Riding the Population Trends
Driven by the strategy to transcend, the single most defining characteristic of public radio’s audience today is its college education. If it remains so into the future, public radio can expect to serve even more minority listeners tomorrow.– Jay Youngclaus
– David Giovannoni
AUDIENCE 98 Core Team
As the number of well-educated minority citizens grows, so grows public radio’s minority audience.
The graph below shows the number of black and Hispanic Americans who have earned at least a bachelor’s degree – a number that has increased nearly six-fold in the last 30 years.
The upward trend is evident, and demographers expect it to continue.
The growth in public radio’s black and Hispanic audience over the last 10 years is calibrated to the population line (A
UDIENCE 98® compared to AUDIENCE 88).Clearly, public radio’s service to black and Hispanic audiences is growing even faster than the college-educated minority population.
The conclusions are obvious.
Powerful population trends are certainly contributing to public radio’s minority service, and there is every indication that they will continue to do so.
Public radio has gotten better and more readily available in the last 10 years, thereby causing a rate of growth in minority service that outstrips even the most powerful demographic trends.
Whether we continue investing in these improvements and enhancements is up to us. The cost of riding the demographic trend is free.
The graph below shows the combined impact of these forces in a snapshot of today’s audience. Younger listeners, like younger Americans, are most likely to claim membership in a racial or ethnic minority group.
Audience Research Analysis
Copyright © ARA and CPB. All rights reserved.
Revised: September 01, 2000 12:38 PM.
