Just about every day of the year has something for some niche group out there.
Do you like peanut butter? There's a day for that.
Don't like to wear socks? Wave your sock-free freak flag every year on May 8.
Today is our day.
It's "World Radio Day" as declared by UNESCO:
World Radio Day was first proclaimed by the UNESCO General Conference in 2011 following a proposal from Spain, with the goal of raising greater awareness among the public and the media of the importance of radio; encouraging decision makers to establish and provide access to information through radio; as well as enhancing networking and international cooperation among broadcasters.
We can get into that.
To show our support of this day, we asked folks to share pictures of their radios. Scroll through the images above to see some of them, and share yours using the hashtag #ShowUsYourRadio or #WorldRadioDay.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon shared this message saying "radio matters to youth around the world.":
http://youtu.be/Q99BaBkebfo
And here are a few stats from UNESCO that show how radio listening is changing (how about a few more smart phone photos in the slideshow above?):
- There are over 2.4 billion radio receivers and over 51,000 radio stations worldwide.
- Even in developing countries, at least 75% of households have access to radio.
- In the United States, the percentage of 13 to 35 year olds listening to online radio is now equal to that of traditional radio.
- In the United States, of those aged between 18 and 34 years of age, 90.3 % said they listened to the radio every week, which means 65.2 million young people listened to the radio.
- In the United States, 23% of 13 to 35 year olds spend their weekly music listening time streaming radio while driving, up 17% from a year ago.
- The amount of time spent listening to internet radio now matches the time spent listening to traditional AM/FM radio, which declined 2% over the last year.
