The Infinite Dial

Okay, see if this sounds familiar:

According to just-released statistics, radio listening for adults dropped from 19.1 hours a week in 2005 to 18.6 hours in 2006, led by precipitous drops in 12 to 24 usage. Teenagers, who listened 11.3 average hours in 1996, now listened for only 7.6 hours--down an hour from just a year ago. Young adult male listening fell from 15.1 hours to 13.7.

What's different about this story is that these are actually figures released by Statistics Canada, based on listening in that country, and reported by the Canadian Press.

Canadian broadcasters have been concerned about young-end listening since the early '90s when Top 40, still regulated as an AM only format at the time, nearly fell off the face of the earth--even more than it did in the U.S. It happened again in the early-'00s when the Jack/Bob phenomenon saw many of the country's CHRs switch formats. Ironically, CHR repopulated in Canada, but only because most of the country's newly launched Urban stations switched format--leaving younger listeners with one fewer choice no matter what.