Rural Programming Initiative
Summary #2, WXPR

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October, 2002

First potential change, midday, weekdays
Last year we had two anomalies - a significant drop in the 10am-noon daypart, and a 7.9% listening rate in the 4-7pm daypart.

Measuring the change is complicated by the fact that the dayparts used in the survey changed this year.

But we can say that the midday weekday numbers are better. We still see a small drop between the 9-11am part and the 11-1pm part, but it's only 2 points. We did address this in January by shortening our noon newscast, as we reported in February 2002. We are considering moving the newscast to 1pm, and will put questions in the next member survey (scheduled for February 2003) to gauge listener preference on this.

Regarding the evening drive-time anomaly, that is still somewhat muddy. The daypart is better this year - 4-6pm rather than 4-7pm. And it shows more listening to All Things Considered than last year, at 20%. But again this year, our in-house member survey shows equal listening between morning and evening drive-times, whereas this survey shows a seven point difference between the drive-times, and a six point drop from the 1-4pm daypart, a music program, to the 4-6pm part. It is difficult to know how to analyze the continuing contradictions here. We have two surveys to go within this project, so at this time we have no plans to makes changes in either of these dayparts.

Regarding our proposal to consider a change to the 6-7pm slot, that change is not indicated in this survey. Percent listening is identical between the 6-7pm daypart and the 7-10pm daypart. TSL is actually higher for the 6-7pm part, as is the AQH. Add to this that our in-house survey showed no significant support for either of the changes we were thinking of, and there is no evidence that the proposed changes would increase listening.

We still have an action plan in hand if future surveys show a benefit to making a change here.

Clearly, people listen to WXPR primarily for music - 30% cited music in general as their main reason for listening. We are aware that competition for music listeners will increase in future, as people have more options for self-choice technologies. But if demographic trends in our listening area remain as they are, with significant populations of retirees moving to the area, we want to be in position to serve the needs of that population. So we will be monitoring listening choices, demographics, and listener financial support, to see when we may want to begin shifting programming focus from music to public affairs. At this time, we see no indication that listeners want more public affairs from WXPR.

We have seen significant increases in listener contributions over the last twelve months. After an 8% increase in 2001, FY 2002 saw a 14% increase in listener support. In program underwriting, we had a small increase in 2001, followed by a 9% increase in FY 2002. We have seen some slipping in special event income in 2002, but those decreases come after a hugely successful FY 2001.

The current survey makes clear that overall listening has not increased measurably this year, so the membership income increase comes from increases in the average contribution. As a measure of listener satisfaction with WXPR, an increase in the average gift is wonderful. According to this survey, overall radio listening in the area is down, so WXPR holding its own in this climate may be the best we can expect.

Our next survey from A&A Research will be conducted in February 2003, so we will have a chance to see if there are significant differences in listening between our substantial summer-only audience and our year-round audience.