After doubling between 1985 and 1995, public radio's audience kept growing to 1,757,500 in 2003, but it has plateaued since then, slipping slightly to 1,743,600 in 2007. (Source: SRG. Data from Arbitron spring nationwide estimates, 6 a.m. to midnight, for CPB-assisted stations, based on audience sample diaries.)
SRG study seeking to identify best bets for audience growth
An initiative launched by Station Resource Group this month aims to propose spending in next year’s CPB budget to rekindle growth in public radio’s audience, which has been flat for four years.
The CPB-funded project, Grow the Audience, plans to articulate a broad public-service strategy for public radio and recommend courses of action to carry it out — no small task — by Thanksgiving.
A task force of network execs, station leaders, funders and web strategists is directing the project. It will tap the expertise of working groups of programmers, producers and other specialists, according to Tom Thomas, project director and SRG co-c.e.o.
CPB leaders hope the tactics and approaches that gain traction from the project “will be ideas they will invest in for fiscal 2009,” Thomas said. The corporation’s 2009 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
The project began with a status report on public radio’s audience, posted online at srg.org/gta.html. The Situation Analysis looks over the competitive landscape and examines usage trends for new media platforms.
“The current reality is that public radio has lost its broadcast audience momentum,” the report states. “The average listening audience to public radio peaked in spring 2003, with the next four years flat to down. The loss of audience momentum has, in turn, caused stagnation in individual giving.”
Some stations nevertheless are building their audiences, including WETA in Washington, D.C., and KUSC in Los Angeles, whose growth surged after they became the only classical music stations in their markets, Thomas said in an interview. He described the slight dips and recoveries in public radio’s national audience stats over the past several years as a “pebbly plateau” with some worrisome underlying stats.
All Things Considered, for example, lost some 230,000 listeners in its national average quarter-hour audience, which peaked at nearly 2.2 million in fall 2004 and eroded to 1,967,000 by fall 2007. NPR’s Morning Edition audience has been comparatively stable in size.
The prevailing view in pubradio is that ATC’s slippage has a lot to do with changes in the late afternoon news environment, as news consumers increasingly get updates on office computers or handheld devices throughout the workday, Thomas says. To develop its recommendations, the Grow the Audience project will grapple with such competitive considerations, as well as opportunities to expand the audience via new media platforms, he said.
The project will also assess which of the emerging new media platforms—such as podcasting, streaming and social networking—“have real legs and which are short-lived fads” and which are most likely to be sustainable financially, Thomas said. “This is tricky because we’re at the early stage of being able to know how we’re doing on those platforms.”
Another major theme of the study is how pubradio can create services that engage ethnic minorities and other potential listeners who say the present public radio offerings don’t speak to them. A proposed English-language service for Latinos is under discussion at CPB. “Grow the Audience” will look for additional ways to address this challenge, Thomas said. “It could be something close to what we’re already doing—not radically different—that makes a larger group of people feel at home at the party,” he said.
Web page posted Aug. 19, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
