From a new survey by the Arbitron ratings company and Edison Media Research (as reportd by The Washington Post):

Four formats — news-talk, adult contemporary, pop hits and black-oriented — account for more than half of all radio listening in the nation. For more than a generation, the radio industry has attributed this to listeners, saying they demand that narrow focus. But the on-demand media revolution has revealed that argument to be little more than corporate spin.

About half of Americans age 55 or older have bought “Me Media” devices, such as TiVo and iPods, that put the consumer in the control booth, but according to a new survey by the Arbitron ratings company and Edison Media Research, about 90 percent of everyone younger than 55 is already on board.

The iPod, Apple’s digital music player, is more like the transistor radio than any other gadget in media history, in that it is making a powerful entrance into the American home mainly through the teen market.

The percentage of people who say they “love” their iPod (35 percent) or their satellite radio (40 percent) versus those who “love” over-the-air radio (19 percent).

But the study says there’s still time for radio to respond: Only 20 percent of Americans own an iPod, subscribe to satellite radio or listen to Internet radio, whereas 95 percent of the country regularly listens to radio.

Like Norm said, “It’s an on-demand world and I’m wearing Milk Bone underpants.” Or something like that.

“The deregulation of radio was tough on good-neighbor radio because Clear Channel and other conglomerates were anxious to vacuum up every station in sight for fabulous sums of cash and turn them into robot repeaters. I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing next to me. Clear Channel’s brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.

After the iPod takes half the radio audience and satellite radio subtracts half of the remainder and Internet radio gets a third of the rest and Clear Channel has to start cutting its losses and selling off frequencies, good-neighbor radio will come back. People do enjoy being spoken to by other people who are alive and who live within a few miles of you.”

— From the  The Nation (May 23) [via Doc Searls]