FACEBOOK USAGE CONTINUES TO DROP, IS THE BRAND BECOMING TOXIC FOR PUBLIC RADIO STATIONS?

Last week Edison Research released The Social Habit 2019, a new study designed to find out why Facebook users are using the platform less often than when they joined.

Social Habit [link] probed deeper into questions that arose in The Infinite Dial 2019, released in March by Edison and Triton Digital. That study found Facebook has 15 million fewer users in the U.S. in 2019 than in a similar study from 2017.

You can download The Social Habit 2019 report free here.

Though Facebook is loosing market share, it continues to be number one social media platform in the U.S. with 223 million users age 12+. Many public radio stations host Facebook pages as part of their outreach to listeners. Data from The Social Habit 2019 may cause some to question their association with Facebook, because of the negative the study respondents have about the site.

The chart on the left from The Social Habit 2019 shows that 32% of the respondents who go to Facebook were doing it less often. 

Fourteen percent of the respondents said they had quit using Facebook entirely.

The second chart shows the primary reasons why respondents said they dropped or ended their use of Facebook. 

The top three are directly related to Facebook's content.

Respondents said that rants, personal attacks, negativity and partisan politics found on Facebook were turn-offs for them.

Women were particularly bothered by the negativity of the content they find on Facebook. 

Almost half of the women surveyed said they had dropped out of Facebook “for their mental health.”

Danger to "mental health" is not a good brand attribute.

The Social Habit 2019 did not provide breakouts of the respondent’s level of education or other predictors of public radio usage. But is may be safe to assume that rants, personal attacks, negativity and partisan politics are not core values of most public radio core listeners.

There were also a couple of “big picture” revelations found in The Social Habit. 

Social media usage appears to have leveled off after almost a decade of annual growth.  

 Still 223-million social media users in 2019 are hard to ignore.

Perhaps the most interesting chart is the last one in this group on the left. Take a look and see which one social media site differs from all of the others.

Linkedin is the only site where men are the largest proportion of the users. 

All of the others have more women users.   

Why? That is a question for a future study.

NPR PODCASTS CONTINUE TO HAVE THE MOST SHELF SPACE ON PODTRAC'S TOP 20

According to Podtrac, 8 (40%) of the Top 20 podcasts in April 2019 were published by NPR. The newsy Up First was NPR’s top offering.

Publishers associated with public media continue to have 12 (60%) of Top 20. PRX had two podcasts in the Top 20.

Commercial publishers had 8 (40%) of the Top 20 podcasts. Both iHeartRadio and Barstool Sports had two shows in the Top 20.

As we’ve said often before, the Top 20 podcasts is our least favorite Podtrac charts.  Without any data to back up the rankings it is impossible to know the difference between #1 and #2 or #1 and #20. Please provide the numbers, Podtrac, it will increase the credibility of charts.