4.4 million people listen to community radio

Community Radio listening slipped slightly in the latest McNair Ingenuity survey, released at the CBAA conference this week. Listening was down one percentage point on the last survey conducted in 2008, but still higher than earlier surveys. Overall community radio listening was 26%, with 4.4 million Australians listening to community radio in a typical week.

 

People aged over 15 years have an average listening time of 7.1 hours per week to community radio.

More than 9 million people (54%) listen to community radio in an average month.

 

The McNair Ingenuity research, which uses different methodology from Nielsen Media’s commercial radio surveys, also studied listening to the other radio sectors. The exclusive listening findings across each sector are:

Commercial radio only listenership – 4,861,000

ABC/SBS only listenership – 2,036,000

Community radio only listenership – 640,000 listeners

 

The study also found considerable overlap between audiences. Overall listening figures for each sector in the McNair survey are:

Total Commercial radio listenership – 10.8 million

Total ABC/SBS radio listenership – 7.6 million

Total Community radio listenership – 4.4 million

 

At the conference, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam won the hearts of most in the sector by committing The Greens to support the Community Broadcasting push for extra funding, pitched in its Vision document. A former community radio volunteer at RTR FM in Perth, Senator Ludlam told the conference: “Don’t hate the media, be the media.”

 

For the full report, click the link below.