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Comment by guywithahat | Hacker News Reader

This is the most interestingly line from his letter:

> nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older — totaling hundreds of millions of people — listened to AM or FM radio each week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56 percent) or own a computer (77 percent)

Admittedly it seems dubious but if true I'm surprised by basically every one of these numbers

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All this requires to be true is that basically all Americans who are in a car weekly turn on the radio when driving, which is very believable. Some people also still have a radio in the kitchen of course.

Is it? It's been years since I, most of my family, or my coworkers have turned on the radio (for non-Bluetooth audio)...my aging FIL insisted on it during a trip back in August (to much good-natured ribbing from his kids) but that's the last time I remember.

I do. There is local news on the radio that's hard to get anywhere else (OK, it's probably also broadcast via internet somewhere, but I'd rather not go through the hassle). It's also a inoffensive way to lessen the monotony when working in jobs dealing with the public (ie, minding a shop).

Really? You go through the trouble of hooking up your phone and starting your favorite app on a 5 minute run to the grocery store rather than just letting the radio be background noise? I totally get doing that for longer trips but so many of my trips are short enough they could be done on foot or by bike if my area was more friendly to that sort of thing.

Radio does the job for the few minutes I'll be in the car.

The phone automatically connects to the car and all I have to do is press play on the car touchscreen. Don't even have to take the phone out of my pocket.

I have to go more out of my way to turn on the radio in my car than I do to connect to Spotify. When I get in my car I plug my phone into the USB cable reflexively and Spotify starts up automatically. I’d have to fumble around with the settings on my infotainment system to even find the radio option (Mazda 3 2020).

Does it count those instances where my Ford randomly plays FM radio (sometimes even randomly AM) before I managed to connect BT/Carplay or if that either of those happen to disconnect?

Because that's about the limit of my usage of any terrestrial radio.

You may listen more than you think. Also counted is in-store (and in-restaurant) listening. That's the main reason why so many stations go with all-Christmas music formats.

Most independently owned retail and eating establishments also qualify for a copyright infringement exemption if they play music originated by a radio or television broadcast station licensed by the FCC [1].

[1] 17 US Code §110(5) <https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/110>

No way that's true. Wonder if they're getting selection bias, ex. the 90% of the people who are willing to take an unsolicited survey on their land line phone.

I can't back up the 90%-of-people claim, but as per the industry-accepted audio listening diary survey, a giant 74% share of audio consumption comes from AM/FM broadcasters [1]. So 90 percent is very possible.

[1] <https://www.westwoodone.com/blog/2022/11/21/edisons-share-of...>

I got a diary from Nielson for radio stations I listened to. I never listen to radio so I entered the stations and programs I wanted to be successful, rather than the ones I was listening to (since I wasn't listening to any of them). (so NPR and the local public radio station got a little boost).

Yeah, there was a lot of "vote for your favorite station" activity when the Arbitron/Nielson diary was used as the main system.

I was working at a station when they switched from diary to the electronic PPM system. The station's cumulative numbers jumped 3-fold that month-- we had no idea that many people were listening.

I wonder what "watch television" means these days. I don't know many people who have broadcast or cable TV.

Trending down slowly, but still 40% of US households:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/612660/paid-services-bro...

What is historically the highest % of US households with TV?

(Paywall. And that is the most aggressive form I've ever battled.)

Hmm, I guess my mass of adblocking extensions in FF must work pretty well, I had to dismiss a single modal. But it looks like Peak TV was reached by about 1980[1], 98% of households!

1: https://www.americancentury.omeka.wlu.edu/items/show/136

Basically "old people"

https://www.statista.com/statistics/659779/cable-tv-penetrat...

It seems reasonable to include things like FUBO, which offer both broadcast and TV channels.

I am still surprised how relatively few people have a set of rabbit ears wired to their "streaming" TVs for basic news or whatever in the current year considering how cheap they are.

Those ears need to be HD-capable or whatever the term is. And I need to get those HD rabbit ears so I can watch sports on broadcast tele instead of choppy rando streams.

False. The broadcast waveform remains analogue. The receiving electronics (not the antenna) need to be DTV-capable to correctly interpret digital content of the received waveform.

My streaming box and smart tv have local channels on them, gratis.

Note the "listened to AM OR FM radio each week", emphasis on the "or".

I can't say how long it has been since I checked the AM dial while driving (basically hit it by accident), but years it he most appropriate unit. What I heard (northeastern US) seemed to support some data I read that it is mostly taken over by religious and Limbaugh-type right-wing talk radio. So, that strongly left- Sen. Markey is supporting it so strongly says something. But, if there are actually high listener ship, then for sure, it could be a critical emergency communications channel, and worthwhile just for that

Just an example: In Seattle, the #2 rated station last month was KIRO-AM 710. Sports play-by-play and local sports talk performs really well on AM [1].

In the same ratings book, the religious and right-wing talk radio on AM continued with a poor performance. I think that generally content is more important than the technology delivering the audio (although probably anything would perform better to at least some extent on FM).

[1] <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/seattle-tacoma/>

Here in NY I regularly tune into AM for news/traffic reports and sports events.

1010 still gets the job done ages later, shame they changed all the sounds to more generic ones though.

San Francisco used to have a station with left wing talk show hosts.

Then some big corpo (cumulus?) snapped up the station and the cast changed significantly, with the station swinging to the right very noticeably.

I switched it off permanently soon after. This was around the time I discovered I get more useful traffic information from my phone anyway.

Makes me wonder if 60% of people listen to FM radio every week, 30% to AM radio, and they incorrectly aggregated them.

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