In early March 2020 our lives were changed, suddenly and seriously, by the COVID pandemic. American families took shelter in their homes. Schools and universities closed, millions of jobs disappeared, no cars were driving the roads.
It was as if the Martians had landed, according to George Bailey, President of Walrus Research.
In an article for Current.org, Bailey explains what happened, during March 2020, to radio listening:
- In markets across the country, radio listening crashed. Levels of persons using radio (PUMM in Nielsen terms) dropped by as much as 50%.
- Closer examination revealed that the loss of listening happened away from home. That made sense, given that people were staying in their homes.
- However, if you thought that radio users would simply transfer their out-of-home listening hours to the home location, that did not happen.
Here’s a chart that illustrates the crash of radio listening in March. It is based on one large market.
This is Nielsen’s Portable People Meter data, persons using radio in the metro, trending 16 weeks starting Jan. 2, 2020.
Note the importance of away-from-home listening. In this market, out of home used to be the dominant location of radio listening.
From the week of March 5 to the week of March 19, out-of-home radio listening crashed. Yet the blue line shows zero growth in radio listening at home!
In this large PPM market, the week of Feb. 6, there were 575,200 persons using radio, away from home, in a typical quarter-hour.
The at-home radio audience was smaller, at 213,900 persons.
By March 19, out-of-home crashed to 287,500.
Bailey notes a critical insight:
Let’s say your station maintained its audience share. However, if overall radio listening (PUMM) in your market dropped, and you maintained share, your station actually lost AQH audience.
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