The decade’s most important radio trends: #12 National Public Radio keeps growing
Everybody knows the fate of over-the-air radio over the last ten years. “On Demand Killed the Radio Star,” as Boston Globe Media put it in 2005, going so far as to ask whether terrestrial radio is on the way out. Consolidation led to poor broadcasting choices like over-advertising and de-localization, the story goes. MP3 players filled the void. The standard estimate is that radio listening has fallen back to 1994 levels. Among consumers 18 to 24 years old, the tune-in rate has dropped by almost 22%.
But there’s one service that has bucked that trend: National Public Radio. In March, Arbitron surveys indicated that, by the height of the 2008 election, NPR now had an audience of 27.5 million weekly listeners, a jump of 7 percent over the previous year. Total tuning in to all NPR stations had grown to 32.7 million weekly listeners.
Listening to individual NPR shows also soared: 15% up for All Things Considered; 9% for Morning Edition; 21% for Talk of the Nation; and an amazing 13% for non-drive time Fresh Air. (more…)



