The number of people listening to podcasts in Taiwan has reached half the number of those listening to traditional radio programs, a National Communications Commission (NCC) broadcasting market investigation report said.
The report said that 17.3 percent of people above the age of 16 listen to traditional radio programs, 8.9 percent listen to podcasts and 5.7 percent listen to radio programs over the Internet.
Nearly 73 percent said they do not listen to any podcasts or traditional radio programs.
Photo: Ting Yi, Taipei Times
The report said 18.2 percent of podcast listeners were aged 16 to 25, with interest waning as people grew older.
Fewer than 1 percent of podcast listeners were over the age of 66, it said.
About 23.5 percent of traditional radio listeners were aged 46 to 55, while those aged 16 to 25 only comprised 10.7 percent of conventional radio listeners, it said.
The audience of traditional radio programs is passive and is constrained by the time of the program or the topic discussed by the host on a given day, said Liao Ching (廖靖), podcast manager of Comma School (逗點學校).
He added that radio program hosts also have a relatively higher vocational qualification threshold.
The audiences actively search for whichever podcasts they wish to listen to, without radio stations dictating the length or the topic of podcasts, he said.
While most podcast listeners are 23 to 44 years old, if the popularity of podcasts continues to rise, older people might begin accepting the medium as well, Liao said.
Competition between podcasting and traditional radio does not need to be a “zero-sum” game, said Tu Sheng-tsung (杜聖聰), chairman of Ming Chuan University’s radio and television department.
The broadcast industry still has much room to grow, as audiobooks and other derivative media show, Tu said, adding that he was more concerned with how podcasters would be able to turn a profit and keep the industry afloat, as Taiwan has a small audience base.
Traditional radio programs are encountering the issue of an aging audience, and creating YouTube channels to broaden their audience bases might be one of the solutions, Tu said.
The NCC poll was conducted from March 14 to April 24 last year and targeted people aged 16 or older. It received 1,346 valid responses and claimed a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
The Sports Administration yesterday demanded an apology from the national table tennis association for barring 17-year-old Yeh Yi-tian (葉伊恬) from competing in the upcoming World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash tournament in Las Vegas this July. The sports agency said in a statement that the Chinese Taipei Table Tennis Association (CTTTA) must explain to the public why it withdrew Yeh from the WTT tournament in Las Vegas. The sports agency said it contacted the association to express its disapproval of the decision-making process after receiving a complaint from Yeh’s coach, Chuang