Rural Programming Initiative
Summary #2, KZYX

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October 2002

Our station has now had the benefit of two audience surveys, through our participation in the Rural Radio Project. We've made some changes in the past year, since we first began our participation in the project and have more planned for the coming year. Our goals, which we set for ourselves a year ago, were to increase our TSL (time spent listening), to increase our membership and to increase the number of listeners who tune in at their place of work. We also identified a few specific day parts in which we hoped to increase listenership: the 10 a.m. to noon slot, the 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. slot and the weekend listening. In addition, we said we would like to gain some understanding of what our regular listeners are listening to when they're not listening to our station. Our most recent survey shows success in some of these areas, though not all of them.

Listening in general is up over last year, as evidenced in the increase in cumes---daily, weekly and monthly. Daily shows an increase of 5% over last year, weekly is up 9% and monthly is up 8%. We had hoped to increase our membership by 500 (it was approximately 2000 members last year), and while we didn't quite achieve that, we have seen an increase in membership. Currently we have over 2300 members, so an increase of more than 10% has been realized in the last year. We are seeing an increase in membership income ($155,000 in the most recent fiscal year, as opposed to $140,000 in the previous fiscal year), as well as an increase in underwriting income, a good indicator of community involvement. Our "minutes spent listening" figures, according to the audience research, are actually down over last year, but we are told that this is to be expected with an increase in overall listening. The fact that we have more listeners in general means that the percentage of devoted listeners, relative to the total, will go down, until more of those new listeners become core listeners.

We have also seen an increase in listening over all the dayparts, some as much as 12%. The two dayparts we specifically identified as weak, 10 to noon, and 2 to 4 pm, have both gained listeners in the last year. We've realized an 8% increase in the 10 to noon slot, which is an encouraging trend. However, this daypart is still our least-listened-to (aside from late evening), and is still an area where we feel we need to improve. The 8 - 10 am slot, immediate preceding it, saw an increase in listenership of 15% over last year, which we feel can be attributed to the rearranging of some of our morning drive time programming. A year ago, we were offering Democracy Now! at 6 a.m., NPR from 7 to 9 p.m. and locally produced, progressive public affairs from 9 to 10. Since then we've made some changes. At the time of our most recent survey, we were airing NPR from 6 to 8 am, followed by an hour of BBC news (with The California Report interjected at 8:30 for 10 minutes) and then the public affairs hour. The 8 to 10 slot, according to our recent survey, now has our highest listening of the day, in stark contrast to the slot which follows it. Given that our research indicates a marked preference for news and information by our core listeners, we believe that the switch to classical music at 10 is where we are most likely losing audience. We are currently discussing what to do with this information. Two possibilities are: 1) to create a news and information block which would continue throughout the morning, and move the classical music to later in the day, or 2) schedule other types of music during that slot, music that might be more compatible with a taste for public affairs. We plan to make some change within the next 6 months and look forward to the opportunity to measure the impact of that change, whatever we decide to try, with the help of more audience research through the Rural Radio Project.

Another goal we set for ourselves was to identify the reasons for tune-out, when it occurs. What we discovered in the last survey was that the biggest cause of tune-out is a change in listeners' schedules. 69% of those surveyed identified this as the reason they turn us off. 19% however, cited programming as their reasons for turning us off. When listeners identified other stations they listen to besides KZYX&Z, two types of programming stood out: One of the stations has an all-talk format, and features a generous serving of NPR programming. The other two most significant competitors are commercial radio stations which play music we don't offer---country and classic rock. The preference for these may not affect our programming decisions to a large degree, since part of our mission is to present what commercial media does not. However, the other public station that our listeners prefer is a large station with a powerful signal which reaches us from a large urban population center. The popularity of this station among our listeners may be influential to us because of the fact that it further demonstrates the desire to hear news and information programming. The more factors that point this up, the more we will lean toward news and information when it comes to restructuring our programming. We are currently discussing the possibility of more drive-time local talk programs. Our listeners have been clear in their desire for it. Within the last several months, one of the other stations in our area which featured daily talk radio during drive time has been sold and has converted to all-Spanish language format, dropping its drive-time talk programming. The information gained in the surveys we've done so far encourages us to think in terms of changes to fill that void.

Our station is currently working on a Strategic Plan. We have had several long meetings involving our Board of Directors, a few of us from staff, and a few community members. The research we have conducted so far, much of it thanks to the Rural Radio Project, has been very useful in the process. We have been able to understand the demographics of our listeners by virtue of the surveys conducted thus far, and by comparing them to the overall demographics of our County. Achieving some clarity with regard to who our regular listeners are has helped, and will help in the future, in determining our core audience and consequently will help to guide us as we make decisions and set goals for the future of the station. Our participation in the Project to date has been invaluable.