Rural Programming Initiative
Final Report, KBUT

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1. You set some programming-related goals for your station when we began this project. Please describe which ones you have accomplished; which ones you are still working on and where you are in that process; which ones you have abandoned and why you abandoned them.

One of our largest concerns at the beginning of the survey was our "patchwork" programming schedule. We wanted to streamline our offering into blocks of similar genres of music to increase the consistency of our schedule. However, as we learned over the course of this survey, this is not a large concern of our listeners. We found that our listeners primarily turn the dial due to lifestyle changes, not changes in programming. We are still striving to gain consistency by placing more upbeat music with a faster tempo, such as rock and hip hop, later in the day or at night, and more mellow music, such as folk and bluegrass, earlier in the day. We also set a goal to find a better timeslot for our weekly call-in talk show, Town Talk, which aired Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. for one hour. We moved the program to a 4:00 p.m. timeslot, a time of day where more listeners would be able to listen attentively. We also shortened the program to a half-hour format. This change has been well-received. We have constantly struggled to provide daily local and regional news, and have not eliminated this problem. We have, however, joined a group of stations airing news reports from our state capitol while the state legislature is in session. This results in daily local and regional news offerings during that time period, but we have not been successful in offering year-round daily local and regional news. We are still working on this goal. Our final goal was to increase female listeners, and we did not purposely abandon this goal, but we have not made any significant programming changes to address this concern.

2. Has there been a financial impact-either directly or indirectly-as a result of your participation in this project?

We have seen an increase in both underwriting revenues and membership income over the past three years. While it is difficult to assess how much of the increase can be attributed directly to this project, the increase is consistent. Our underwriting revenues showed an increase of 2.3% between September 2001 and October 2002, and a .9% increase between September 2002 and October 2003. Our membership income increased 4.9% between September 2001 and October 2002 and 9.1% between September 2002 and October 2003. We increased our underwriting rates after the first round of surveys, and we added information from the survey to our solicitation packets. Our suggested membership levels have not increased, but we have been focusing more intently on asking for larger donations and pitching more aggressively during programs that have a proven history of earning more pledges. We have also used information from the surveys to appeal to larger donors and new members in direct mail campaigns.

3. Please summarize what you have learned about programming and listening at your station as a result of your participation in this project.

In addition to learning a lot about surveying listeners, such as methodology, the terminology and what doesn't work, what does work and why, we learned a lot of specifics about our own station. We learned KBUT has more core listeners, more regular listeners and listeners who spend more time with KBUT than most other public radio stations. However, we also learned that 38% of our listeners say they listen because KBUT is the only station they can get. This worries us because we want people listening to KBUT because they want to, not because we are their only radio option. In addition, many people in our area do not have broadband and high-speed connections to take advantage of Internet radio, although this is changing daily, and satellite radio is just emerging in this market. We also learned that listeners seem to rely on KBUT more as a companion than an informant. Most people indicate that they listen more for the music than the news and that when they stop listening, it is often due to a change in their lifestyle rather than a change in our programming.

4. Can you generalize from anything you have learned about programming and listening at our station that would be useful for other rural public radio stations?

We have learned that listeners in rural areas have much different listening patterns than those in urban areas. The work day begins and ends at differing times and there are different drive times. This affects the way that programming should be planned; people in rural areas can perhaps listen to programs that take more attention at different times of day, because they are not in and out of the car, or not at work. Also, there are needs for various programming elements in some areas that are unheard of in other areas; some stations need to center their morning programming around traffic and accident reports, while in other areas backcountry ski and avalanche reports are more important. Certain types of programs have more appeal in different geographical regions with different socio-economic composites. I think that this project was very useful in getting the entire station, including staff, volunteers and board members to think about radio and programming in new ways. It taught us to consider our listener and their lifestyle at any given moment of the program day rather than just following assumptions that we have held for a long time, yet never confirmed. We also learned that sometimes our most vocal critics, or fans, do not truly represent the entire listening population. Last, and certainly not least, we learned that there are a lot more people listening at any given time than we might have imagined.