Why the Urban Youth Don’t Matter When It Comes to Radio

KARF’s new radio numbers for the first quarter of 2012 have proven one thing to us: the urban youth don’t matter when it comes to radio. The best performing youth radio station is Kiss FM, being the only one in the top five.

Ghetto Radio and Easy FM are the only other youth stations in the top 10. Three more youth stations made the top 20. 1 FM made it to the mid-teens numbers and Ghetto FM and Capital FM closed out the top 20. It’s surprising that vernacular stations are doing much better in Nairobi. Inooro, Kameme and Coro FM are all in the top 10. Ramogi and Musyi FM add to the top 20.

Many complain about the offering on radio and the kind of music played. But when such numbers come out, the older skewing stations do more of what they’re doing and the youngster-targeting ones try to go for the older guys or do nothing to better the shows to draw an audience that is ‘obviously’ not not listening to radio, anyway.

Royal Media Services, which is the group with the most, and best performing stations, only has one youth-oriented station, Hot 96, which didn’t even make the top 30.