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From the ARAnet On-Line Library of Public Radio Research

Guys in Suits with Charts: Au dience Research in U.S. Public Radio

by Alan G. Stavitsky (14 pages)

Originally published as:

Stavitsky, Alan G. "Guys in Suits with Charts: Audience Research in U.S. Public Radio." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Spring 1995.

Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media

David Giovannoni, Audience Research Analysis

GUYS IN SUITS WITH CHARTS: AUDIENCE RESEARCH IN U.S. PUBLIC RADIO

A significant change in the practice of U.S. public radio during the 1980s was the ac- ceptance of audience research as an essential management function. In commercial broadcasting the need for audience research has long been evident: to provide the institu- tional knowledge used by advertisers and broadcasters to buy and sell audiences (Beville, 1988; Buzzard, 1990; Webster and Lichty, 1991). For many years, however, public radio managers widely resisted the conduct and application of audience re- search as marking the ascendance of market considerations over public broadcasting’s social and cultural imperatives. Nonetheless, during the 1980s what has been described as a “research revolution” swept across U.S. public radio (Giovannoni, 1991, p. 19). To- day, audience research is extensively used by public radio managers, both network and station-based, when making decisions about programming and fundraising, and a cottage industry of consultants has emerged. The degree to which audience research has been embraced by the public radio community became evident when research consultants Tom Church and David Giovannoni were honored with awards for service to public radio during the 1994 Public Radio Confer- ence (Kudos for Audience Gurus, 1994).

The rise of audience research in U.S. public radio, however, has become a lightning rod for critics both within and outside the indus- try, a symbol of the changing nature of pub- lic broadcasting. Some critics argue that in- creased emphasis on audience research re- flects the transformation of public radio from its educational, service-based origins to an audience-driven orientation. They think that public stations will target those listeners

most likely to support the stations financially (for examples of this line of argument, see Fisher, 1989; Josephson, 1992; Katz, 1989; Lee and Solomon, 1990; Rauber, 1993; Rowland, 1986 and 1993). One of public radio’s foremost personalities, Garrison Keillor, told an interviewer: “I think there has been an influx of commercial people... Guys in suits with charts and pages of num- bers. I think that this is a pretty dreadful de- velopment” (quoted in Thoughts from Lake Wobegon, 1994, p. 58). Reacting to the awards given Church and Giovannoni, Larry Bensky, a journalist for the Pacifica chain of public radio stations, argued, “Not since Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize has there been a more inappropriate award” (personal communication, May 7, 1994). Still another critic, independent producer Larry Josephson, contends that “Obsession with audience size, revenue and format have replaced the spiritual underpinnings of pub- lic radio, which sought to maximize intel- lectual and moral growth, passion, variety and pleasure” (personal communication, May 7, 1994).

Lumley, in a seminal book on audience re- search published in 1934, noted three “im- portant questions” related to audience meas- urement: “What are the purposes of...radio broadcasting in general? How can methods be developed to determine validly whether broadcasting fulfills these purposes? Is it possible to standardize the measurement techniques which have been found to be useful?” (1934/1971, p. 3) This study illumi- nates anew Lumley’s fundamental issues. Debate over audience research in public ra- dio centers on Lumley’s first question, which deals with the essence of broadcast-

ing, and researchers have grappled with the latter two questions in seeking to apply re- search techniques developed for the com- mercial sector to non-commercial communi- cation. This study also highlights the rela- tionship between research and practice; the availability of research techniques and appli- cations shaped thinking about public radio’s mission, and the reverse. Drawing heavily upon personal interviews with public broad- casters, audience researchers and other indi- viduals concerned with the issue, this paper will describe the evolution of audience re- search in U.S. public radio and its implica- tions.

A definitional issue must be noted. While there are nearly 1,700 U.S. radio stations li- censed by the Federal Communications Commission as “non-commercial educa- tional” (“By the numbers,” 1994), the sta- tions generally referred to as public radio are those which provide a regular schedule of programming intended to serve the public (Giovannoni, Thomas and Clifford, 1992). Such a categorization would exclude non- commercial religious stations as well as low- powered stations operated by educational institutions, which may not broadcast during school holidays and for which training stu- dents is the primary function. By this scheme, it can be estimated that there are about 850 U.S. stations categorized as public radio.

A “Pre-History” of Audience Research

Prior to their contemporary engagement with audience research, U.S. public radio broad- casters were not as concerned about ac- countability to their audiences as Western European public-service broadcasters. Be- cause public-service broadcasters were the first — and, for many years, the only — electronic media in much of Western

Europe, they sought to be comprehensive: to educate, inform and entertain. Their reliance upon listener support through license fees provided justification for audience research as a form of feedback, as well as providing a form of feedback in itself, to ensure that the public was being satisfied. The British Broadcasting Corporation, for example, set up a Listener Research Unit in 1936 (Blum- ler, 1992; Silvey, 1974).

In contrast, a number of forces militated against either an ethic of comprehensiveness in U.S. educational radio or a perceived need for accountability to audiences. Educational broadcasting in the United States was con- sidered a supplement to the dominant com- mercial system — “a palliative,” in the words of Raymond Williams (1974, p. 37). Popular, mass-appeal programming was considered the domain of the commercial sector (Rowland, 1993, p. 159). Educational broadcasters, generally based at colleges and universities, saw their industry as an oasis in the desert of commercial programming. Further, financial support for educational broadcasting prior to the Public Broadcast- ing Act of 1967 was largely institutional or from philanthropic foundations (Blakely, 1979), so the broadcasters did not need to feel beholden to the public.

Accordingly, audience research in U.S. edu- cational radio (as non-commercial radio was known prior to the 1967 act) was sporadic and unsystematic. A study of educational radio stations found that station managers conducted audience research of various kinds as early as the 1920s (Stavitsky, 1993; see also Charters, 1930). Examples of early research included coverage maps from the 1920s, upon which stations indicated those areas from which they had gotten notice that people had received their signal; and 1930s- era analyses of how many and what kinds of letters had been received from listeners

about programs. However, such research was generally limited to stations based at land-grant universities. Further, the methods employed by educational broadcasters lagged in sophistication behind those used when researching commercial radio listening during the 1930s and 1940s. Commercial approaches to audience research in this era included telephone surveys conducted by the Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting and C.E. Hooper, as well as A.C. Nielsen’s Audimeter, a mechanical device which me- tered the usage of radio sets (see Beville, 1988, pp. 4-27; Buzzard, 1990, pp. 10-27).

During the 1950s several prominent faculty members who conducted audience research — notably Harrison Summers of Ohio State, a former NBC vice president — sought to encourage its use through presentations at National Association of Educational Broad- casters (NAEB) conventions and articles in academic journals (Summers, 1950). Inter- est in audience research spread, albeit gradu- ally (see Wright, 1961, for an annotated bib- liography of selected research findings to that time; also see Avery, Burrows and Pin- cus, 1980; Becker, 1962). NAEB established a Research Committee, which considered hiring an audience research consultant as early as 1953; lamented the lack of money for such research in 1954; and discussed purchasing Nielsen ratings data in 1955 (NAEB Research Committee, 1953; 1954; 1955). As a former Wisconsin educational radio manager said: “It’s not that the interest wasn’t there, the money wasn’t” (Ralph Johnson, former WHA station manager, per- sonal communication, June 30, 1989). However, lack of funds and concern about commercialism kept such research widely scattered and limited to the larger stations (Stavitsky, 1993, pp. 15-16).

Enter CPB

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is an independent, non-profit organi- zation, created as a result of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, that receives fed- eral funds and allocates them to stations, program producers and others involved in the industry. CPB was charged by Congress with assisting in the establishment and de- velopment of a system of public radio and television stations (Public Broadcasting Act of 1967). In public television, station offi- cials who had been troubled by what they perceived as an “East Coast, liberal bias” of National Educational Television, educational television’s program service, were deter- mined to avoid creating a network in the model of U.S. commercial television (Rob- ertson, 1993, pp. 251-255; Rowland, 1986, p. 257). The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was created by public television sta- tion leaders as a distribution entity and was forbidden from producing public television programs. Leaders of the lower-profile pub- lic radio system, on the other hand, had no such reluctance about a national program- ming organization. Most of educational ra- dio’s previous shared programming had been “bicycled” from station to station on a sporadic basis, with the exception of occa- sional ad hoc wired or wireless networks (Wood and Wylie, 1977, p. 24). National Public Radio (NPR), therefore, was estab- lished to produce as well as distribute pro- gramming to a system of stations intercon- nected for the first time (Avery, 1979). NPR began to distribute programs nationwide in 1971 — initially classical music concerts and the newsmagazine All Things Considered (see Stamberg, 1982; Stavitsky and Gleason, in press).

CPB commissioned analyses of Nielsen rat- ings for the public television system as early as 1969 (Willard D. Rowland, Jr., former PBS research director, personal communica- tion, February 23, 1993). CPB’s director of research, Jack Lyle, was primarily interested in television and paid little attention to public radio research until 1973 (David J. LeRoy, former CPB deputy director of research, per- sonal communication, February 15, 1994). In 1973, with new CPB president Henry Loomis placing an increased emphasis on radio, the corporation made its first purchase of Arbitron ratings data for public radio (Bailey and Church, 1979; LeRoy, personal communication, February 15, 1994). The size of public radio audiences was difficult to determine; listenership to public stations was not routinely listed in the ratings books, which were produced for commercial sta- tions, and required customized computer runs by the ratings service and hand- tabulation by CPB staffers.

Though the ratings data were provided to public radio stations, the role and value of audience research locally as an audience- building tool was neither initially valued nor emphasized. Jack Mitchell, then an NPR producer, learned to interpret and apply rat- ings data not from CPB, but rather from a neighbor who happened to work for Arbi- tron (Mitchell, personal communication, October 25, 1993). CPB officials used the audience information primarily for repre- sentational purposes. The data were taken to Congress to demonstrate that people were indeed listening to public radio and that the CPB appropriation was justified (Bernadette McGuire, director of planning and research, Association of Public Television Stations, personal communication, March 5, 1993; Rowland, personal communication, Febru- ary 23, 1993). Even after public radio pro- fessionals embraced audience research for programming and marketing purposes, its

representational function remained impor- tant. For instance, public broadcasters faced charges of elitism — that public broadcast- ing serves a relatively well-educated and wealthy audience, and that tax-based sup- port therefore unfairly subsidizes upper-class tastes (Rowland, 1993, pp. 162-166). NPR officials, like their counterparts in public television, have long sought to counter this criticism by presenting audience demo- graphic data to demonstrate that public broadcasting appeals to a broad spectrum of the U.S. citizenry (see Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1993, p. 13).

Research and the Station

The notion that audience research could be — and should be — fundamental in station programming became paramount after Tom Church, who had previously worked at Ar- bitron, joined CPB’s research office in 1976. Church sought to merge the non-commercial broadcaster’s sense of mission with the commercial concept of serving listeners. As he wrote in a primer on audience research for public radio: “While non-commercial stations may define success in more esoteric terms than profit, the bottom line for all ra- dio stations is that a mission...cannot be achieved if there are no listeners” (Radio Re- search Consortium, 1986, p. 1). Church made a technical, but significant, change in the type of data purchased from the ratings service. Whereas CPB had previously re- quested a customized tabulation of ratings diaries based upon the stations’ signal cov- erage areas, Church began buying diaries from the stations’ actual home markets, or Area of Dominant Influence, as defined by Arbitron. The effect was that, for the first time, public radio stations could compare their audiences to those of their commercial competitors (Church, personal communica- tion, March 1, 1993).

In 1977 Church began sending public radio stations the national rankings of stations in terms of their cumulative audience (cumes), the size of a station’s unduplicated audience during a specified period of time. He also encouraged local stations to make further use of Arbitron data from their home mar- kets, such as extracting demographic data (Church, personal communication, October 22, 1993). This provided an opening for the research consultants who were to have a major impact on the rise of audience re- search in public radio. Individuals inter- viewed for this study noted three leading consultants: Lawrence Lichty who had studied under Harrison Summers at Ohio State and was on leave from a faculty posi- tion at Wisconsin; David Giovannoni, Lichty’s graduate assistant; and George Bailey, another former student of Lichty, who was a professor at Wisconsin- Milwaukee and also managed the university radio station, WUWM.

Station managers such as Peter Dominowski in Orlando, Wallace Smith in Los Angeles, and Max Wycisk in Denver welcomed the audience research during the late 1970s as a useful form of feedback. However, others in public radio “greeted the methods, para- digms, and proponents of research with open hostility and disdain” (Giovannoni, 1991, p. 3). These critics — including pro- ducers such as Larry Josephson and manag- ers such as Marvin Granger, then in Spo- kane, both of whom participated in a debate with researchers at a 1978 conference — be- lieved that concern for ratings “collided with the art of programming non-commercial radio” (Marvin Granger, personal communi- cation, May 24, 1994). Anti-research an- tagonism boiled over at the 1978 Public Ra- dio Conference. After a presentation by Church, E.B. Eiselein, an academic from Arizona and a consultant to public radio sta- tions, stood up and proclaimed, “Arbitron is

bullshit.” Many of the conferees cheered. Church realized that more missionary work was needed (Church, personal communica- tion, March 1, 1993).

The Audience Research Road Show

Church convinced CPB Research Director Leon Rosenbluth of the need for a series of seminars for station managers on the value and function of audience research. The seminars were modeled after a series of CPB-sponsored meetings on public televi- sion programming techniques and NAEB seminars on ascertainment during the mid- 1970s (LeRoy, personal communication, February 15, 1994; Thomas A. McCain, Ohio State University professor and partici- pant in NAEB seminars, personal communi- cation, February 25, 1993). CPB’s Office of Communication Research funded eight seminars across the United States between 1978 and 1981, entitled “Public Radio and the Ratings,” to which managers and pro- gram directors were invited (CPB, 1981, p. 98). To help him conduct the seminars Church enlisted Lichty, Bailey, Giovannoni, and a cast of station managers.

Bailey characterized the attendees in three categories. First, managers who believed research was irrelevant because they had missions to fulfill. Second, skeptics who doubted the validity of research because their low ratings conflicted with intuition (often from phone or personal contacts) that many people were listening. Third, the “re- search converts” who sought more informa- tion about their audiences (George Bailey, personal communication, October 8, 1993). The presenters described the basics of social- scientific research, discussed the applications of ratings data, and sought to dispel some of the mythology surrounding audience re- search, such as the notion that a station’s

Friends group or program guide readers were representative of the audience at large. Humor helped. Asked at one seminar about “the best time” to schedule radio drama, Bailey replied, “1938” (Bailey, personal communication, October 8, 1993).

More than 220 station managers attended the sessions (CPB, 1981, p. 98). While the “road show” contributed to the incremental acceptance of audience research during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the seminars ex- posed many managers to the techniques and availability of research. They also provided a forum for research proponents to argue that conducting research did not in itself compromise a public station’s mission. (See Church, personal communication, March 1, 1993; Giovannoni, personal communication, March 1, 1993; Lichty, personal communi- cation, February 9, 1993). This process was also fostered by similar workshops at NPR meetings, numerous articles in professional publications (see, for example, Bailey and Church, 1979) and industry newsletters, and word of mouth.

The Morning Edition Project

Another significant episode in the diffusion of audience research involved the creation of NPR’s Morning Edition, which was mar- keted with the help of research and led to the establishment of the network’s research unit. The network’s first news program, All Things Considered (ATC), was scheduled for late afternoon because some public sta- tions were not on the air during radio’s “morning drive” time and because a morn- ing program would have been more difficult for NPR’s small staff to produce (Lichty, personal communication, February 9, 1993). After ATC had established itself, NPR sought to add a morning news program in 1978, but several prominent stations, such as

Boston’s WGBH and WGUC in Cincinnati, resisted on grounds that another network offering would displace local morning pro- gramming (Samuel Holt, personal commu- nication, March 4, 1993). NPR’s vice presi- dent for programming, Samuel Holt, used research to make the case that a morning news program would increase audience size throughout the day, as well as in the morn- ing.

Holt contracted with Lichty in 1978 to sur- vey morning radio listening. Some stations were dismayed to learn how few listeners they were attracting in the mornings, the time when radio listening in general was highest and when research showed there was high demand for news (Holt, personal com- munication, March 4, 1993; Lichty, personal communication, February 9, 1993). “If you want to serve listeners, you need to behave like radio,” Holt told managers (Holt, per- sonal communication, March 4, 1993). He asked stations whether they could justify rejecting the network’s proposed morning program based on the performance of local programming. Holt offered them Morning Edition in a modular format, borrowed from his commercial radio experience, in which stations could insert local material between the national segments. Although fewer than half of NPR’s member stations carried Morning Edition when it debuted in No- vember 1979, it was gradually picked up by more stations — and surpassed ATC in cu- mulative audience by 1989 — supporting NPR’s research claims about the importance of a morning news program (Piantadosi, 1979; Weinstein, 1989).

Nonetheless, Holt wanted more detailed audience information about national listener- ship to NPR programs, especially Morning Edition, than was currently available by summing up individual station cumes (Holt, personal communication, March 4, 1993).

Lichty was hired in 1979 as director of audi- ence research and evaluation for NPR and brought on Giovannoni to develop a system to measure the NPR audience. The Public Radio Audience Profile (PRAP) was labori- ously constructed by sampling local market listener diaries to compute national cumula- tive and average-quarter-hour audiences for public radio network programs (Giovannoni, personal communication, March 1, 1993). PRAP yielded its first audience estimates in 1981, the year that Lichty left NPR to work on a PBS documentary, and Giovannoni took over as head of research. That same year Church left CPB to form the Radio Re- search Consortium, a membership organiza- tion that provides stations with audience re- search data and consulting. By the mid-1980s discord over the use of audience research in public radio had largely faded. As station manager Marvin Granger noted, “The issue was settled and the re- searchers won” (personal communication, May 24, 1994). In addition to NPR’s active research unit, individual stations were con- ducting audience studies by the mid-1980s, often with the help of consultants, though occasionally using station staff or university students (see Giovannoni, 1991; Stavitsky, 1990). As an example, the Ohio public radio station for which the author worked hired consultants to conduct a “psychographic analysis” of its listeners in 1985, to assess their preferences regarding the station’s pro- grams and personalities (Psychographic Analysis, 1985).

Several external forces contributed to the ascendance of audience research. With tax- based funding for public broadcasting flat or decreasing during the 1980s, most station managers were forced to depend more on listener and underwriter dollars (Rowland, 1993, pp. 173-175, 180). Audience research became increasingly valuable as a means of assessing the appeal of programming to lis-

teners, and of pitching audiences to potential underwriters. Further, FM had become ra- dio’s dominant band during the 1970s, which exposed more listeners to the public stations clustered between 88 and 92 mega- hertz, the portion of the spectrum set aside for non-commercial broadcasters. Stations also reaped the benefits of NPR popularity as All Things Considered and Morning Edi- tion developed audiences; stations that had been run without concern for or awareness of how listeners used radio “lucked into an audience” nonetheless, in Bailey’s words (personal communication, October 8, 1993).

Changing Application of NPR Research

Within this environment the applications of audience research had begun to broaden in the early 1980s. In 1981 NPR first pur- chased data on public radio listeners from the Simmons Market Research Bureau, which surveys people nationwide on their media usage, product usage and buying be- havior, and demographics (Giovannoni, per- sonal communication, March 1, 1993). This marked a shift from asking simply how many were listening to asking what kinds of peo- ple were tuning to public radio — demo- graphics and psychographics. In this man- ner audience research became a tool for un- derwriting in addition to programming. For example, a spring 1991 survey found NPR news listeners were 47 percent more likely than average to own an Acura automobile; public station underwriting salespeople could descend on their local Acura dealer- ships armed with such data (“Who is listen- ing,” 1992, p. 11).

The focus on underwriting at the national level was driven by NPR’s fiscal exigencies of the 1980s. Given the Reagan Administra- tion’s marketplace ideology, even flat federal support for public broadcasting was no

longer assured. Under NPR President Frank Mankewicz, in 1982 the network attempted to become fiscally independent through a profit-making subsidiary and through tech- nology ventures, as well as increased under- writing sales. However, amid a $3 million deficit and charges of fiscal irresponsibility, Mankewicz resigned. With NPR on the verge of bankruptcy, its affiliated stations and CPB bailed the network out with an emergency loan in 1983 (Witherspoon and Kovitz, 1987, pp. 36-38).

Given NPR’s financial straits in a time of uncertain federal support, under new Presi- dent Douglas Bennet the function of re- search at the national level shifted further from a focus on building audience to an em- phasis on underwriting and listener support (Giovannoni, personal communication, March 1, 1993). The network’s audience research operation became analogous to a commercial station’s sales department. Re- search became instrumental in determining who are the people most likely to listen to public radio, and why they do — or don’t — support their local stations. Giovannoni left NPR in 1986 to devote full time to consult- ing. After several interim managers, the network hired a veteran of commercial radio programming and marketing, John Sutton, as its research director in 1990.

Today, NPR’s Audience Research unit pro- vides information to support the efforts of member stations to generate revenue (John Sutton, personal communication, March 3, 1993). For example, a recent study involved a comparison of fundraising programming, seeking to determine what styles and strate- gies would yield the best listener response. The department also provides stations and program producers with Simmons data on the demographics and product and media usage of NPR listeners. They provide ZIP code analyses of where pockets of each sta-

tion’s listeners reside; information on what motivates listeners to give money; and cus- tomized profiles of station contributors, for purposes of eliciting increased donations and membership renewals (National Public Ra- dio, 1993). For the network itself, the unit provides data to help NPR market its pro- grams to member stations and to attract un- derwriters. Public radio’s contemporary ap- plication of research at the network level, therefore, reflects a commercial orientation.

Leading Role of Consultants and Stations

At CPB support for audience research in public radio declined after the corporation’s Office of Communication Research was dis- banded in 1982 by CPB’s new administra- tors, who were displeased with OCR’s line of research (John Fuller, PBS director of research, personal communication, March 2, 1993; LeRoy, personal communication, Feb- ruary 15, 1994). OCR studies had become “very sociological” and were generating “lit- tle actionable research,” according to another researcher (Fuller, personal communication, March 2, 1993). An audience research unit at CPB was later restored in 1985 on a smaller scale as part of the planning depart- ment. By this time consultants and station managers had taken the lead in audience re- search that stressed programming applica- tions (Ted Coltman, CPB director of plans and policy, personal communication, March 3, 1993).

Giovannoni, for example, produced a series of studies with CPB support. The so-called “Cheap 90” study — named for the roughly 90 percent of public radio listeners who do not support their local stations financially — compared supporters with non-supporters (Giovannoni, 1985). According to “Cheap 90,” listeners who said public radio was im- portant in their lives were more likely to

support it, and “programming causes audi- ence.” AUDIENCE 88 was a study of public radio listeners’ demographic, values and life- style characteristics, as well as their uses of radio (Giovannoni, Liebold, Thomas & Clif- ford, 1988). AUDIENCE 88 contended that public radio listeners tended to be well edu- cated, professionally employed, fairly well- off financially, 35 to 44 years old, and in- volved in social causes. Bailey, doing busi- ness with Church as Walrus Research, began consulting with CBS Radio’s FM stations as well as public radio clients and encouraged public radio managers to apply more so- phisticated research methods, such as those utilized by commercial stations (Bailey, per- sonal communication, October 8, 1993). One such application was the Denver Proj- ect, supported by CPB between 1988 and 1992, in which commercial research tech- niques were adapted for use at Denver pub- lic radio station KCFR. In addition to the standard Arbitron data (e.g. rating and audi- ence share), the Denver Project included analysis of individual listener Arbitron dia- ries to determine such characteristics as audience loyalty. They recontacted diary keepers to ask about financial support for KCFR and attitudes toward the station. They conducted focus groups and a tele- phone “perceptual” survey to check the reli- ability of the focus group information about the image of the station. They also did auditorium music testing in which segments of prospective programs are played for groups of listeners, to assess what types of music appeal to what types of listeners (Gio- vannoni, 1991, pp. 73-74).

The Denver Project reflects the second wave of research in public radio: research as a pre- dictive tool. The first phase of audience re- search in public radio involved technical mastery — developing the ability to compile ratings for public radio — and working to foster broad acceptance and application of

audience research on the part of managers. However, research was largely descriptive of past performance. Now researchers are seeking to use research as a predictive tool, a means of determining the preferred pro- gram choice from a range of options. This is the idea behind research for the CPB Radio Program Fund, a pool of money available to producers of prospective public radio pro- grams. To help decide which programs will receive funding in their formative years, the fund's director, Richard Madden, uses audi- torium testing and a model known as Pro- gramming Economics (Giovannoni, Tho- mas, Clifford, Berky & Madden, 1989). Programming Economics seeks to determine how many listeners the funded program de- livered per CPB dollar spent (Madden, per- sonal communication, March 4, 1993).

However, in keeping with public radio’s long-standing contention over audience re- search, the debate still roils at individual sta- tions. For instance, public radio listeners in four states organized successful campaigns during the past ten years to restore broad- casts of the Metropolitan Opera. Station of- ficials had attempted to cancel the opera broadcasts, citing low ratings at a prime lis- tening time — Saturday morning and early afternoon (Behrens, 1993; “Opera listeners triumphant,” 1993). At this writing, a dis- pute over Bailey’s research for WUSF in Tampa had become an issue of community controversy after the station’s news director stated publicly that the research findings would lead to elimination of local news cov- erage (Conciatore, 1994; Rosen, 1994).

Changing Conceptions of Localism

The rise of audience research in U.S. public radio reflects changing conceptions of local- ism, as well as the fiscal realities of non- commercial media in a mediascape domi-

nated by private entities. As described in an earlier edition of the Journal of Broadcast- ing & Electronic Media, the conception of localism in contemporary U.S. radio broad- casting has shifted to a socially derived con- ception from the traditional spatial notion of localism (Stavitsky, 1994). This theory holds that radio broadcasters, both commercial and public, seek to reach audiences defined by shared interests, tastes and values. Con- ceiving of audiences in social terms contrasts with a spatial conception, for which the pa- rameters are geographic entities such as cit- ies, counties and regions. The spatial con- ception corresponds with the U.S. policy ideal of localism: broadcasting that speaks — often in local voices — to the concerns and needs of residents of a specific geo- graphic entity. Nonetheless, commercial radio stations have sought to construct audi- ences in social terms since radio adopted niche formats in response to the arrival of television. Few radio stations try to serve all of the people in their listening areas some of the time; instead they seek to serve some of the people all of the time with tightly defined formats (e.g. Classic Rock, New Country, Sports Talk).

In public radio, however, consolidation of programming into focussed formats, a nec- essary condition for social localism, was a phenomenon of the 1980s, and is still ongo- ing for some stations (see Hinman, 1992; Stavitsky, 1993, pp. 87-88). According to a 1992 study (Giovannoni, Thomas, and Clif- ford, 1992), public radio stations have in- creasingly focussed their formats to attract a loyal audience drawn to a consistent type of programming, an audience that would be willing to support the stations financially. This narrowing of programming, for exam- ple, may involve eliminating public affairs from jazz formats or opera from classical formats, which some stations have done de- spite the listener opposition noted earlier

(Behrens, 1993). Because audience research informs managers on the construction of a social community of listeners, public radio’s engagement with audience research has fos- tered this changing conception of localism.

Conclusions

Educational broadcasters often viewed their mission from a teacher-student perspective: as educators, they sought to transmit the in- formation they believed their listeners needed to be informed and enlightened. While a number of educational broadcasters were interested in audience feedback (see Stavitsky, 1993), concerns of audience ap- peal were generally secondary to concerns about program quality and pedagogical value in educational radio, as determined by the educational broadcaster's sense of the com- monweal and audience “needs.” However, in contemporary public radio, audience re- searchers were successful in imbuing man- agers with the notion that audience size and composition did matter, that public radio could not justify itself if few people chose to listen — and could not survive if fewer still chose to contribute. External forces con- tributed to the diffusion of audience research during the past 15 years: the uncertainty of tax-based funding forced public stations to depend more upon listener and underwriter support, for which audience research was instrumental.

However, while audience research has been successfully diffused into public radio’s managerial culture, its application continues to elicit concern at the level of producers. Put another way, the debate seems no longer to revolve around whether or not to conduct research. Instead the contemporary conflict involves the ways in which research is ap- plied in the service of mission; the manager or program director’s view of mission may

clash with the news or music producer’s view. From a station manager or program director’s standpoint, mission may be meas- urable in audience and revenue terms, while the producer’s currency is often more amor- phous — fealty to internalized professional values and standards. Nonetheless, the fiscal

realities of contemporary U.S. public radio — indeed of public broadcasting worldwide — dictate that stations must be cognizant of their appeal to listeners who will support them financially, and thus audience research will remain an essential management func- tion.

References

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