By The Numbers
Radio listening is down across the board, but there’s a difference in just how much one socioeconomic group has been tuning out: “Over the last decade, college graduates ages 25-54, who make up an increasingly large portion of the population, have abandoned radio eight times faster than nongraduates. Today, they listen to 15 hours and 45 minutes of radio a week, while their peers without degrees listen to 21 hours and 15 minutes weekly.” Why is that? One expert thinks that the spread is a result of the types of jobs college graduates have, and not the notion that they’d be fleeing to Internet or satellite radio–or that current formats are less to their liking: “In part, it’s the nature of the work that people do,” Mr. Rosin said. “Nongraduates are more likely to have jobs that allow them to listen to the radio. If you think of teachers, for example, that’s a huge category of college-educated people in an environment where it’s entirely impossible to listen to the radio.” [NYT]
