The GfK 2021 Summer Listening report has found that Australias are more likely to listen to media than watch it during summer.
Nearly one in two respondents between ten and twenty-four said they would ‘feel lost’ if they couldn’t listen to the radio for a week, while nine out of ten radio listeners said they listened to the radio as much or more over summer.
That figure has held true over the last four years of the survey.
The younger generation also consumed their radio content via a range of platforms. Twenty-nine per cent of ten to twenty-four year olds spent more time listening to the radio in their car, while half listened via smartphones.
Joan Warner, CEO of industry body Commercial Radio Australia, said, “radio serves a critical role during the summer months as a medium that listeners can turn to 24/7 to meet their needs for information, entertainment and companionship.”
“For advertisers, radio reaches audiences while they are travelling or at their holiday destination, at a time when they have more time to consider purchases.”
The study was conducted across Australia between the 12th and 28th of January. It found that ninety-three per cent of listeners consider the radio ‘a valuable source of information’, while nine out of ten felt that radio gave them ideas or inspiration about what to see and do.
As people travelled more over the summer period, sixty-two per cent of radio listeners and thirty-five per cent of people who don’t usually listen to radio tuned in at their holiday destination.
Radio was a mood booster for many respondents, who said that it made them feel happier while they were off work. Seventy per cent of respondents viewed the radio as a “great companion”.
For seventy-two per cent of the fifty-five to sixty-four age bracket surveyed, the radio was “like an old friend”.
