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Let Us Know What You're Thinking

In an ideal world the internet offers a free an open forum for thoughtful conversation among informed individuals. At least, that was the hope of the comments section on news sites. The continuing discussion was supposed to add value by expanding understanding of complex issues. That's not really happening. 

Be Careful What you Ask For

NPR is dropping the comments section on its website. What they found through analytics it was the same slice of audience saying the same things over and over. According to the report,

"the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two months. More than half of all comments in May, June and July combined came from a mere 2,600 users. The conclusion: NPR's commenting system — which gets more expensive the more comments that are posted, and in some months has cost NPR twice what was budgeted — is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience." 

The on-line comments were doing nothing to further the conversation. NPR says the conversation will continue on social media. You can find out more at NPR Website To Get Rid Of Comments

There used to be this debate about the significance of calls and letters in response to programming. I attended a panel on the subject at the Public Radio Conference (PRC) in the mid 80's These programming "experts" were on the panel and asserting that each call was worth five listeners and each letter was worth ten. I wondered where they got this metric. It turns out they just made it up. Each caller and letter writer represented them self and nobody else. The comments were personal opinion. They did not represent a larger trend.

This knowledge helped sustain me through a major programming shift at one of the stations I worked for. When we made the shift to news and information, we got 4,000 complaints from listeners and members. Some at the station saw this as significant. On the surface, it would seem so. If 4,000 were moved to complain, surely that represented an much larger trend. In raw numbers the 4,000 represented about 2% of the audience at that time. I believed the 4,000 represented the opinions of the 4,000. No more.

My thought...Patience...we'll know more soon.

We did know more within a year. The audience numbers increased by 30%. We had a slight dip in membership, but the dollars given rose because the average pledge grew by 50%. Underwriting grew 500%!

A Closed Loop

It's easy too be moved off target and away from a true community service by the withering response of a few. If you know what you're doing and why you're doing it, have faith in your decisions. Those responding may be a closed loop. The same group of people saying the same things. Instead of being inclusive...the respondents become exclusive. It's kind of like an all request music program. The same people asked for the same things week after week. There was nothing fresh or new. The concept became tired and unappealing for the majority of the audience and they eventually tuned away.

That seems to be what was happening in NPR's case.