During the arrival and immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy last month, those with power looked to television, the Web and social media for information. But large numbers of people, particularly those in the hardest-hit areas, also turned to the radio.
Arbitron, the radio ratings service, will report on Monday that from 7 p.m. to midnight on Oct. 29, when the storm made landfall in New Jersey, an average of just more than a million people in the broader New York region were listening to the radio during any 15-minute period. That is up 70 percent from the same period the week before. (Besides the five boroughs of New York City, the metropolitan market includes five counties in New York, nine in New Jersey and part of one in Connecticut.)
The audience skyrocketed in coastal areas. Stamford and Norwalk, Conn., had a 367 percent increase during that period; in New Jersey, that figure was up 247 percent in Monmouth County, and up 195 percent in Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties. These numbers increased even though some stations, like WNYC and WINS, lost their AM frequencies yet continued to broadcast on FM.
In many areas, power was out for days, limiting access to televisions and computers. Joe Puglise, the manager of Clear Channel Communications? radio stations in New York, said that at his home in Monmouth County, which got power back last week, he tuned in on a transistor radio, and that his stations received similar reports from listeners across the region.
At WHTZ-FM, also known as Z100, Clear Channel?s popular Top 40 station, D.J.?s whose news reports are usually confined to Lady Gaga sightings took calls from listeners and spent long stretches disseminating information from the authorities. At Clear Channel?s building in TriBeCa, the studios had generator power but offices upstairs were dark.
?We haven?t had a situation like this in terms of response from listeners since 9/11,? Mr. Puglise said.
In some areas, the storm continued to dominate the airwaves well into last week, as Sean Ross, a radio analyst in New Jersey, noted in an online column for Billboard magazine about WJLK-FM, a Top 40 station on the Jersey Shore. On that station, the storm was a topic for news coverage, listener testimonials, even car dealer and supermarket ads.
The news reports on commercial music stations contrasts with the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Ross said, when many stations simply turned their signals over to affiliated news stations. It also underscores radio?s local roots and accessibility in a time of media deluge.
?Radio,? Mr. Ross said, ?still has an authority that not every tweet has.?
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