Havas Media Study Finds Millennials 'Embracing' Radio, Print Because Of COVID-19

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, April 27, 2020

One of the bright sides for the media industry in the current pandemic is that certain legacy media that were being written off as no longer viable -- radio, newspapers and magazines -- are seeing increased usage, especially among younger demographics. That's one of the findings of a new report …

cmmr, covid-19, demographics, magazines, media, millennials, newspapers, radio, research

5 comments about "Havas Media Study Finds Millennials 'Embracing' Radio, Print Because Of COVID-19".

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Tim Brooks from consultant, April 28, 2020 at 11 a.m.
Joe, this is junk research, at least as reported. Your skeptical fourth paragraph is well heeded. Without knowing the bases it is hard to evaluate (e.g. were older demos already listening & reading more, so that a lesser percentage increase could actually mean a greater increase in time?) Also, what does "a melange of original research... third party sources... anecdotal verbatim" mean??? If you are going to report on it at all, I would have liked the headline and first paragraph to be a little more forthcoming about the superficial nature of the info released.
Reply

Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc. replied, April 28, 2020 at 11:04 a.m.

@Tim Brooks:

mé·lange
/māˈlänj/
noun
a mixture; a medley.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, April 28, 2020 at 11:19 a.m.

Joe, to Tim's point, when one third of the respondents in a study like this claim that they are increasing their use of a particular medium---say radio---this means that two thirds are either not increasing it or are using the medium less---all based on a general impression that is elicited by the survey---not anything that could pass for specifics--- what did you listen to, when and where? etc. If you tried to calculate the net increase that such a study indicates for radio listening and counted the no increase or decrease replies, you might estimate an overall gain if the upside percentage was larger than the downside one---but that's about all. This is hardly a dramatic finding of a huge surge in listening. To infer that you would need much larger percentages claiming that they are increasing their usage than shown in the table.

Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., April 28, 2020 at 1:03 p.m.

@Ed Papazian & Tim Brooks: No argument here. That's exactly what we reported.

John Grono from GAP Research, April 28, 2020 at 8:42 p.m.

Frankly, I am embarassed that this came from a media agency.