Commercial Radio: “A long term growth problem…”?

“Commercial radio is a $1.6 billion industry in this country thanks to bankable stars at the microphone. But while the digital invasion has not killed the radio stars it is having a big impact.

Listeners can now get their music, news, sport and weather online, and advertisers are beginning to tune out with them. “

That was set-up for the ABC TV’s The Business.

For the commercial radio industry – ARN CEO Tony Kendall went about setting the record straight saying:  “For all the hype of the streaming services, they’re only at 9.2% of listening, of that Spotify is 5.8%.”

Tony goes on to say:  “There’s a lot of hype around those new players but the actual time that people are spending with them I think is not as great as people are perceiving.”

It comes off the back of CRA releasing research at the National Radio Conference. Tony went on to put forward some of the key strengths of the industry, including the power of the content that radio traditionally creates being transferable across all platforms and the unique strength of Breakfast and Drive radio to a captive car-bound audience

ARN also got some good mileage with its achievements taking a nice slice of the revenue pie overall. The ABC report also features an IBISWorld analyst who describes the radio industry as being resilient and in his view radio formats do not directly compete with streaming services.

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