It's Time To Start Telling Radio's Best Story

With unemployment less than 5%, it seems that advertisers can buy spots on any platform and reach people with jobs and money, but that's simply not true.

According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, 40% of adults in the U.S. don't go to work,

What do people without jobs do all day? Watch TV.

What do people who earn a paycheck do? Listen to the radio - in the car and at-work.

Based on the latest Nielsen Audio numbers, not only is the reach of AM/FM radio larger than TV and smartphones, the weekly audience for AM/FM radio is almost double the audience of streaming, satellite and podcasts combined. Even among millennials, nearly nine out of every 10 minutes spent with audio is spent with AM/FM radio.

As a result, despite living in a world increasingly dominated by smartphones and digital technology, consumers overwhelmingly listen on traditional AM/FM radios, especially during their commute and at-work.

In fact, while stations want their content to be conveniently accessible across platforms, whether it be on a smartphone or a smartspeaker like Alexa, the reality is that consumption of AM/FM stations on those devices is very limited, now and likely for the foreseeable future.

As a result, absent a clear audience-centric strategy, simply streaming your on-air content on more and more platforms, primarily designed for on-demand/personalized consumption, might be counterproductive.

Continuing to build skills, while launching new mobile platforms that don't predictably increase in-metro listening or generate meaningful new revenue, takes time and resources away from on-air content, execution and audience development, all of which, have a clear and proven monetization strategy.

With major advertisers like Procter & Gamble rediscovering AM/FM radio, the current "golden age of audio" provides an important opportunity to catapult AM/FM radio ahead of local TV and newspapers in the local media landscape, as people increasingly cut the cord, view time-shifted content and no longer subscribe to a daily paper.

Our employed audience -- with money to spend -- gives AM/FM radio an amazing story to tell, but too many people think it's somebody else's job to tell it.