Alan Jones is angry that media buyers have made several assumptions about talk radio and his 2GB program.

Jones says, in a story in today’s AFR: “The perceptions about talk radio and this station are simply not correct. Our audience is not aging and it is not dominated by people aged over 70. When media buyers say that, it simply proves that they can’t read ratings books and don’t want to learn how to read them.”

In his story Neil Shoebridge says media buyers are not willing to discuss Jones publicly, fearing any negative comments will provoke and on-air attack.

Privately they insist the audience of Jones and 2GB is getting older in general and that some marketers are starting to see it as a marginal audience.

Macquarie Radio Network Chief executive Angela Clark says this is not true. She says the average age of 2GB listeners is 52.8 years. The number of people under 40 listening to the station has climbed 20% over the past year and they now account for 27% of the audience.

Jones’s audience has grown 13% over the past year to a cumulative figure of 480,000 including a 27% jump in the number of under-40’s tuning in.

In the AFR report Jones says: “Radio is more challenged at the younger end than where we sit because of the rise of new media – iPods and so on. People still want talk radio. They are increasingly turning to radio to get news and opinion.”

Bookings from media agencies account for 40% of 2GB’s revenue. The rest comes from direct advertisers who, Clark says, focus more on the results their ads generate than the official radio ratings numbers.

Jones adds: “People at media agencies don’t listen to us. And it staggers me that they can’t read ratings books. There isn’t a lot of analysis going on there.”