Radio audience still in the hundreds of millions

People who are drafting their epitaphs for radio ought to get their facts straight before they send out the death notices.

Radio reaches 232 million listeners weekly, according to a new study from Arbitron.

(If Microsoft had such numbers, Bill Gates would probably face more than anti-trust allegations.)

OK, if you suspect that Arbitron has a conflict of interest (since its main customers are radio stations), check out Gallup and other polls, which show that National Public Radio -- that's right, good ol' NPR -- in December of 2006 attracted 19 percent of American adults daily. That's just 1 percent lower that the highly touted talk radio phenomenon.

Local newspapers? Fifty-seven percent get their news daily or several times a week, Gallup reports.

The biggest losers? Nightly newscasts from the Big Three networks show up at 35 percent daily -- down from 62 percent in 1995.

Read the news brief from Radio Ink here -- http://www.radioink.com/HeadlineEntry.asp?hid=137299&pt=todaysnews