Turning Off Limp-Baugh, Turning on Céline Dion

The radio industry has finally caught on to using electronic meters to find out what their sample audiences are listening to instead of relying on user-written logs. Turns out that guys listen to a lot more 'soft-rock' than they previously admitted to. Under the old diary system, men were thought to represent 34.7 percent of soft-rock listeners whereas they actually make up 40.1% of the radio audience for Céline Dion, The Bee Gees, etc. And there's more:

Talk radio, a largely conservative format, turns out to have fewer fans than previously thought. Talk radio’s market share declined 2.6 percent in the study of areas where the meters were used. Talk radio (excluding sports and news) is about 80 percent conservative, says Michael Harrison, publisher of the trade magazine Talkers.

Men used to boast that they listened to talk radio more than they really did? Wow. I'd sooner people thought I was rocking out to Céline Dion in a pink disco jumpsuit while driving than listening to Chairman Limp-baugh. But, hey, that's just me.

Interesting aside that the no-nonsense radio trade mag matter-of-factly says talk radio is "about 80 percent conservative". Damn that liberal media bias!