October Radio Revenue Holds Steady

  • by December 19, 2001
Radio revenue continues to remain healthy in local sales, with overall improvement coming from outside of the top 15 markets. According to the latest announcement from the Radio Advertising Bureau, local sales figures for October fell 6% when compared to the same month a year ago, while national dollars were off 15% and the combined total was down 8%.

From a year-to-date perspective, local figures were also off 4% during the first ten months of 2001 while national numbers fell 19% for a combined year-to-date total that was down 8%.

“In looking at the revenues by markets, we find that the larger markets are the ones driving down the total revenue numbers,” observed Gary Fries, President and CEO of the RAB. “In the top 15 markets, year-to-date local is down 7%, national is off 24% for a year-to-date total of - 12%. After the top 15 markets, Radio is performing reasonably well.”

To put the intermediate and long-term growth of the Radio industry into better perspective, RAB has introduced an index that equates base year 1998 to 100. The index works similar to the Gross Pricing Index so that the information can be monitored on a monthly basis. The RAB sales index for October came in at 110.2 for local, 102.5 for national yielding a combined total of 108.8.

When looked at from a year-to-date perspective, the sales index for local is 126.9 while the national index is 114.0. The index for the combined year-to-date total is 125.0.

Looking ahead, Fries stated, “Our first glimpse of November indicates improvement over last year, particularly in local sales, which continue to grow and strengthen. Radio will end this year down 8% in ad sales,” he predicted. “For 2002, I foresee national remaining flat while local rebounds to end the year up 4%. The combined total in Radio revenue for 2002 will be up 3%.”

Next story loading loading..