Radio Listening Decline Continues

Combined with stories that portray podcasting as an upstart that's stealing listeners from both satellite and terrestrial radio, comes the recognition from the industry that it ain't going to get any easier:

Report paints a 'depressing' picture for future of radio - San Antonio Business Journal

But it is all due to podcasting? I don't know. I've been a radio DJ and programmer since 1975 (having fleed radio in 2002), and it's always been my insistence that despite the convenience of corporate programming, not everybody wants to listen to McRadio. There are always folks who want to listen to something new and different - admittedly, the minority, but I feel that those numbers are growing.

And with podcasting offering more and extremely wide choices, those early adopters are pushing the edge, and abandoning radio without a look back. Radio is the loser here, but much of us in the trenches, answering the phones from listeners for years, heard the complaint first hand for years: corporate radio and corporate rock have always sucked, and probably always will.

And if the corporate powers-that-be don't see that, they'll at least have a good vantage point to see their listeners continue to wave bye-bye.