GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO? NOT ANY MORE Tenille Bonoguore – Globe and Mail Radio has gone from ‘golden age' to middle age, and it's moving east.
A survey of Canadian's radio listening habits reveals a continuing shift in habits, with teens and young adults ditching antennas for downloads and audiences across the country disappearing.
The only places bucking the trend are Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where radio listening rates have actually risen in the last year.
Overall, Canadians spent less time listening to the radio last year than in previous years, tuning in for 18.6 hours during measured weeks of autumn, compared to 19.1 hours a week the year before. That has dropped almost two hours since 1999.
Much of the change, according to Statistics Canada, comes from 12- to 24-year-olds, with teenagers only deigning to bother with radio for an average of 7.6 hours a week.
But that doesn't mean that music is dead. Far from it. Digital players and online music services are snaring the young audience and leaving the airwaves for an older audience.
Senior women are the most loyal listeners, racking up 22.7 hours a week, while senior men listening has dropped slightly to 19.5 hours.
But while those seniors love the CBC, youngsters just aren't digging the vibe, with the national broadcaster coming in last for young Canadians.
Almost a quarter of Canadians are listening to ‘adult contemporary', making it the most popular radio format, followed by golden oldies and rock. The CBC comes in third, while talk radio and country round out the top-five radio formats.
So what is everyone listening to? It depends on where you live.
In Nova Scotia — Canada's radio-loving province — country music is the favourite choice to fill the 20.4 hours of radio people listen to each week.
Country is also the favourite in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island.
B.C. loves gold/oldies/rock, Newfoundland and Labrador loves talk radio, and Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick are into adult contemporary.
Listening among francophone Quebeckers slipped by a full hour a week, but their anglophone counterparts tuned in to English-language radio for 20.8 hours a week, the highest level among the provinces.
Listeners in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were a close second and third to anglophone Quebeckers as the country's biggest fans of radio.
Read the report here. |