Judging from my friends, I've got a feeling that portable transistor radios are a pretty rare find in the homes of people in their 20s and 30s. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find *any* battery powered radios in a lot of homes today, since rechargable mp3 players (most sans radios) have taken over as the portable units of choice. I'd guess that a large percentage of city dwellers simply have no access to broadcast information during power outages.