Public Broadcasting Truths

 The Top Ten Truths 

Hey Pubsters. Remember this! 

The Top Ten Truths were discoveries made by ARA during Audience 98.

Perhaps you don't remember Audience 98, or are not aware of the efforts being made by ARA on behalf of CPB and PRPD to find out more about the Public Radio Audience. It came a decade after the discoveries of Audience 88. 

Audience 98 was a major study that aimed to extend programmers' understanding of listener behavior developed in the widely influential Audience 88.

Audience 98 is based in part on a rare re-contact survey of 8,000 Arbitron diary-keepers who indicated in fall 1996 that they listened to public radio. The survey was designed to elicit their pledging behaviors, personal beliefs, and attitudes toward public radio.

Besides nostalgia, what other feelings does the Top Ten Truths elicit from you? To be sure, this should not be confused with The Ten Commandments, but how much has changed from the listener's perspective. These ten points helped us build a loyal and engaged audience that still values our service today.

Public Radio Utopia

Location Matters

In real estate...it's all about location, location, location. The same may be true for public radio. There are markets with high concentrations of really smart people where it can all come together for public radio. Stations that air and create content that appeals to the values and lifestyles of their listeners manage to garner a sizable audience. That's a long way from the days of declaring, we have a small but loyal audience.

Public Media Audience is Smart

The most significant cohort for public radio is education. Educated, intelligent people seek out and use the content on public radio and other platforms. The educational cohort was one of the most significant findings of Audience 98. The application of VALS research confirmed that the public radio audience is served by programming that informs and entertains educated listeners. Seven-in- 10 have advanced degrees, and virtually all have graduated from college. Along with a good education comes the opportunity for increased income.

Location does not preclude good programming practices and attention to content creation that consistently appeals to the audience. All elements must come together to create success. The idea that you can put just anything on the air and the audience will come is so '70's.  Audience 98 put it this way...

The appeal of a program is inseparable from those who listen. The program creates the audience, and the characteristics of that audience define the program’s appeal. Programs that serve very similar audiences – i.e., programs with highly congruent appeals – work better in combination. The degree to which the appeals are congruent is called affinity. Programs that serve the same audiences have high affinity. Programs that serve moderately different audiences have only moderate affinity. Programs that serve different audiences have no affinity.

In other words, it is easy to fail. That's why there are under performing stations and content providers in ideal markets. Conversely, with hard work, stations and content providers can overcome less than ideal markets and over perform.

Programming Causes Audience

If the content you create and program consistently appeals to your target audience...the more successful you will become. That is, if the audience is willing to voluntarily support your offerings. Again from Audience 98, "Certain kinds of listeners are attracted to certain kinds of programming. So when we choose what we air, we select who will listen – and also who won’t." I think this holds true no matter the platform. Podcasters should be paying attention. Figure out what the audience wants and go for it! Perhaps, intensive audience research is in order to find out more about the highly educated millennial cohort.

There are  markets with high concentrations of educated people and high performing public radio stations. The top 25 markets with the most educated populations according to Wallet Hub are listed below. The compilation is from 2015. Among these markets are high performing public radio stations. I chose stations with a share in the top 5 among all stations measured in their market. 13 stations are performing exceedingly well when it comes to audience share. 12 are not. There may be mitigating circumstances for under performing stations, but a look at why might prove helpful if your station is in the top 25 of the educational cohort among the 150 metro areas included in the study.

So What?

Think of it this way...stations that perform well with the public radio audience are more likely to generate listener support. That support makes it possible to create content more suited to the platforms used by smart millennial listeners.

Stations in the Top Five

Ann Arbor  WUOM - Michigan Radio  9.8% Share

Washington DC  WAMU  8.0% Share

Madison  WERN  5.8% Share

Boston  WBUR  4.4% Share

Raleigh-Durham  WUNC  7.1% Share

Tallahassee  WFSU  7.9% Share

Portland, Maine  WMAE  8.1% Share

Austin  KUT  5.3% Share

Denver  KCFR-Colorado Public Radio 5.6% Share

Portland, Oregon  KOPB  7.4% Share

Albany  WAMC  4.7% Share

San Francisco  KQED  5.5% Share

Huntsville  WAYH  3.8% Share

Overall Rank	MSA	“Education Level” Rank	“Quality of Education & Attainment Gap” Rank
1	Ann Arbor, MI	1	4
2	Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV	3	19
3	Madison, WI	2	51
4	Provo-Orem, UT	11	6
5	Colorado Springs, CO	4	47
6	Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA	6	31
7	Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH	5	63
8	Lansing-East Lansing, MI	15	1
9	Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI	7	59
10	Raleigh, NC	10	49
11	Tallahassee, FL	17	15
12	Durham-Chapel Hill, NC	18	9
13	Portland-South Portland, ME	12	68
14	San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA	21	5
15	Austin-Round Rock, TX	21	11
T-16	Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO	9	119
T-16	Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA	13	66
18	Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY	14	92
19	Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD	23	30
20	San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA	16	110
21	Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT	8	149
22	Manchester-Nashua, NH	19	128
23	Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT	20	116
24	Honolulu, HI	30	14
25	Huntsville, AL	25	99

Marijuana Radio in Denver

Pot-Branded Station Lights Up Denver

Talk about core loyalty!

Smokin' 94.1 is all about the pot smoker's lifestyle

Will this work? Will they be able to build a large enough audience to entice advertisers?

Significant Programming for a Significant Audience

Many successful public radio stations thrive on core loyalty. If you're not sure what that is...There's a publication that was the product of Audience 98 called "Public Service - Public Support." The report is long, but it is worth reading. All of the findings can be distilled into two key concepts.

Public service begets public support. 

Public support focuses public service. 

Successful stations actively pursued significant programming for a significant audience. The public radio audience was further defined as being highly educated and engaged Baby Boomers.  Because the programming appealed to a the values and lifestyle of the targeted audience, those listeners spent more time with the station and became loyal. The growth in listenership was astounding.

Targeted Lifestyle

The new pro pot station in Denver, Smokin' 94.1 promised to be a musical lifestyle format. The music will be classic rock. A similar format idea was part of radio in the late Sixties and early Seventies. These stations featured Album Oriented Rock before the music was codified into a format and corporatized. Many of the stations self identified as being underground and programmed to those who were part of the counter-culture. The stations failed to generate enough advertising to support themselves. There were only so many head-shops, record stores, concert venues and sub sandwich shops in the market.

A quick look at their website revealed nothing about advertisers. A good match might be donut shops, salty snacks and places that can satisfy the munchies.

They're playing hits, but other musical choices might include Quicksilver Messenger Service's, Fresh Air and Bob Marley's Kaya.

On Air Pledge Drive In Perspective

Over 2,000 Pledges! 

So Disappointing.

I was listening to the last day of my public radio station's pledge drive. The talent was thanking just over 2,000 contributors. That seems pretty exciting...right?

Not really.

A lot of hard work went into garnering pledges from less than 1% of their audience over a nearly two week span. If you look at the success of this drive based on the core audience...the response came from about 2% of the core audience. I think it is safe to assume the drives are grinding up and chasing away the audience.

It was noted in the research that came out of Audience '98 that on air drives were akin to trimming your toenails with a shotgun. I've always thought how much better life would be for the staff and the audience if all those calls would come during a five day span...or less.  

Looking for a Better Way

A look at audience trends, programming and the impact of the programming can help plan and forecast the effectiveness of fundraising efforts. If all is okay with the audience...A lot more leverage...please.

Public Media Fundraising Model

Significant Programs for a Significant Audience

(How a development function should be built and how integrated communication is necessary to support that function.)

Development, marketing and communications are co-dependent. My qualifications and skills in these areas are based a significant experience in public media. Through research of the intended audience, fundraising-awareness programming strategies were developed that were focused on building the following:

·         Regular, frequent, loyal donors;

·         A strong perception of personal value;

·         And an understanding of the importance of giving.

I believe the concepts (and lessons) learned in these projects are applicable to most community service-based development functions. I have a belief that community service begets community support.

Of course great content, by itself, doesn‘t raise a dime and there is no meter running that automatically brings in revenue without these factors:

·         Reliability and trust of the offered service;

·         The contributor understands his or her personal importance;

·         A connection with the contributor’s personal values

It is only when these essential factors are combined with a disciplined, coordinated development program that users become givers and the virtuous cycle of public service generating public support to fuel still more service—begins to engage.

Content and giving are interlaced. Good marketing efforts are wasted if the content provided by a service does not match the values and lifestyle of the intended audience.

Giving is dependent on the following:

―If a person:

• Has an awareness of the service;
• Uses the service;
• Finds the service to be valuable;
• Believes he or she needs to do his or her share;
• Has money to give and…
• Four of the five factors are driven by the services own performance. (Audience 98)

In public radio we confirmed that:

• Public radio givers can be predicted primarily from patterns of listening.
• Reliance may be measured by purely behavioral variables like loyalty to a service and becoming a core user.
• Personal importance is an internal realization.
• Individuals who not only listen but also sense that public radio has become important in their lives are more likely to become givers.
• Education adds predictive power to our model. Half of public radio givers have earned an advanced degree, an indicator of their socially responsible values and upscale lifestyles.
• Belief that public radio depends on listener support adds some predictive power to our model, but the strong predictors are behavioral reliance upon public radio along with a sense of personal importance. (Public Radio Tracking Study, Turning Listeners into Givers)

These studies highlight how quality fundraising success is really about building a relationship with the intended audience. 

Car Talk Regrets

The Story Ended Happily

John Dankosky's Blog about Tom Magliozzi (Why Everyone Who Loves Public Radio Should Thank Tom Magliozzi) reminds of the time I decided to take Car Talk off the air. We had a classical music audience. The phone calls about the show were hostile...vehement. Based on those calls and the urging of the station manager I pulled the plug. It was a big mistake. I learned a lesson about programming by phone call. The caller represents his or her interest...nothing more. Audience figures over the next six months convinced me I made a mistake. Our Saturday morning audience went to our public radio competitors. Fund raising took a big hit. Within a year Car Talk was back. The program was welcomed back in a big way with a huge audience and blockbuster fundraising as described by John in his blog posting. I've been told the audience for Car Talk continues to be strong.

Community of Listeners

Reinstating Car Talk was the the impetus for the gathering of the public radio community. That community is one of the key concepts of the Audience '98 research project.

                  A Sense of Community

If givers think of public radio as a community, then a fund drive is a barn raising, not the Home Shopping Network. On-air pitching is passing the hat, not selling Beanie Babies. Shirts and mugs – still the most popular premiums – are emblems of membership and pride in the community, not merchandise exchanged for cash.

"Sense of community" may add dimension to the seminal concept of personal importance, and thereby help public radio professionals to influence giving, focus fundraising messages, and schedule programming. 

Communication technologies let us choose our neighbors based on their sympathies rather than their proximities. Being connected to other people by psychological rather than geographical space isn't so alien anymore.

Audience loyalty and support grew by leaps and bounds after Car Talk found a permanent place on WNPR's schedule on Saturday Morning. It was as if we had crossed a threshold of Core Listening. A solid base of support resulted. Radio at Connecticut Public Broadcasting became self sustaining.

If that sense of community disappears...Public Radio will become a memory.

Recurring Fundraising Dream

There was a time when I was responsible for the fund drives at WNPR. That continued even after Connecticut Public Broadcasting united donor development into one department. The fund raiser became a partnership...a collaboration.

Dreaming about Fund Drives
Just before every drive I had a recurring dream. In that dream nobody called. Since I was also responsible for content, the dream also meant that my choices for programming had no appeal to the audience. The axiom of "Significant Programming for a Significant Audience" proved false. The implications of the dream was that the programming was not significant and the audience it generated was not interested in voluntarily supporting the programming. The dream never came true. I worked with some talented content people who worked hard at programming that appealed to a significant audience.

There were ways of measuring what we were doing that helped predict what areas of our scheduled would be successful during the fund drive and what areas would be more difficult. I wrote a couple of articles with the help of the folks at Audience Research Analysis for Audience 98. You can read about it. Public Service Economics and Connecticut Public Radio By The Numbers. It's public radio geek. When I presented this stuff to upper management and the board, their eyes glazed over. They didn't get it. Because of the time put into the research, because we did our homework trying to understand how the audience used the content, the bad dream never came true.

That Same Old Feeling
I'm experiencing some of the same foreboding. We're about to launch an appeal for donations for the FOCUS Center for Autism. I'm working for them as Development and Marketing Coordinator. The audience is much smaller but, the content is significant and meaningful. FOCUS Center for Autism became a non-profit organization in 2000 under the name of FOCUS Alternative Learning Center. What began in 1996 as an after-school program and a camp in the summers for children and adolescents on the Autism Spectrum is now an intensive and growing clinical continuum of care. In 2009 we expanded our Extended Day Treatment Program to include the morning hours and to offer a Clinical Education Program that targets children who are having a difficult experience in their traditional school system. This program coupled with our After School Program offers a comprehensive clinical model that promotes social, emotional and academic growth. The FOCUS Extended Day Treatment Program has developed into a well respected community-based model of treatment that has now served over 500 children and families.

The challenge is getting the word out to a much smaller audience.
 

Listener Support

I'm getting ready for another fund drive. I volunteer my services at WNPR. I ask for contributions on the air for an employer that let me go. I do it because of a sense of loyalty to the people I used to work with. I do it because I think the information provided by public radio is important for promoting civil conversation in our society. I value the content from NPR, PRI and APM. I also value the content produced locally when done well. The local stations need funding to keep you informed regionally and nationally. I'm glad I can help.

The model I use comes from Audience 98 - The Stairway to Given.

1. Someone must be a listener or a user of the service. 
2. The individual relies on the service
3. The content or service must be personally important. (Personal importance and sense of community.) This is the idea that the content and the services are the ties that bind together people with certain shared values. 
4. Funding Beliefs – Users must believe their support is crucial. They must understand that funding from other sources is only a piece of the fiscal puzzle. Individual support is the most reliable source of income. 
5. Household income is a contributing factor in whether someone will give, but that it is not nearly as significant as the other steps of The Stairway to Given. 

People give because they rely on the service, find it personally important and believe their contributions are truly needed.

As more of public radio's audience switches to digital content on social media, the web and  mobile devices as platforms for their information, the question becomes can the listener service model be used to raise the revenue needed to support the services? 

John Sutton's recent blog asks Will Listeners Voluntarily Support Web-based Services? The impetus for John's question is the report in Current that corporate support for NPR was off by $9 million last year. NPR's Stephen Moss says the potential for growth in digital ad revenue is limited by competition and downward pressure on the price of ads.   Corporations and foundation support cannot be the only sources of income for public media. 

What's working? Are there examples within public media of successful revenue generation from users?

Can the system build on that success? I think we need to find those answers. I'm willing to help.

A Sense of Community

I was asked to participate in the discussion for the Real Life Survival Guide taping yesterday. 

The question was posed by Bruce Barber, "What's an important lesson you've learned or story you've heard - whether in your day to day existence, your job, or a hobby or personal passion - that you think would help other people?"

I chose to focus on an experience from my teen years. I grew up about a half-mile from a velodrome. We used to go to the bike races there in the summer. One summer the Olympic trials were held there along with the national championships. One of the announcements at the race mentioned that the Milwaukee Wheelmen had community rides at the track and in the park a couple of times a week. Charged up by the races, I decided to go.

One thing led to another and I started to race my stock bike. Through the associations and friendships developed at these rides; a local bike shop owner agreed to build my fits racing bike. I started to win a few races and a couple of the older riders took an interest in me and became my coaches.

There was at least one race a week between the tracks in in Milwaukee, Kenosha and Northbrook, Illinois. The races weren't really Olympic competition. We raced in packs on these ovals. Sometimes there were as many as 30 riders on the track at one time. It was a cross between roller derby and NASCAR.  There were plenty of heated rivalries and crashes. Because of the competition, riders were drawn from all over the country. Some of them were world class athletes. 

There was no way I could compete with these athletes head on. Through my coaches we developed a strategy. Since not much happened in these races (the sprints) until the bell lap, we came up with a plan that made me competitive. A velodrome is a banked oval. I was able to use that to my advantage by swinging to the top of the track headed into the first turn. Then, I cranked into a sprint in the second turn using gravity to increase my speed as I swung down to the inside track ahead of the pack. If it worked, I got a jump on the competition heading into turn three and four. There was always a sprint to the finish down the final straight, but I would often have the advantage of being the front runner. It didn't always work because the competition was lot bigger, stronger and faster than I was.

It was great for my self-esteem as a teenager. Winning was fun too. But, since I understood where I stood in the competitive order of things (there was no way I was going to be national champ or make the Olympic Team) I became a good winner. There was humbleness to it. 

I enjoyed the competition. I also valued camaraderie and the friendships. I belonged. It was a shared experience. There was a real sense of community. It was my first meaningful lesson in the importance of community. 

That sense of community and belonging is one of the key findings of Audience 98. Public Radio listeners expressed they are a part of a larger public radio audience. It is a shared experience. It is one of deciding factors in listener support. 

So much of our time today is spent in isolation. It's easy to spend four or five hours on-line or on mobile media not really interacting with the people around us. Because of this are we losing that sense of community? The thinking of the panelists at yesterday's taping was there will always be a need for community.  

I hope they're right.

Maine public broadcasting cuts remain likely

Sen. says Maine public broadcasting cuts remain likely | SeacoastOnline.com

The move will eliminate state funding for public broadcasting in Maine. It is easy to say listeners and viewers will need to take up the slack. Some stations are better prepared to take a 20 percent cut than others.

A solid member base of support begins with the programming. Audience 98 outlined this concept with Fundamentals In Brief.

"But the most powerful force affecting giving is not in their control. Programming not only causes audience, it also causes audience support. Fundraising is always about programming. That’s the indisputable fact of 15 years of research, reconfirmed by AUDIENCE 98^®."

• Giving is the product of two programming factors (the value listeners place on the programming and the amount of listening done to it) and one development factor (the efficiency with which fundraising efforts turn this into financial support).
• Effective fundraising activities can raise giving and gift amounts above public service predictions.
• Fundraising practices can lower giving and gift amounts below public service predictions when they attenuate or otherwise interfere with public radio’s service to listeners.

There are many other factors. One is that size matters. The size of the audience and the size of the core audience (P1 listeners) determines the ability of the station to raise enough funds to become self-sustaining. External factors like market size are important too.

For three decades I was involved in public broadcasting through a variety of positions at Public Radio Stations and in Public Media. Much of my experience centered on fundraising and donor relations.  During my tenure as Program Director and Station Manager we built audience and support through programming appealing to core values of the public radio audience. We had about 200,000 listeners with about 85,000 in the core. Through our services we were able to build and sustain relationships resulting in significant support. Basically what we accomplished was the development and creation of content meeting the needs of our clients (listeners). The content fit in with their lifestyle and beliefs. The public radio audience was mainly made up from two VALS types, innovators and Thinkers. We deliberately targeted them. We fashioned messages reminding them of the value of the programming. A guiding principle was community service resulted in community support. 


These two highly educated groups take up the mantle of social responsibility and are motivated to support causes for the greater good. These are individuals who believe in the value of continuing education and believed public radio was fulfilling that need. By focusing our programming and our messaging towards these two groups, we became self-sustaining.

(It should be noted that this is not a model embraced by Public Television.)


There are many more factors that go into good fundraising. The Development Exchange is a great resource. So is the Station Resource Group. But, it all begins with programming.

KCET drops PBS

KCET drops PBS, risks viewer loyalty to avoid $6.8M yearly dues

It's a risky decision indeed.

One of the questions we faced on a regular basis at Connecticut Public Radio was the high cost of National Programming. Was the programming really worth it? Could we cut our losses if we just cut a few of the really expensive programs like Car Talk or A Prairie Home Companion. It was even suggested briefly that Morning Edition was too costly. Couldn't we just cancel these programs to reduce our expenses? Surely there must be something almost as good that costs a lot less? If we do that can't we put some of the savings into local efforts?

Fortunately, we took a careful look at how our audience was using the station. I even wrote an article about it for Audience 98, Public Service Economics.

We used listener hours to determine how the audience was using our programming. We then compared revenue per listener hour against cost per listener hour to determine our return on investment. The three programs mentioned above generated a large portion of Connecticut Public Radio's listener hours. The costs per listener hour were more than offset by the way our listeners used the station.

For the sake of argument, suppose we took A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk off the air to save $32,000 in 1998. Because those programs were carried by two other public radio stations, we would have lost most of those listener hours and the revenue they represented.  In 1998 Car Talk represented about $68,000 in listener sensitive income. A Prairie Home Companion represented about $110,000 in listener sensitive income. Listener Sensitive Income is a combination of the revenue from listeners, local underwriters and local foundations. The combined return on investment was $106,000.

These numbers are a lot smaller than the $6.8 million in dues paid by KCET. The number of viewer hours represented by KCET audience is a lot larger than the 56 million listener hours generated by WNPR.  KCET has probably put a lot of thought into their decision, but they are likely to lose several million viewer hours to the other PBS stations that serve the LA Basin. The drop in viewer hours will represent a drop in viewer sensitive income. The question is, did the viewer sensitive income offset the cost of the PBS programming?
Will the new local focus generate enough viewer interest to offset those costs?