HOUSTON ROCK JOCK IS ONE STEP AWAY FROM CONGRESS • RADIO IS STILL “KING OF THE CAR”

Dayna Steele

Radio folks have another reason to pay attention to the November mid-term elections. 

One of their own, former FM rock host Dayna Steele is the Democratic Party’s candidate for the House of Representatives from Texas’ 36^th District.

Steele [link] won in the recent Texas Democrat primary by a wide margin. She will face incumbent Republican Brian Babin in November. 

The 36^th District includes suburbs east of Houston to the Louisiana border, including Port Arthur and Beaumont. In recent years Republicans have easily won the district but 2018 may be different.  Representative Babin is closely aligned with President Trump and the electorate is unpredictable, so anything can happen.

Dayna Steele, called The First Lady of Rock, first became known in the Houston area as a host at former Album Oriented Rock (“AOR”) powerhouse KLOL in the 1980s and 1990s. Steele began her radio career at KAMU at Texas A&M in the late 1970s.

After KLOL, Steele became a spokesperson for NASA. She organized and participated in several community initiatives involving healthcare, education and protecting the environment. She is the author of several books including Rock to the Top: What I Learned About Success from the World’s Greatest Rock Stars, which has been getting Five Star reviews on Amazon [link].  

Etheridge (left), Crosby & Steele

Steele’s friends in the music business have been campaigning on her behalf. Rocker Joan Jett has performed at quite a few of Steele’s rallies. Legendary singer-songwriters David Crosby and Melissa Etheridge recently performed at a campaign fundraising event. Crosby told fans at the event:

"Welcome to our new super group: Crosby, Steele and Etheridge."

INFINITE DIAL - PART TWO: YOU WILL PROBABLY HEAR RADIO IN A CAR, BUT MANY HOMES DON'T EVER HAVE A RADIO TUNER

We continue with the second of three debriefs of Infinite Dial 2018, the annual study of market penetration of various media platforms and devices by Edison Research and Triton Digital. Today’s focus is terrestrial radio. (On Wednesday we will look at use of social media and mobile devices.)

Infinite Dial is important because it has become the recognized baseline data about the market penetration of various media platforms and devices.

Data in Infinite Dial 2018 was gathered in January and February 2018 from around 2000 people ages 12+ via mobile and landline telephone surveys. You can see a recording of the presentation of Infinite Dial 2018 here. You download the presentation slides here.

 

BROADCAST RADIO IS BY FAR THE TOP IN-VEHICLE AUDIO SOURCE

Terrestrial AM/FM remained the top audio source for folks behind the wheel. Among people 12+ who had driven and/or ridden-in a car during the past year (88% of the respondents), 82% listened-to or heard broadcast radio. This amount was unchanged from 2017.

Listening to other audio sources in vehicle remained steady in 2018 compared with 2017 except for podcasts. Podcast use in vehicles grew to 23% in 2018 from 19% in 2017.

BUT AT HOME, RADIO RECIEVERS ARE HARDER TO FIND

According to Infinite Dial 2018, the number of radio receivers in the average American home has dropped by a large margin in the past ten years. 

An increasing percentage of households that had no radios in the home – only 4% in 2008 and 29% in 2018. 

Also, in 2008 65% of households had between one to three radio sets. That number fell to 60% in 2018.

The most dramatic change occurred with respondents between the ages of 18 and 34.   

According to Infinite Dial 2018, only half of the households have radio sets. Ten years ago, the percentage of households with no radios in the same demo was 6%. 

This is a drop of game-changing proportions.

As you probably have read elsewhere, the ownership of Smart Speakers grew dramatically in the past year. However, the overall market penetration of Smart Speakers is still relatively low.

We noted that the researchers do not define “radio.” Is it a device that only plays AM and FM? Or is it any device that plays AM and FM and can also play other audio sources? When someone is listening to a FM station on a Smart Speaker, are they listening to “radio” or to a “Smart Speaker” or both?

Listening to radio online continues to grow each year. The percentage of respondents who said they do listen to online audio has grown from 2% in 2000 to 57% in 2018. 

Note that the researchers define “online audio” as both streaming audio of stations and streaming audio from“pure play” vendors like Pandora and Spotify. 

The researchers did not report the percentage that listened to each type of provider.