Peak Of Weekday Listening To Radio Returns To 3pm

With last week’s release of JUN21 Nielsen Audio data for PPM markets, The Radio Research Consortium  now have over a year of data to document radio’s recovery from the coronavirus. Winter 2020 was the leadup, Spring 2020 represented the onset of the pandemic, and now we have four full quarters of recovery.

Their key highlights: 

• AVG Weekly Cume is back to 95% of Winter 2020, while PUMM is back to 89%; Spring 2021 market recoveries range between 103% to 74% of Winter 2020 PUMM
• Hour-by-hour for weekdays shows that 3pm is again the peak of listening; out-of-home listening is where the recovery is occurring.

RRC's analysis also shows that over the course of the pandemic, out-of-home listening never lost its lead in Nielsen's PPM markets, even during Spring 2020's lockdown when out-of-home PUMM led in-home, 3.9 million to 2.8 million respectively. Additionally, out-of-home's share of PPM listening has been a steady 65% since Summer 2020, now at 66% for Spring 2021, while in-home is down to 34%.