Big Picture Numbers Show Radio's Power

When you look at some of the Big Picture numbers on Radio's reach you can see how powerful the media remains.

If we look at the Monthly U.S. web traffic the top 3 sites from 2013 according to Nielsen are:

1. Google - 164 Million Unique Visitors a month.
2. Facebook - 134 Million
3. You Tube - 119 Million

On You Tube the biggest video of the past week was the Eminem's Headlights with 5.6 Million views.  If you look at Pharrell Williams official video of Happy he has pulled in almost 235 million views in the past 5 months.

In TV the top rated shows were the NCIS, Dancing With The Stars, and Big Bang Theory ranging from 16 to 17 Million viewers from the Nielsen TV Ratings.  

Now let's take a look on the Mediabase Overall Chart and see the reach of the top played songs in the country. 

1. John Legend - All Of Me - 39,207 spins reaching 241 Million people
2. Pharrell Williams - Happy - 31,054 spins reaching 188 Million 
3. Justin Timberlake - Not A Bad Thing - 26,195 spins reaching 151 Million

In just 1 week Pharrell's 'Happy' got 80% of the audience that the You Tube Video brought him, but that took 5 months to build.  Over the last 6 months John Legend's Vevo Video of All Of Me has pulled in 100 million views.  John got over double that exposure in 1 week on radio. 

Of course these numbers all have different metrics but I think we can all see that Radio's reach with it's top played content is very impressive.  Perhaps down the road as Nielsen integrates all the data we'll be able to see some standards where we can get more comparisons.  While seeing where Radio ranks in the forest of Media options could be scary, the slice we see here may surprise many.   Let's not forget the impressive reach we have as our air staff's hit the air and the sales teams present the marketing opportunities.