Radio’s national audience of 244 million listeners reaches listeners of all ages in markets large and small. This quarter, the audience exceeded nine in 10 Americans: 91.5% of all people age 12+ use radio during the week.
With such a large listener base, people tune into audio for reasons as varied as their individual backgrounds. And the audio landscape has something to offer for everyone, whether that is breaking local news or the latest hit that’s soaring up the charts in the summer. As a result, radio offers many different types of content, from hyper-local news and information specific to each community, to network programming with a national viewpoint.
Understanding the intricacies of different programming is essential to connecting with different consumer groups. In this report, we turn our focus to network radio and the large catalog of national content available each week from the 46 radio networks measured by Nielsen RADAR. These networks provide audio content across the country on thousands of stations each week and represent the bulk of network radio listening in America. Combined, they reach more than 181 million listeners on a weekly basis with music, sports and talk content from a variety of personalities and perspectives.
Network Radio Composition
The network radio audience mirrors the national radio audience by gender (slightly more male than female) and age (consumers between the ages of 25 and 54 account for half the audience, with 45-54 representing the largest group of listeners.)
