Rural Programming Initiative
Summary #1, KIDE

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What did you learn about listening to your station and your Listeners from the first round of research?
Two things jumped out at us from the research results. One, there are far fewer telephones in Hoopa Valley than we thought. And two, we have a pretty good audience in Willow Creek.

As for what we learned about our station and the listeners from this research, we learned our drive time is around 7 to 9am. While the survey results did not support this time slot as a strong listener base, we still feel this time slot as one of our strong time periods. What makes the difference is that the survey numbers reflect more of the Willow Creek community, but in Hoopa we hear directly from people in person or by their calls that this is one of the best time slots.

We learned that our listeners are in their 30's and 40's. We learned that there are more female listeners in these age groups. This confirms to us that our programming is working as planned. Once KIDE was a bubble gum top forty music mix. This was due to the fact that the average age of our volunteer staff was 22. Over the years the younger people burned out and got paying jobs. Our current paid on-air staff average age is 45. Our volunteer staff average age is 35. We carry more talk and information shows off the satellite, and we produce more local information shows. Our music mix no longer is top 40 hits.

One thing we learned from the research was that younger people are not listening to our Native American programs. This may be because we have no younger Native people producing Native cultural content programs. It may also be that because of the Native American programming we do carry, very little of it is of local native culture. We do have one Hupa Language bingo game show which does have a large younger audience because it airs during the Hupa Language class time at Hoopa High School. The students play along each week, and there are students in the studio calling out Hupa Language names and phrases.

Based on the research and other information you have, what are your programming strengths and weaknesses?
Based on the research our strengths in terms of music time slots is the late afternoon. In this slot Jay does a new music show that highlights new releases. He does various genres. This time slot includes the evening drive time. Another time slot that seems to overlap with Jay's is our mix of 70's & 80's rock. I was surprised because I think the mix gets too heavy for office hours. Listening to KIDE in the office ranks number three, behind morning drive time and listening at home.

Our programming strengths is our 7am to 11am native content theme time. During the weekday mornings we run a two hour mix of contemporary native music and new Country, then move to an hour block of national, local, and state news and information. This includes National Native News, news from the Indianz.com service, a local job report, local birthdays, local weather, NPR news, the California Report and Star Date. In the second half hour we run a series of five different talk shows each of which has a native or local Hoopa community focus. At 10am we run Native America Calling. This morning line up has worked well for us.

What is the process you are using to decide on programming changes?
Our basic method prior to the research results was how we felt about the program time slot and what people mentioned to us.

Sometimes programs took time slots that were more convenient to the volunteer producer. These shows were informational program updates from various tribal departments. It did feel odd to run these shows in the middle of a music block. Upon attending the workshops and learning about audience listening habits we felt strongly that these shows had to move.

In the near future we will re-establish our Community Advisory Group. We plan to let this group give us feed back on programming, which we will take under advisement.

What program changes have you made?
The only change we've made since the Rural Cohort meeting and the discussion about program schedules is we moved our locally produced Speaking Out show from 11:30am Thursday slot to 9:30am Thursday. This actually worked better for the producer/host as she took over this time slot from a previous tribal department schedule. This worked well for us because we were able to present a new show each week during the 9:30am slot. Before, we dipped into our archive the night before to schedule a show for this time slot.

Other changes we discussed at the meeting are still pending further development. When we get our PRSS system complete, we receive our renewed CPB funding and are able to hire two more part time staff, then we'll have more breathing room and make more changes.