Watch above or read below.

Matthew Burns:
So, Jack, man, you are a super sleuth of data. You’re always trying to find the proof points for the theories and the beliefs that we have about media, about writing, about everything. And so you shared with me right before we started that even media buyers have the wrong perception of the effectiveness and power of radio. And this is something we believe dearly. So enlighten us, what’s going on?

Jack Heald:
Well, this is weird. You would think that if anybody would understand the reach of media of various types, it would be the people responsible for buying it. This is from an August 2025 study by a company called Advertiser Perceptions, backed by data from Nielsen, Edison Research, and LeadsRx. This is good data. When asked what percentage of Americans are reached by AM/FM radio in a typical week, the average answer from ad agencies was 40%.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, no, wait, ad agencies? So the people that are trying to put your message in front of people, they only believe –

Jack Heald:
The people who are telling you where to put your message…

Matthew Burns:
Okay. They only believe that it’s 40% effective?!

Jack Heald:
The average answer is 40%.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, got it.

Jack Heald:
Actual answer. Nielsen data, 87%.

Matthew Burns:
Oh my God. That’s staggering.

Jack Heald:
As insane as that seems to me, and it does seem absolutely mind-blowing. I said in a previous conversation you and I had that I’m in the business, and I thought radio would be dead 25 years ago.

Matthew Burns:
Yes, you have said that.

Jack Heald:
So it’s a fairly common belief, one that I confess I hold, that the younger generation, Gen Z and millennials, who are technically people under 34, have completely left radio behind.

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Jack Heald:
Not true. Want to know what the largest demographic segment for radio is?

Matthew Burns:
Let’s hear it.

Jack Heald:
Young adults, 18 to 34. I’d have lost every penny I’d have bet on that particular statistic.

Matthew Burns:
Actually, I’ll be honest with you, that’s all I hear from … So I have kids in that age group. My children are Gen Z and millennials, and they said this to me the other day, which is brilliant that you came up with this topic for today, and I got data backed by my own scientific research. But my kids were like, “Dad, I love the radio ads you guys make, and you guys produce, but who hears them if you’re putting them on the radio?” Because nobody I know listens to the radio.

And I said, “Oh, okay. So who’s 1-800 GOTJUNK?” And he goes, “Well, I know 1-800 GOTJUNK because they’re part of what your group has…” And I’m like, “Yeah, I know, but who are they? ” I said, “What is the slogan? What do they do? ” He goes, “Well, they got the stupid bling.” I said, “I don’t write those ads, but you know them.” And he’s like, “Oh, damn.” And I said, “You don’t maybe turn the radio on. That doesn’t mean you’re not hearing the radio.”

Right? I had the same conversation with an Uber driver, he was an East Indian Uber driver, really good, really interesting dude, and very curious, and was asking me all about what I did and blah, blah, blah. That’s so interesting. He goes, “But I don’t listen to the radio because I swear to God, these are the words he said. I’ll tell you the exact scenario. I don’t listen to the radio because I like to stream my music, so I can hear my music from back home.”

And I’m like, “Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense.” My in-laws are Portuguese  and they used to watch RTP television on satellite. They weren’t cable people except for every time they went to somebody else’s house, and they were watching somebody else’s television, or when they were in waiting rooms and stuff like that. So this guy says, “I don’t listen to the radio while the local radio station is playing in the car.” And I said, “Oh, you don’t?” And he says, “No.” And I said, “Well, this is the local radio station.”

And he says, well I put that on for my clients, for the people to get in the car. And I said, “Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Oh my gosh, you’re so kind to think of meeting the client where they’re at,” which is a topic that we talk about a lot. Anyway, I said, “But so you’re not hearing the radio for eight hours a day?” And he just stopped. He goes, “Oh yeah.” I said, “Active listening and passive listening don’t make a difference. It doesn’t make a difference.” And so it does not… Now we know this. I mean, that’s why we’re talking about it. It doesn’t really surprise us that it’s as high as it is. I mean, we did think there was going to be a much faster decline. TV is actually going through a much faster decline, but to not realize that you’re hearing the radio to me is a brilliant state of affairs.

It’s the reason why if you are a marketer, I’m going to look right at you. If you’re a marketer or a business owner, just think about getting on radio. Even if you don’t get an ad writer team and blah, blah, blah, get on radio.

Jack Heald:
We need to make it clear. We’re not radio whores.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, no.

Jack Heald:
We don’t care except that you have a dollar to spend. Our job is to make sure that the dollar reaches the most people, the most times, the most effectively.

Matthew Burns:
Yes.

Jack Heald:
If we could do that by painting the back of bald guys’ heads with your message, if that was the best way to do it, we would do it. We don’t care.

Matthew Burns:
[laughter] You completely broke me painting the back of bald guys’ heads.

Jack Heald:
Okay. Get this. So we’ve established that passive listening and active listening, it doesn’t matter. You could intentionally go turn the radio to your favorite station and you’re not going to hear more or less than walking past a store where the doors open and the radio’s on. You’re still going to hear it. Your brain hears it. Now, Pandora and Spotify all about listening. It’s the digital version of radio.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah.

Jack Heald:
Ask the average Joe Schmo, what’s more popular? Digital things like radio, like Spotify and Pandora, or over-the-air radio. None of this would be surprising if people not in marketing said, “Oh, those are way more popular.”

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, I got a Spotify playlist. Yeah, I got an Amazon music playlist.

Jack Heald:
Agencies surveyed in this study believe that Pandora and Spotify command a bigger audience than radio, on average.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, like a total bigger average.

Jack Heald:
On average, agencies believe that about 41% of an audience can be reached by Pandora or Spotify, 26% by radio. Reality? The reality? Yeah. And we’re talking ad-supported radio.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yep.

Jack Heald:
We’re talking to marketers, we’re talking to business owners. You’re spending some money to try to get a message to somebody.

Matthew Burns:
Okay.

Jack Heald:
Which is more effective? Spotify, Pandora, or over-the-air radio. You’d think agencies would know this, right? Oh my God. Well, we know this. 14 times. Bigger share of audience.

Matthew Burns:
14 times.

Jack Heald:
1400%. And again, we’re not radio whores. We really don’t care.

Matthew Burns:
No, we’re media agnostic.

Jack Heald:
Other than how do we get the most bang for our client’s buck?

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Well, I mean, okay, so you said it a couple of times. So we’re not media first, right? So your terminology a lot more drastic than mine. So we’re not media first. We don’t care if you want to own Facebook or you want to own radio or you want to own TV or you want to own billboards, you want to own direct to consumer… Direct response, skywriting. Signs on the back of a bald man’s head. Whatever it is.

Jack Heald:
You want to own it.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. If you want to do that, if that’s where you want to live, then great, you can do it. We don’t care. We’ll find the message and the strategy that makes that work. I mean, that’s what we believe as marketers. Marketers in general should believe this. And if you don’t, shame on you, because if you don’t have a strategy, you have nothing.

The media is not the first choice. But we do believe in offline media more than we believe in digital media, only because repetition is the key. Guys, listen back to the episode with Stephen Semple about repetition and what we believe about repetition. But ultimately, if you are going to choose a medium for the best return on investment, reaching the most amount of people with the least amount of money, with the best repetition and effectiveness, radio can’t be beat.

And we’re not trying to tell you that you should be on the radio. I leaned into the camera and said, “Go to the radio, get on the radio.” I’m just saying, if you don’t believe in radio, then there’s nothing I can do to persuade you. I mean, this is a discoverable document. We can probably put a link to it in the description, I think, right, Jack?

Jack Heald:
It’s behind a paywall I pay for, but- If we can screencap it and throw it on screen …

Matthew Burns:
Listen, I’m going to put it back up. We’re going to put it right here for a couple of minutes, seconds, or whatever. It’s going to sit here roughly. I don’t know how to make … We’ll do this in post-production. But anyway, guys, push pause. Again, I’m new to this whole thing. So just understand that what we’re trying to say is get the data. Don’t have confirmation bias. “Well, I don’t listen to the radio, so nobody listens to the radio.” “I don’t watch TV, so nobody watches TV.” “I don’t read newspapers, so nobody is reading newspapers.” Yes, there’s a lot of change in the world, but it’s shockingly scary how little radio has changed over the last 50, 60, 70 years. So, all we want to do is give you the data.

Jack Heald:
I feel like I sound like a radio whore. And I’ll admit, personally, as a consumer, I love radio. I’ll readily admit that.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, I love radio too.

Jack Heald:
But I so clearly remember when Napster hit, what was it? 98, something like that. I had the thought back then, “Oh, radio is dead. Radio is over. Radio’s done.” And I could have given all the reasons why, and I failed to think about some really, really significant things. So I guess I shouldn’t beat up our compadres in these agencies too much because if I just didn’t have my head buried in this kind of stuff all the time, I’d have been just like them. I would’ve said, “There’s no way radio is more effective than Pandora and Spotify.” Yeah. Impossible. No way.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. No, listen, I’m with you on that. Listen, guys, this is what we want to talk about is specifically, listen, this is the data. These are the numbers. So please take the data. Do with what you will. Do with it what you will. We’re just purveyors of information and we really want to see more companies, more marketers use the powerhouses that are there. So you have that unfair, that cheap, that unfair advantage, a cheat code for getting to more people with your message for the least amount of money. And radio just happens to be one of the best of them.

It doesn’t always work. There’s a lot of times when radio doesn’t work. Okay. So guys, we usually end our episodes and now unfortunately I’m signaling you that we’re ending an episode, but the Wizard Academy guys, we love that place. You can learn all about everything from this kind of media.

You can learn about communication. And we’re actually going to do an episode coming up about communication. Wizardacademy.org, if you want to take a course, you want to learn more about marketing and communication in general, go check them out. We love them. And again, we do this because we love them, not because they’re telling us to. They’re a non-profit school, so we’re not asking for money for this. We just love them. We’re both students.

Jack, as always, you find the data that bites hard, and you feel passionately about it, and I love that about you. So thank you for this one, and we’ll see everybody next time.

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