Local businesses have been marketing their goods and services on Charlotte radio since March 18, 1922. That's when the Federal Radio Commission granted a license to the Southern Radio Corporation with the randomly assigned call sign, WBT.

From studios located in the Realty Building located at the corner of Trade and Tryon, WBT began broadcasting music from phonograph records for two hours each day. The station's early broadcasts were heard by about 22,000 people using hand-built radio receivers.

Who could have guessed that 102 years later, advertising on Charlotte radio would still be the best advertising option for all types of retailers and business owners.

Nowadays, according to Nielsen, Charlotte radio reaches 1,983,988 adult consumers. This reach is significantly higher than all other advertising options including local TV, cable, social media, streaming video, online audio, and newspapers.

Reach, according to Nielsen, is the audience metric most responsible for driving the success of an advertising campaign. Only the message itself carries more sway.

There are about 1,700,000 registered passenger vehicles in the Charlotte area. Some are cars. Some are trucks. Some are Hondas. Some are Fords. Some are Teslas. Some have four doors. Some have two. Some go fast. Some go slow. Some guzzle gas. Some sip. Some are red. Some are blue.

The one thing that almost every car and truck in the Charlotte area have in common, though, is the AM/FM radio smack-dab in the middle of the dashboard.

The first car radio went on sale in 1930. It was an invention of the Galvin Manufacturing Company. The company named the radio 'Motorola,' and its cost was $130, around $2000 in today's dollars. By 1935, more than three million car radios had been installed.

Today, AM/FM radio is part of every car and truck on Charlotte-area roads. In addition to the radio, many of these vehicles also provide drivers with other audio options, including a CD player, Sirius/XM, Pandora, Spotify, podcasts, and easy access to personal MP3 collections.

It is fair, then, for small business owners who depend on Charlotte radio to advertise their goods and services to ask: with all the audio options on today's dashboards, is anyone listening to local AM/FM radio in the car anymore?

Every week, according to Nielsen, 89% of adult consumers tune in to a Charlotte radio station. This is significantly more people than watch broadcast TV, local cable, or video streaming services. It's more than use social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.  And, it's more than read local newspapers.

Charlotte radio is also the medium with the greatest reach among millennials, a generation that not only has embraced an abundance of online media options but also accounts for nearly a third of all local consumer spending.

This reach advantage is a crucial reason why local small business owners depend on Charlotte radio to market their goods and services.

A study released this week by Edison Research and NPR discovered that their six distinct types of radio listeners. The study also examines how each group of listeners engages with both programming and advertising.  These distinctions are important for Charlotte small business owners to understand.

The six listener categories as described in the study are:

There are more than 1,700,000 car radios in the Charlotte area. On March 30, though, many of these devices became quarantined along with their owners. That was the day when the Governor of North Carolina shut down the state to slow the spread of COVID-19.

According to the Apple Mobility Index, the Governor's public-safety order caused traffic on Charlotte roadways to plummet to 65% of pre-pandemic levels.

By the beginning of July, however,  the AMI indicates that traffic in Charlotte began to exceed pre-Covid levels. The surge in mobility is due, in part, to work-from-home, furloughed, and laid-off employees returning to their workplaces.

According to Nielsen, during the week of April 30, only 39% of adults with jobs were working outside-the-home.  During the week of October 1, though, that number had expanded to 61%.