December 2015
From a Survey Requesting Non-listeners to Try Listening to Radio
Kensaku Saito / Tadamichi Koga
How can radio attract new listeners effectively? In order to find a clue, we conducted a survey that requested those who with no habit of listening to radio to try listening to it for a week and analyzed the consequence. Initially we expected that few would want to continue listening to radio after the trial, but the result was far beyond our expectations. To our surprise, 94% of those surveyed said, “I want to continue listening to radio” right after the trial. We also surveyed their reaction two weeks later and found out, 75% still tune in radio. Based on these surprising findings we also held a focus group interview four month later to explore “why and how those ‘continuous listeners’ do so and why those who stopped listening did so.” To a question asking the respondents whether they “still listen to radio,” 52% of those who still listened to radio two weeks after the web survey still did so. The interview suggested that continuous listeners managed to find a time to listen to radio, such as finding a “niche time” or tuning in radio while doing something else, during which they encounter programs that they find worth listening “deliberately” or by “taking time to do so.” Meanwhile, many of those who stopped listening said they had not encountered any programs interesting enough for them to bother to tune in.