Early this year, AMS decided to find out if the mainstream media in this country were telling the entire story. AMS wanted to discover first-hand what the American consumer was thinking about radio, as well as all the new technology that continues to fascinate the mainstream media. AMS has advocated for a long time that radio get its act together and go full-bore with its own information campaign against the massive PR onslaught that has been launched by XM and Sirius over the last couple of years. You have to hand it to them; they have succeeded in convincing the national mainstream media that satellite is eating radio's lunch.

So the first AMS Radio Index was launched in January 2006; it was a scientifically-conducted national survey of 1,008 Americans. The news coverage of that first survey was amazing: the trades covered it heavily, and there has been significant pickup from consumer media, such as the Los Angeles Times, NY Daily News, Louisville Courier-Journal, Orlando Sentinel, Denver Post, and others. Even Howard Stern took issue with the survey and attacked it three different times on his program within a week after the survey results were released.

The Index received so much attention, and its results were so different from what we have been reading about in the national media, that we have decided to commission two surveys a year. Their results will be placed on this website.

We are including "Industry Viewpoints," our blog, because we think our industry needs a place where radio professionals can talk about what is going on across the country. We will place articles of interest in the blog, and our intention is for "Industry Viewpoints" to become one of the first places radio professionals want to go when they are looking for the latest information on the radio profession.