In 1979, one-hit wonders the Boggles wrote “Video Killed the Radio Star,” which became the first video shown on MTV.
People have been predicting the death of radio ever since.
Yet, radio continues to hold on.
The New York Times ran a brief article, “Radio’s Popularity Declining Unevenly,” that looks at the radio listenership. Given all the competition from old media, new media and MP3 players, radio listnership has fallen only 14 percent over the past decade.
Meanwhile, while I don’t have specific numbers in front of me, network TV viewership over that time period has declined at much more significant numbers.
Radio’s not dead yet…especially while Americans drive in their cars.
And neither is network TV…though it may be hurt by the fact that real-time TV is not widely available in cars (not that drivers should be watching). (Disclosure, a former client makes satellite dishes for cars and boats.) Also, networks need to figure a way to aggregate numbers based on real-time viewership, time-delayed vewiership (like TiVo), and web-based downloads. I bet network TV’s decline would not be as significant if looked at that way.