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THE RADIO HABIT – YOU HAVE IT OR YOU DON’T

By Andy Beaubien, BPR

For many of us radio listening has been a habit virtually all of our lives. We do it almost without thinking about it. However, what happens if someone already has a media habit that precludes radio?

A recent article by James Cridland for the All Access website pointed out the positive and negative aspects of habit. He writes…

Given the amount of change to the media landscape, why does radio do so well? A lot of it is due to habit. We’ve always listened to radio. It’s a habit to wake up to the clock radio, or to turn the radio on in the kitchen. It’s habit — and automatic — that the radio goes on in the car on the way to work.

This habit is what keeps our listeners coming back to us day after day, time after time. This is great as long as nothing comes along to break that habit. These days radio listeners can get similar entertainment and informational material from new media such as podcasts, You Tube, blogs and streaming services. So far radio has kept many of its listeners because they are in the habit of listening to our stations. However, are they listening as much as they were 10, 20 or 30 years ago?

Cridland goes on to say…

Habit, too, may be explaining why radio has a problem in many countries with younger audiences. They may still listen in roughly the numbers they did before, but they listen for far less time. And if you’ve heard people saying that audiences “grow into” radio listening, I’m here to tell you that no, that’s not true. All the statistics I’ve seen show that younger audiences don’t magically change their habits later in life, and as they grow up, they continue listening to less radio than their parents.

Young people are quickest at adopting new sources of information and entertainment. They are, in effect, developing their own media habits and that may not include radio. If we want them to include our stations in their media consumption habit, we need to make ourselves available to them where they (young people) can be found. How strong is your station’s presence on the Internet? Is your station active enough on Twitter, blogs, You Tube, Facebook, etc.? As a comedian once facetiously quipped, “If you’re hungry, go to where the food is.” For radio that means go to where the listeners are.

Read original article here