Old Haunts

Checking out old haunts. WUMB was my radio home for an ever so brief moment. Looking at the website....

Nothing much has changed

Looking at the ratings...

Nov 2016    AQH   Share   Daily Cume   Weekly Cume    Cume Rtg      TSL

WUMBFtlr  800        0.2      15,500            49,200                1.1                 1:45

Nothing much has changed

As long as the University supports them they will keep hobbling along. If that support were to fall away, the end would be swift and painful. The audience is just too small to support the station. By comparison, WERS has four times the share and almost four times the cume rating.

There is a critical mass when it comes to fundraising for public radio. The size of the Core Audience is the determining factor and the amount of time they spend with the radio station. Audigraphics made it easy to measure the size of the core, how often they tuned in and the duration of each occasion. Benchmarks for the core were about ten occasions a week with each occasion lasting about an hour. With an Average Quarter Hour Audience of 800 in the Boston Market and the audience turning over 19 times a day (62 times a week) it does not appear that WUMB has the numbers to support itself.

I was hired in 2010 to help turn things around. I didn't get a chance and that was disappointing. The lack of change since then is equally disappointing.  

The Wealthy Give Less

Middle and Low Income People Give More

Being a part of the top income earners doesn't mean they give more. The total dollars given by this group has increased, but the percent of income has decreased. 

The Chronicle for Philanthropy reports, "As the recession lifted, poor and middle class Americans dug deeper into their wallets to give to charity, even though they were earning less. At the same time, according to a new Chronicle analysis of tax data, wealthy Americans earned more, but the portion of the income they gave to charity declined."  Americans earning $200,000 or more are giving 4.6% less than they were in 2012 that they were in  2006. You can see more of the report at The Chronicle of Philanthropy website.  

As Wealthy Give Smaller Share of Income to Charity, Middle Class Digs Deeper

Giving was down in our largest cities. Among the top 50 markets giving was down in 2012 in 36 markets.  Giving rates in New England bump along the bottom. Percent of income giving in the Hartford and Providence metro's were 1.9%. Boston wasn't much better at 2.3%. Salt Lake City and Memphis were the most generous. They gave more than 5% of income.

Despite the disparity, American charities continue to pursue high income donors. This begs the question. What is more valuable...the one really big gift or smaller contributions from many donors?

WBUR/WGBH Revisited

WGBH and WBUR continue to compete for the same market share...the NPR news listener. It was feared when WGBH switched formats to News and information that the move would split the audience. It hasn't quite turned out that way.

Certainly WBUR lost share of the market while WGBH made very modest gains. More importantly, public radio collectively lost share of the Boston Market. Public Radio's Share of the market, (Persons 6+) according to PPM data provided by RRC, has dropped from 9.5% to 7.0% of the radio audience.

I compared the quarterly topline reports from Winter 2010 to Spring 2011.
Without more data, I can only guess at what is happening. It seems public radio is less appealing now to the Boston Market than it was in the Winter of 2010.