Rural Programming Initiative
Summary #2, KMUN

Back to Rural Programming Initiative

October 2002

Where are you relative to your goals?
We are planning to make a change in our weekday morning schedule by Jan. 1st, 2003. Right now we have classical music from 6-9 am. In January
we will be inserting a locally hosted hour of Morning Edition from 7-8 am. Classics will be moved to 5 - 7 am and 8 -9:30 am. We are in the process of
hiring a news director who will produce a local news cast to be interwoven with Morning Edition. From audience polling and radio research I have
studied, the 7-8 hour seems to be the best hour for news. Of course it would be easier to program Classics from 5-8 am and then have news from 8-9 am, but by that time, it may be too late in the morning for most listeners to catch. We also plan to have our All Things Considered Hour ( 5-6 pm) hosted by an afternoon news person with local news, starting in December.

Are you reaching your target audiences?
According to our July 2002 survey, our listenership from our target audience, 45-54 year old women, went up slightly. Our second targeted audience, 65 plus women, also went up slightly. We lost audience in the 25-44 year old market, but the 18 -24 year old market showed our biggest
increase. This is a rural area that is most attractive to retirees and people raising families. If this data is consistent in our next survey, perhaps we should look at increasing listenership among younger listeners. I think that increasing our news and information programming will do that.

What is your current thinking about programming at your station?
Our music programming is very popular. Where we have been lacking is in providing local public affairs and news. There are many issues going on here- salmon, logging, deepening the Columbia River, etc.- and with the news department getting going again in December, I feel that this very important programming will be providing a great service to our community. I hope that this will also increase our listenership.

Have you seen a noticeable increase or decrease in listenership financial support?
KMUN management has been concentrating hard on increasing underwriting, which has gone up about 30%. Our membership levels have remained consistent.