Rural Programming Initiative
Summary #1, KGVA

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October 2002

What did you learn about listening to your station and your listeners from the first round of research?
To our knowledge this was the first ever audience research survey completed for KGVA. What we have learned from this survey will be very essential for future programming. The KGVA staff created a new daily program that went into effect on Jan 1, 2002. Six months later this survey was implemented. From the survey we have concluded that we are serving our purpose better than what we thought. The numbers and percentages were low for KGVA however we believe these numbers are on the rise. The survey was very valuable for KGVA to actually have numbers to compare with (i.e. AQH, Cume, Listener Demographics). The information provided from this survey show us where are strengths and weaknesses are at. We can set reachable goals from the audience survey.

What we learned:
- Have actual numbers for cume for comparison.
- Listeners enjoy music in general followed closely by news.
- Only 16% stop listening because of programming.
- We have a young audience with the highest percentage in the age group 18-34.
- The station is strongest in the morning then drops off and picks back up late afternoon.

Based on the research and other information you have, what are your programming strengths and weaknesses?
We feel our overall programming works well for our listeners. Our strengths are a variety of music programming and local news. Our weakness is steady volunteers. Our volunteer turnover is high. Another weakness is our operating hours and we are working on expanding those hours. As stated earlier we made a big program change beginning Jan 2002 and we think that new listeners will stay tuned longer if we stay with our current program without making big program changes.

What is the process you are using to decide on programming changes?
Currently, staff members make programming decisions after discussing different ideas. We need to find ways of gathering listener information possibly by conducting a short survey of our core audience.

What programming changes did you make?
We made one program change. We changed the music programming of our late afternoon format. We changed from Country music to Native American music 4:00PM to 6:00PM. We feel that we should continue our current programming because of the big change in Jan 2002. We do not want to get into constantly changing programs. We feel that new listeners will listen longer once they are accustomed to the programming.

What have you learned about those changes so far?
We had good comments during our drive time 5:00PM to 6:00PM of listeners traveling from work to home. We also had good comments from listeners that they appreciated the change of music at the end of the workday from 4:00PM to 5:00PM.