Pew Trending: Radio Listening Flat, Station Revenue Down

While terrestrial radio reaches a large portion of the U.S. population, online audio and podcasting audiences have grown over the last decade. And revenue for news radio stations dropped over the past year after years of relative stability, according to a recent analysis by The Pew Research Center.

The audience for terrestrial radio remains high, though there was a slight drop in 2020: In 2020, 83% of Americans ages 12 or older listened to terrestrial radio in a given week, a figure that dropped slightly from 89% in 2019 according to Nielsen Media Research data published by the Radio Advertising Bureau.

The share of Americans who listen to podcasts has also substantially increased over the last decade. As of 2021, 41% of Americans ages 12 or older have listened to a podcast in the past month, according to “The Infinite Dial” report by Edison Research and Triton Digital, up from 37% in 2020 and just 9% in 2008. Additionally, 28% of those 12 and older said they have listened to a podcast in the last week, up from 24% in 2020 and 7% when this was first measured in 2013.

According to survey data from Edison Research and Triton Digital, the share of the public listening to online audio has plateaued. As of early 2021, 68% of Americans ages 12 and older had listened to online audio in the past month, while 62% had listened in the past week. This has been about steady since 2019, revealing a plateau after steady year-over-year growth from 2007 to 2018.

Average revenue for a combination of stations in the all-news, news/talk, and news/talk/info formats is substantially lower than when looking at all-news stations alone – in 2021, $2.1 million per station. This likely stems from the fact that this category contains a sizeable number of stations with low total revenue.