We sent you a card because your community needs honest listeners, non-listeners, and everyone in between. Here is why your participation counts.
More than 82% of the United States tunes in to AM/FM radio weekly, reliably, by choice. In an era of infinite content options, people keep coming back to their radio, and with good reason.
Radio is free, instant, and needs nothing from the grid but a receiver. It does not ask for a subscription, a login, or a data plan. It is just there, as it has been for over a hundred years.
When power goes out, cell towers get damaged, or networks jam under load, AM and FM stations keep broadcasting on battery-powered radios, car radios, and hand-crank receivers that need nothing from the grid.
The National Public Warning System reaches more than 90% of the U.S. population through broadcast radio stations, equipped to keep transmitting when everything else goes dark. During Hurricane Helene in 2024, radio newsrooms became front-line resources for communities that had lost power, water, cell service, and internet simultaneously.
Streaming and satellite require paid services and subscriptions. Streaming often proves brittle during weather events, and satellite is inherently not local. Radio is more resilient and more available than any other medium.
Free to listen. Free to hear. No login, no data plan, no monthly bill. Just a receiver and a frequency.
Battery radios, car radios, hand-crank receivers. When cell towers and internet go down, radio stays on the air.
Weather closings, evacuation routes, shelter locations. Local personalities are often a community's most recognized voices and most trusted sources of reliable information.
Local personalities connect citizens to their communities in a way no algorithm can. This bond, proven for generations, is what makes local radio endure.
A playlist service does not know your mayor's name, your high school team's record, which road washed out, or what the shelter-in-place zone is for your neighborhood. Local radio does, because the people making it live there too.
Local personalities connect citizens to their communities in a special way proven for generations. As technology advances, radio proves its value as a permanent part of each town's social fabric.
No subscriptions, no limits.
Radio has your hometown.
Every kind of listener, every kind of non-listener, every opinion about what radio is doing right and what it could do better. Survey research only works when it reflects real people, not just the enthusiastic ones. No trick, no sales pitch waiting at the end.
If you listen to local radio every day, we want to hear from you. If you barely listen at all, we especially want to hear from you. Even if radio is not part of your life right now, your honest answers help local stations understand who they are reaching and who they are missing.
What you tell us this time and every time after is part of something that genuinely matters.
This survey is conducted on behalf of your local radio market, not any individual station. No personal data is ever sold, given, or provided to third parties. Your answers are combined with other respondents and reported only in the aggregate. No one will contact you to sell you anything.
By participating, you are automatically entered in any contest associated with the mailing you received.