Billions and Billions Served

Public radio provided more than 11.5 billion hours of public service in FY 2003. That’s an estimated 11.5 billion hours of listening to public radio in one year.*

Let that sink in for a moment.

The public consumed more than 11.5 billion hours of public radio’s mission – news, information, music, and entertainment programming – in a single year. Over the past decade, the public has spent more than 85 billion hours listening to public radio. That’s more than 85,000,000,000 hours of public service.

And the best news of all? Listening to public radio continues to grow while listening to commercial radio continues a decline that started long before satellite radio and Internet streaming.

We must know something the commercial radio people don’t know.

* Based on the Arbitron Nationwide Average Quarter-Hour audience of 1.76 million listeners reported by the Station Resource Group in its 2003 revenue update.