Radio songs

American Demographics, Sept, 1996 by John P. Robinson

RELATED ARTICLE: Public Radio MARKETING WITHOUT COMMERCIALS

IT FIRST WENT ON THE AIR IN 1971 with live coverage of the Senate hearings on Vietnam. Since then, National Public Radio (NPR) has served as a major source for the programming available on noncommercial radio. NPR's 25-year anniversary should be a triumphant time for the producer and distributor of such programs as "All Things Considered," "Car Talk," and "Performance Today." But even though 540 radio stations buy NPR programs and 12 million Americans listen every week, public radio's future is unclear.

The public radio stations that help support NPR get a big share of their funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private nonprofit group entirely funded by Congress to the tune of about $250 million a year. But congressional budget-cutters are threatening to end funding for public broadcasting after existing allocations run out in 1999. NPR, as the largest single programming provider, receives about one-fourth of the total, most of it indirectly through member stations that receive money from CPB and decide to pay it to NPR in the form of membership fees. These fees provide about 60 percent of NPR revenues; grants and underwriting, some of which come directly from CPB, bring in most of the rest. In an effort to counter the threatened budget cuts, CPB is using market research to convince lawmakers of its worth. Its most powerful tool is AreaPop II, a market analysis system developed for the corporation by TETRAD Computer Applications of Bellingham, Washington. The system combines three pieces of software--PCensus, Maplnfo, and FoxPro--with which CPB can map each public radio station's broadcast range and analyze the demographics of its potential audience.

About 91 percent of American homes were reached by a public radio station in 1995, up from 86 percent in 1989, says Wendy Charlton, manager of information industry resources for CPB. Most can receive the signals of three or more public radio stations. Eliminating some of these overlapping signals would save money without cutting services, but this isn't the best option in all situations in view of differing audience demographics. "When a public station with a big African-American or Latino audience overlaps with a station that has a largely white audience, you have more things to consider," says Charlton.

AreaPop II also gives CPB a better idea of how well each station is reaching potential listeners and members. "If a station's audience penetration is not good enough, it could lose our funding," says Charlton. "AreaPop lets us identify problem stations and work with them to improve."

Some NPR member stations use numbers from AreaPop themselves, as well as audience ratings data from Arbitron. Most are taking crash courses in direct marketing. The reason is simple. "Eventually the federal funds are going away," says NPR spokeswoman Kathleen Scott. "We'll have to have something else in place."

NPR stations have power in their markets, because their relatively small listener base has demographics to die for. Listeners are twice as likely as the average American to be college graduates. One in three weekday listeners works in a professional or managerial position. Two-thirds of listeners are aged 25 to 54. More than 70 percent own their homes.