The latest RTDNA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University Survey found that the minority workforce in radio rose nearly 5 points to 21.5% — the highest level ever — eclipsing the old record of 17.8% set in 2022. All minority groups set record highs except Native Americans, which edged down by 0.1.
The big change this year came in commercial radio — which soared from last year’s 9.8% minority to this year’s 19.4%. Non-commercial radio held fairly steady at 23.5% minority — compared to 23.2% last year. We cannot account for the big jump at commercial stations. We’ll wait until next year’s numbers to see if this is real or a one-year anomaly.
In radio news, historically, men have outnumbered women by about 50%. Men still outnumber women, but the margin got noticeably tighter this year, with 57.4% men compared to 42.6% women. That’s 4 points down for men, and 4 points up for women. This year, only white men outnumber women. Among Caucasians, the percentage is 61.6% men versus 38.4% women. That’s 3 points down for men, 3 points up for women. In all other groups, women now outnumber men. With Hispanics, it’s 54.7% women and 45.3% men; African American women outnumber men, 57.5% to 42.5%; Asian American women way outnumber the men, 64.2% to 35.8%, and Native American women are 55.6% to 44.4% men.
Historically, women news directors have been much more common at non-commercial stations than commercial ones, and that’s certainly true again this year. There were gains for women news directors in major markets but losses in medium and small markets. In the end, the percentage overall is virtually identical to a year ago. Women news directors are most common in the West. This year we also have the first reports of non-binary news directors — at 0.7% overall.
The Deep Dive: HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment