LEARNING FROM CHARTS & GRAPHS

Today we have a few more charts and graphs that provide snapshots of media consumption over time. Please let me know if you have suggestions for chart and graphs for future posts.

Earlier this week, Nielsen released its Comparable Metrics report for the third quarter of 2016. It is quarterly data from platforms that are measured by Nielsen. The complete report can be found here.  

Slide #1 has good news for traditional radio. Radio usage during a typical week trails only broadcast and cable TV and Smartphones.  Note: Among adults 18-34 radio leads weekly consumption TV.  The group that uses TV the most is adults age 50+.

Slide #2 shows the same data in a different layout.

Slide #3 is from From Airwaves to Earbuds, a November 2016 report about trends in podcasting published by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It uses data from Edison Research’s Share of Ear studies.  It shows that podcast listeners spend more time listening to podcasts than the traditional radio and all other audio sources. The full Knight report is here.

Slide #4 is from Triton Digital and was published in December 2016 in the report Top 20 Ranker. It shows the number of Average Active Sessions (AAS) of streaming audio from radio sources from Monday through Sunday 6:00AM to Midnight. Think of this as a measure of “weekly cume.”

Slide #5 is from the same Triton Digital report.  It shows that the peak hour for streaming audio during weekdays at 1:00pm. On weekends the peak hour is at 3:00pm. Apparently there is no “morning drive” for streaming audio. The full report is available here.

Slide #6 (full screen below) is also from Triton. It shows the top 20 providers of streaming audio in December 2016.

Slide #7 is from Gabe Hobbs, a commercial radio talk show training consultant [link]. It is a mash-up of the top Rush Limbaugh stations and NPR News stations. Mr. Hobbs seems to think that commercial stations like KFI-AM, Los Angeles, have lots in common with noncoms like KQED. Hobbs says the data shows The overwhelming majority of any “Trump Bump” went to non-commercial radio. 

Slide #8 is an oldie-but-a-goodie from the trade publication Editor & Publisher. It shows the circulation of daily US newspapers from 1940 to 2010. Compared to newspapers, traditional radio is doing pretty well.