“Our house is a very, very, very fine house.” – Crosby, Stills, & Nash
In 1970 when “Our House” was released and found its way on radio stations all over the U.S. and the world, Americans were often homebodies. Vacation, leisure, and business travel were not what they are today.
In radio circles, at-home listening was a force to be reckoned with. And while radio and cars have had what I call a “peanut butter & jelly relationship,” listening to the radio at home was a much more common activity when David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash hooked up to form one of the early “supergroups.”
Of course, it helped that everyone had multiple radios where they lived – in the kitchen, on the nightstand, as part of a “stereo system” in the living room or den, along with a smattering of radios in the basement, garage, and other rooms in the house.
Compare that to today. I was looking over our new Techsurvey 2025 data yesterday, and found a new key datapoint: only three in four (75%) of core radio listeners in our survey now own a working radio in their homes that they use. Not surprisingly, Millennials are especially unlikely to have a functioning radio where they live that they use.
So, it’s not a surprise that when programmers discuss listening strategies, most of the conversations revolve around the car.
But what if there’s more potential listening at home – both cume and quarter-hours – that we’re simply not figuring into our calculations? And while it’s easy to change stations – or audio sources – in the car using pushbutton presets and/or buttons on the steering wheel, or barking out voice commands, it may be a little less convenient to make these same moves at home.
There’s more upside potential that that, however, based on a Fast Company story I ran across over the weekend: “Why America is turning into a nation of homebodies”
Using data from the American Time Use Survey, researchers calculated how much time we spend outside our homes – pre-COVID, during it, and in the first year or two after it subsided.
It turns out time spent hanging around the house was already downtrending way back in 2003. Leading up to the pandemic, it continued falling. In fact, when the researchers compared 2019 data to American habits back in 2003, they were already nearly a half hour less each day engaged in out-of-home activities.
You can see that in the chart below. And when the virus became the big story exactly five years ago, getting out of the house hit an all-time low. In the years that followed, the researchers saw a bounce-back – but not a big one.
As counter-intuitive as it might seen, the end of lockdowns and the development of vaccines didn’t spur a new era of outside activities. As the researchers discovered, COVID “accelerated ongoing trends.”
And as the Fast Company story points out, we’re in a strong indoor cycle, referred to as “the anti-social century” by writer Derek Thompson. I’ve written about the loneliness epidemic, an emotion felt by more of us in recent years. When people stay home more often, they are often by themselves.
The trend is manifesting itself in many aspects of our lives – more working from home has led to a glut of empty commercial real estate space, movie theaters are imperiled, online shopping is robust as evidenced by Amazon Prime Days last year increasing more than 10% over the 2023 totals.
The conclusion? Based on the numbers, Americans are spending almost 1.5 hours less outside their abodes than just two decades ago.
Of course, these circumstances have led to some growth as well, especially in homes, apartments, and condo where expansion has included more space for recreation, exercise, and other in-home activities.
The Fast Company data show similar traffic patterns to what we’ve become used to seeing in radio – less traditional “drive time” congestion in mornings with a spread of traffic in afternoons. 
Meantime, public transportation volume is off as WFH remains part of the workweek for so many.
So, what are the implications for radio?
While the focus on the car needs to be prominent (and stay tuned for news about a free webinar early next month from Quu, the “metadata mavens,” reporting on their 2024 audit of the 100 most popular car makes and models), rethinking the homefront and giving it some promotional emphasis makes sense.
Check out the “Traditional:Digital Pie Chart” in our new Techsurvey. This is where we track consumption of respondents’ favorite stations on various platforms and devices. While tuning in a P1 station on a “regular radio” is about half the consumption of in-car listening, we’re seeing indicators that smart speakers – and now smart TVs – might be a growing factor at home, at work, and other indoor locations:
Including the smart TV option in this question is new. We have taken note of respondents in our focus groups mentioning they listen to audio – and in some cases, radio – on a smart TV. Many have hooked up sound bars and other quality sound systems to their smart TVs, making it a an increasingly better choice for in-home listening.
So, Exhibit A: three out of four Techsurvey respondents now own a smart TV – the highest level we’ve charted, and up sharply since COVID when we hunkered down to watch Netflix. Meantime, it has become an essential device in most homes as opposed to good old AM/FM radios which continue to disappear.
But are smart TV owners actually using these devices on any consistent basis to listen to audio? And so we asked them:
So, is there a “there there?”
Considering radio’s embrace of the new “3 Minute Rule,” this may be a way for radio to use these devices to its advantage. While not always super-simple, there are myriad ways to listen to “radio” on a smart TV, including via the iHeartRadio, Audacy, and Tune-In apps.
And when add in smart speakers – now owned by nearly four in ten Techsurvey participants – the environment for listening to radio at home just got even better.
That means devoting some on and off-air promotional inventory to “How to listen to KSLX at home” promos, perhaps in bite-sized video form that live on the station website and/or on social media video platforms. Why leave any quarter-hours on the table?
Yeah, I know….some of your are way ahead of me here. But for those of you who haven’t really given the home scene a whole lot of thought in recent years, perhaps this deserves some of your prime brainstorming time.
And by the way, all those disconsolate people sitting around at home? When broadcast radio is on its game, it’s the antidote to loneliness: companionship and community. If we’re delivering on those promises. we can uplift, engage, entertain, and inform with the best of them on any device.
And stay tuned here for this year’s all-industry webinar where I’ll present the key findings from Techsurvey 2025 in partnership with Inside Radio and sponsored by Quu. There are all sorts of new questions this year – including what you see above – plus compelling tracking that tells radio’s and technology’s trajectories over the past many years. I can’t wait to show it to you. – FJ
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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RADIO IS EVERYWHERE……TO INFORM, ENTERTAIN, PROVIDE ESSENTIAL CONNECTION. http://www.broadcastideas.com