offer some degree of control. Fifty-three
percent of respondents said that they were very interested
in streaming where it is possible to play a song on demand, while
only 24 percent were very interested in radio that plays music
mixes designed by music experts.
The full
version of the Arbitron/Edison Study is available online from
the Arbitron Web page at www.arbitron.com/study/digital_radio_study.asp.
Similarly, the Vision Critical report is available at www.visioncritical.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Radio-Futures-2010-Report.pdf.
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Radio
TechCheck
will not be published on May 31, but will return June 7,
2010
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The May 24, 2010 Radio TechCheck is also available
in an Adobe Acrobat file.
Please click
here to read the Adobe Acrobat version of Radio TechCheck
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