Mary Beth Garber Has More Questions For Pandora's Joe Kennedy

Mary Beth Garber

KATZ RADIO GROUP EVP/Radio Analysis And Insights MARY BETH GARBER was at the WORLDWIDE RADIO SUMMIT 2012 this past weekend, and made a couple of observations:

"The sessions at the WORLDWIDE RADIO SUMMIT were outstanding. Interesting, intriguing, funny, sometimes outspoken. Good, mind-expanding learning for people in every aspect of the radio business. I especially enjoyed the session on SATURDAY with the record execs/producers/distributors. I was impressed with their candor about the fact that all their research shows that radio remains far and away the dominant driver of record sales. And with their examples of new creative ways they are engaging radio stations to grow their sales.

"My only disappointment, and apparently, I learned, one shared by many people who attended the opening session panel, was that I was never given the chance to ask my question of JOE KENNEDY, President of PANDORA.

"During the panel session, MR. KENNEDY stated that virtually all of the listening to PANDORA came at the expense of AM/FM radio listening. He claimed that listening to CDs, iPODs and MP3 players had increased. That time spent listening to radio had decreased, and he cited some statistics to support his contention, but never sourced those statistics."

GARBER continued, "My question to him is this:

"In 2012, there have been six studies (NPD, two by MARK KASSOF, iHEARTRADIO, EDISON and ARBITRON's 'INFINITE DIAL 2012' and the 'JACOBS TECH 8' study unveiled on FRIDAY at WWRS 2012) that indicate that digital listening is largely in addition to radio listening, not instead of AM/FM radio listening.

The INFINITE DIAL 2012 pointed to a drop in listening to CDs, iPODs, MP3s, etc. so, basically, none of these studies support your contention. One of the statistics you cited to support your contention was a level of hours spent with radio that was only about 60% of what the MARCH 2012 RADAR shows (93% of people 12+ spend more than 2:40 minutes a day with AM/FM radio).

"So, what exactly are the sources that support your contentions and that provided you with the statistics you cited?"

Joe Kennedy Responds

If you saw PANDORA's JOE KENNEDY at the WORLDWIDE RADIO SUMMIT, you know he's a direct communicator, and so is his answer to MARY BETH GARBER:

"The data I cited comes from these two charts (linked below), both shown in the 'National Listening Trends' section of the respective editions of RADIO TODAY, which show a 5% decline in Time Spent Listening per week from 2010 to 2011."

Click here for RADIO TODAY Page 88.

Click here for RADIO TODAY Page 105.

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