Pay-TV is struggling to survive COVID-19.

Before the onset of the pandemic, Nielsen reported that 76% of Southwest Florida area households received their television programs from cable systems, telephone companies, or satellite operators.  That number, however, is plummeting.

Pay-TV providers in the Fort Myers-Naples area include Xfinity, Dish, Spectrum, Summit, Hotwire, AT&T TV and DirecTV.

"Cord-cutting, people dropping their cable and satellite TV subscriptions, pre-dates the onset of Covid-19. But the pandemic is exaggerating the trend, creating deeper issuers for programming that relies on those services for distribution," Eric Savitz wrote last week in Barron's.  This includes non-premium services like ESPN, TBS, TNT, USA, CNN, and Discovery.

"LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield counts a loss of 1.96 million subscribers to cable, satellite TV, and virtual cable services combined in the first quarter," Savitz continued. "This is the worst combined quarterly drop ever, down 6% from a year ago."

Greenfield said in an interview with Barron’s that what is especially sobering is that most of the first quarter activity pre-dated the virus. The numbers are likely to get considerably worse in the second quarter.

There is alarming news for Southwest Florida small business owners who advertise on Fort Myers television stations: broadcast TV viewers are disappearing at a rapid pace.

Nielsen reports that halfway through the first quarter of this year, the number of people using television has dropped 7.5%. This compares to -6.3% in the fourth quarter of 2019, and -7.0% a year ago,

"If the trend holds, it would represent the largest quarterly decline for TV viewership in our data set," explains UBS analyst John C. Hodulikadding. "Trends have worsened across most age demos with persons 25-34 now falling -17% vs. low double-digit declines throughout 2019. The persons 55+ demo continues to trend down -2%, similar to 2019 (the first year of declining ratings for the demo)."

Radio listenership, on the other hand, has remained quite stable, according to Nielsen. Since 1970, the medium has reached more than 9-in-10 consumers every week.

How quickly the millennials have grown up.

According to Nielsen, 58.7% of all Southwest Florida parents with children under the age of 18 are millennials.  

From the time their kids are born until they reach they are 17, these young parents will spend, on average, $233,000 per child. This does not include the cost of college.

Currently, there are 197,533 children under the age of 18 living in SWFL. That means the local parenting economy is worth upwards of $45 billion. These dollars are being spent, among other things, on diapers, daycare, transportation, toys, education, electronics, clothing, and health care.

For SWFL small business owners interested in competing for a substantial portion of this multi-billion dollar pool of parental cash, they must advertise to millennial moms and dads. By almost any measurement, advertising on Fayetteville radio is the best way to reach this audience.

Low unemployment, a boom in housing starts, and confident consumers are propelling robust sales for Southwest Florida furniture stores.

In 2019, local consumers in the Fort Myers-Naples area spent $460,000,000 on furniture and home furnishing. This number is expected to grow.

Based on estimates developed by Furniture Today’s Strategic Insights team and Easy Analytic Software Inc. (EASI), the total furniture and bedding market is projected to expand by more than 22% by 2024.

If an SWFL small business owner who sells furniture, furnishings, or home decor would like to grab a larger share of this expanding market, then advertising is necessary.  By almost every key metric, advertising on local radio is a sound marketing investment.

Southwest Florida small business owners have depended on radio advertising to market their goods and services since 1940.  That's when William E. Benns put the first Fort Myers station, WFTM, on the air.

Today, there are 28 radio stations that serve Lee and Collier counties. Each provides a unique blend of music, information, and entertainment.  Some stations focus on politics or sports. Some play country music. Some play the hits. Some play classic rock. Some are on the AM dial. Some are on FM.

When Mr. Benns began broadcasting, there were no TV stations in Florida. Those would come nine years later. Also, there was no social media, YouTube, Sirius/XM, Pandora, Spotify, or smartphones. Each of those would be products of a new Millenium.

With an overabundance of advertising options now available to small business owners, does advertising on Fort Myers radio still make sense?  Here are five facts that serve to answer that question.

It's time to set some misguided SWFL small business owners straight.  When we say everybody listens to  Fort Myers radio, we mean everybody.  Generations X, Y, and Z. Baby boomers, and, yes, the millennial generation.

You know...millennials. Those are the "kids" who came of age at the turn of the millennium (which is, debatably, either 2000 or 2001).  This means 18-34 year olds. 

In the Fort Myers metro (Collier and Lee Counties counties) 196,800 millennials make-up exactly one-third of the population and will deliver $6.6 billion to local cash registers.

But here's the thing about millennials that many SWFL small business owners get wrong: millennials listen to the radio.  Almost all of them. 94.6% of them to be exact.