Good News For America: Talk Radio Audience Is Down

The bombastic broadcasters of fear and loathing have lost 18% of their audience in the last three years. (What does this mean for Talk Radio 570 KLIF?) Meanwhile, NPR is doing fine. The key paragraphs from the Media Audit report after the jump:

A preliminary National Radio Format Report for 2007 reveals that while News/Talk radio is still king when it comes to reaching more U.S. adults than any other radio format, overall reach has been in decline, paving the way for other radio stations and formats to capture the attention of the huge Baby Boomer segment which currently makes up nearly two-thirds of today’s News/Talk audience.
According to a three year reach analysis, News/Talk reached 14% of the adult U.S. population in 2005, compared to 11.5% today, a nearly 18% decrease in three years. The reach figures are based on past seven day listening.

What’s at stake? Possibly the last generation of loyal radio listeners who grew up listening to radio and whose children are more apt to listen to iPods, CD’s, and MP3’s than they are to radio.

Among the major radio contenders for the Boomer market is Public Radio, ranked fourth overall in reaching U.S. adults 18+ and Boomers also making up two-thirds of Public Radio’s audience. According to the 2007 survey, 9.8% of all adults 18+ listen to a Public Radio station in a typical week, a figure that has remained unchanged in the past three years. The survey further revealed that Public Radio is the second choice among News/Talk listeners, suggesting notable audience duplication among the two. According to the survey, one-third of News/Talk listeners also listen to Public Radio and one in five chose a Public Radio station as the station they listen to “most often”.