Report: Radio Fighting To Be Heard Via The Dashboard

The car dashboard, once the exclusive infotainment domain of traditional radio, is becoming a battleground where divergent companies and their wares fight for the attention of drivers and passengers.

According to the Indianapolis Business Jounral, carmakers such as BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Hyundai and Tesla are unleashing automobiles with increasingly expansive dashboard displays that let riders access myriad apps and talk and text through mobile phones hands-free via wireless connections.

Time spent listening to radio is already dropping steadily, and if in-car listening tanks, radio could lose lots of listeners—and advertisers.

“Everybody is looking at this issue right now,” said Robert Unmacht, a partner at iN3 Partners, a Tennessee-based investment banking consultancy focused on broadcasting and technology. “Without car listening, there is no radio industry.

“In-office listening has already been decimated by the internet and in-home listening is long gone to cable TV and the web,” he added.

According to New York-based Nielsen Media Research, time spent listening to radio among people 12 and older decreased 35 percent from 2007 to 2015, to less than 14 hours.

Industry experts said as much as two-thirds of radio listening has traditionally occurred in automobiles. And even with the increased technological options in cars, Nielsen’s ratings still show listening surges 25 percent to 35 percent during morning and evening rush hours.

“It used to be that traditional radio was merely concerned with things like satellite radio, iPods and music services like Pandora,” Unmacht said. “If that isn’t enough, now the radio industry has to compete with the ease of the use of a mobile phone in the car. And when you’re talking on the phone, you’re not listening—or at least paying attention—to the radio.”

Drivers’ changing habits have caught the attention of advertisers and media buyers, including Erin Theis of Indy-based Williams Randall Marketing.

“We’ve seen the radio ratings decline a bit, so it’s something we’re keeping an eye on,” Theis said. “It’s similar in some respects to the issue of the DVR for television. The landscape is changing and we want to keep an eye on that for our clients.”

But traditional radio is still a big part of many ad campaigns, she said, and in-car listening is “a pretty huge” consideration in her radio ad buys.