The Top Five Reasons Christian Radio Listeners Listen: How Music Station Listeners Are Different from Music/Teaching (Hybrid) Station and All-Teaching Station and Program Listeners
In 2023’s Finney Media Why Listen?® Survey there were almost 15,000 respondents from three different formats: CCM stations, Music/Teaching (Hybrid) stations, and all-Teaching stations & programs.
The centerpiece of the survey is the reasons Christian radio listeners listen. It turns out that in some cases, listeners who came from CCM stations listen for reasons similar to listeners from both Music/Teaching (Hybrid) stations and all-Teaching stations and programs and then there are a few reasons that are different. Here are the percentages, by format, of respondents who said that’s a Main Reason they listen:
Music Station Respondents
| 1. You like worshipful Christian music | 93% |
| 2. It helps you worship God throughout the day | 91% |
| 3. You want to be encouraged | 82% |
| 4. It helps you grow spiritually | 76% |
| 5. It’s safe for you and your family to listen to | 67% |
Music/Teaching (Hybrid) Respondents
| 1. It helps you grow spiritually | 85% |
| 2. It helps you worship God throughout the day | 84% |
| 3. You want to be encouraged | 73% |
| 4. You like worshipful Christian music | 71% |
| 5. It helps you understand the Bible better | 71% |
All-Teaching Station Respondents
| 1. It helps you grow spiritually | 92% |
| 2. It helps you understand the Bible better | 85% |
| 3. It helps you worship God throughout the day | 81% |
| 4. You want to hear sermons | 77% |
| 5. You want to be encouraged | 71% |
The answers in bold are the ones not common to all three formats. The ones not in bold made the Top Five Main Reasons for each of the formats. A few observations:
- It makes sense that “I like the worshipful Christian music” would not show up as a top Main Reason for Teaching Station respondents since those stations don’t play any music.
- A more Bible-focused and evangelism reason shows up higher for the stations that lean toward Teaching programs “It helps you understand the Bible better” showing up much more strongly than that reason did with music listeners.
- We believe that the biggest headlines are this. When you look at the Main Reasons that are common to all three formats “It helps me worship God throughout the day”, “It helps me grow spiritually” and “I want to be encouraged” it is as if our CCM listener is saying “I’m coming to you for Spiritual Encouragement. Because of the differences in Hybrid and Teaching stations and programs, for those stations, it’s more Spiritual Growth.
Coming in December: The Top Five Reasons Listeners Give.
