Report: AM/FM Radio Streaming Skews Young and Female

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Westwood One's Insights team has studied the distinctions between the streaming audience and the over-the-air audience of AM/FM radio outlets. The company analyzed audience data from over 88,000 consumers who recently registered on the Cumulus radio station group sites that make up its station group digital streaming network. The analysis looked at age, gender, and location data from these listeners between April and July of 2019. Here are the key findings:

AM/FM radio streaming skews female
While half of the on-air audience to Cumulus Radio Station Group music AM/FM radio stations is female, 62% of the music streaming audience consists of women. Every music programming format on streaming shows a higher composition of women compared to the on-air audience.

https://news.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/headline_id=b15996

Westwood one has released research on their demographics and streaming.

 

[boombox4]

62% seems fairly significant. Interesting data.

 

[seattlesarchiebunker]

One point I gleaned from the article:

The median age of the Cumulus Radio Station Group music streams is 40, five years younger than the on-air audience

Ouch...pretty much confirms radio is skewing much older than the median age in the US (38.1). What does that mean for the industry? Can they figure out a way to get younger folks listening OTA, or will radio eventually get to the point where major advertisers don’t want to deal with the graying demographics?

This is general information based off one station group, but I’d imagine iHeart and others aren’t much better

 

[TheBigA]

Ouch...pretty much confirms radio is skewing much older than the median age in the US (38.1). What does that mean for the industry?

The primary sales demo is 25 to 54. What age is in the middle? 40. If they're saying the on-air audience (cross format) is 45, that's not bad. That includes some AM news/talk stations where the age is mostly over 60.