International Radio Broadcasters in Latin America

Radio signals are carried on many frequencies. Commercial radio stations are either AM or FM, reflecting the method of modulation, and can only be heard clearly in a local area. There are also short-wave and medium-wave radio stations that can be heard over vast distances internationally. Many of these long-distance radio broadcasters are operated by governments.

One reason that governments feel that they need to operate international radio broadcasting services is that this is a means of international communications. Thus, they are able to communicate political, economic, religious, social and cultural opinions and values, generally without interference from the local governments. Many of these international broadcasting services deliver multi-lingual programs. For example, Radifusión Argentina al Exterior has English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish services.

The audiences to these international radio broadcasting services are reckoned to be fairly small, since the signals are not as clear as local commercial signals and may also require special equipment (such as receivers and scanners). This means that it may be difficult and/or expensive to estimate their audience sizes. When we consider any local market, their audiences may be miniscule. However, their strengths lie in their broad coverage and they may have sizeable listenship when aggregated across many local markets.

The Los Medios y Mercados de Latinoamérica study is a pan-regional research study that covers 18 Latin American countries. In the 1998 survey, we asked about listenership to eight international radio broadcasters. Here listenership is defined to be 'within the last 30 days'. This is looser than the 'last 7 days' definition that is used in local market radio audience measurement, because we did not know what to expect. The results are shown in the table below for eight services. Please bear in mind that the survey universe corresponds to 289 million persons between the ages of 12 and 64 in eighteen Latin American countries. Overall, 9.21 million (or 3.2%) of these people listened to one or more of these international radio services.

International Radio Service	# of Listeners In Last 30 Days (in millions)
Rádio Nacional do Brasil	3.50
VOA (Voice of America)	2.86
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation	1.34
Radio Mexico International	1.15
Radiodifusión Argentina al Exterior (RAE)	1.03
Radio France Internationale (RFI)	1.03
Deutsche Welle (DW)	0.63
Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI)	0.55
NET	9.21

Demographic Category/Class	% Listened to in Last 30 Days
Sex Male Female	3.3% 3.1%
Age 12-17 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64	1.5% 2.9% 5.2% 1.8% 4.1% 3.4%
Educational Level Less than 6 years More than 6, but less than 12 12 years of more	2.6% 2.6% 4.4%
Occupation Owner/Manager Professional	10.9% 5.7%
Socio-Economic Level Level A Level B Level C Level D	8.3% 2.1% 3.0% 2.6%
Geographical Region Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Mexico Venezuela Balance of Central America Balance of South America	4.4% 2.4% 1.1% 2.3% 5.9% 1.2% 3.1% 1.5%
TOTAL	3.2%

In terms of demographics, the listeners to the international radio broadcasters are

Geographically, listening to international radio broadcasters is more common in the countries close to the USA (namely, in Mexico and Central America) and those with large immigrant populations (namely, Argentina).

Today, these traditional radio broadcasting services face a serious challenge from Internet radio services which deliver clear signals across international boundaries. There are presently hundreds of Internet radio stations already (see, for example, our Radio page). Of the 9.21 million people who are listeners to international radio broadcasters, 4.9% of them have access to Internet from their homes.