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For U.S. commercial radio, last year was simply a bad one<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t put lipstick on a pig. And you can\u2019t make business year 2020 look any better for the commercial radio industry in the United States. It simply sucked.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s a new chart that shows the big hurt that COVID-19 put on the industry.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs anticipated, the radio industry took a very big hit in 2020 due to the pandemic and subsequent cutbacks in overall spending activity,\u201d said BIA Advisory Services in its announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the first quarter edition of BIA Advisory Services\u2019 2021 Investing In Radio Market Report, over-the-air advertising revenues dropped to $9.7 billion, a 23.6% decline from $12.8 billion in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even hardened radio sales veterans may swallow hard when they hear that the industry\u2019s revenue fell below the $10 billion mark.<\/p>\n
BIA said digital ad revenues at stations \u201cdemonstrated their continued strength,\u201d declining only slightly to $939 million in 2020 versus $1 billion in 2019.<\/p>\n
Still, that\u2019s the first time in memory when the digital portion of our radio industry\u2019s revenue went south in a given year.<\/p>\n
SVP and Chief Economist Mark Fratrik said in the announcement, \u201cLocal radio stations have been feeling the impact of new competition for the past few years; unfortunately, the pandemic just exacerbated the problem and it will take some time to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though those blue digital columns are still pretty small compared to the green OTA ones, he called online digital advertising radio\u2019s \u201cshining star.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose broadcasting groups that have invested-in and oriented their companies toward digital will benefit faster from that foresight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The green lines in that chart start to grow again because Fratrik thinks 2021 total local radio revenue will be $11.7 billion, with about $1 billion from online revenues, a 9.7% increase.<\/p>\n
Another measure of the economic lockup: BIA said station sales transactions fell \u201cto levels that hadn\u2019t been seen in years.\u201d<\/p>\n
It counted 534 stations sold in 2020 for an estimated value of $139 million, \u201ca stark contrast from the 1,080 sold in 2011 for $1.1 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n
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