Status Report

Report on 10/27/04 Community Advisory Group Meeting

WABE Listenership Ratings Prepared for October 28, 2004 AETC Board Meeting


About Atlanta Public Radio Initiative

The second members-only meeting of the PBA Community Advisory Group (CAG), was held at the station's headquarters on Wednesday, October 27, 2004.

APRI's understanding is that CAG's purpose is to gather input from viewers, listeners, and community leaders as to the direction, including the programming mix, of public broadcasting in Atlanta. CAG is comprised of 12 people supposedly chosen to represent a broad spectrum of the Atlanta community. One of APRI's founders, Andy Altman, was asked to be a member and has attended every meeting.

Here is his report of CAG’s meeting yesterday:

Chairperson Chuck Taylor stated the goal of the meeting was to discuss recommendations that would be forwarded to the Programming CAST. These recommendations were to be based on the notes Mr. Taylor and the facilitator took of audience comments during CAG’s first public meeting, held last May. (Due to a lack of coordination on the station’s part, the meeting was not recorded.)

After Mr. Taylor’s report, CAG members quickly reached a consensus that they did not yet have adequate information to make recommendations to the programming CAST. The remarks from the May meeting were collected in a way that was simply too haphazard to support any particular recommendations.

Andy Altman argued that the kind of objective data contained in an analysis called "Strategic Audiographics" (available from Audience Research Analysis, Inc.) would be useful to WABE. The analysis predicts the impact of major programming changes on membership and underwriting revenue. According to an individual who worked for over a decade in public radio, "In most cases, especially in major markets such as Atlanta’s, the station's public service potential (as well as revenue) will be significantly enhanced by making the sort of change APRI advocates [i.e., more NPR-type programming]."

It was revealed at the meeting that WABE already receives analyses from Audience Research Analysis. However, Mr. Taylor quickly interjected that the Programming CAST – not CAG – is the place where such data will be reviewed, and that CAG would not have access to it. He explained that CAG's task is to determine, by reaching out into the various Atlanta area communities, how station programming can better serve the needs of the community. Nonetheless, even if one agrees that community outreach is a major part of CAG's task, it remains unclear why supplementing that outreach in with scientific data provided by Audience Research Analysis (and Arbitron ratings, for that matter) would be not be useful.

The reply might be that CAG need not look at the data because the Programming CAST and station management will do so. However, such a reply does not explain how it is possible for well-founded recommendations regarding programming to be made if there is no access to data the Board and station management themselves use in assessing the programming schedule. CAG's recommendations would be hobbled by the arbitrarily limited scope of information on which the group relied.

Recommendations cannot simply be a recitation of what CAG members hear from their community constituencies. What is heard must be assessed, balanced, and prioritized. Opportunity costs must be taken into account. None of this is possible under the restrictions that have been imposed on CAG.

When it was suggested that nothing but marginal changes could be expected from CAG, Mr. Taylor asserted that the group was free to make far-reaching recommendations for changes in PBA programming. In reality, CAG lacks the information that would be necessary to support all but the most marginal of changes in the current programming format.

A member of CAG expressed the view that it might be helpful to look at how much pledge money was raised during the different programs. Notwithstanding Mr. Taylor's request that she remain silent at the meeting, WABE Program Director Lois Reitzes responded that Audience Research Analysis found that people give money when they have the time to call in and not when they are listening. Such a response is implausible on several fronts.

First, it is belied by the efforts of every NPR station – WABE included – to target the listeners of shows during the pledge breaks of those very same shows, e.g., "You know how important All Things Considered is to you. Please call now with your pledge..." Second, there is no doubt that some people call in during shows to which they do not listen, but to posit that there is no correlation at all between pledge support and audience size is not even prima facie credible. Third, the Arbitron ratings provide an independent check, showing the highest pledge goals at WABE are consistently matched to the shows with the highest ratings.

Unfortunately, Mr. Taylor preemptively ruled that any discussion of pledge support during various shows was beyond the scope of CAG, and he cut the topic off after Mrs. Reitzes had made her dubious assertion.

At a subsequent point in the meeting, Andy Altman argued that any recommendations about programming, far-reaching or marginal, should surely take into account the fact that Aribtron ratings show WABE has the third highest rating among Adults 35+ during Morning Edition, and the second highest rating during All Things Considered/Marketplace. The station then falls to 12th place during the 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. time period, all but one hour of which is Second Cup, hosted by Lois Reitzes.

Another CAG member replied that in her view, such ratings were not as important as what community leaders, such as those in the arts and culture, could tell us about what their constituencies thought were important. Yet, it is surely no mystery what people devoted to arts and culture are going to say. Does the station really need community outreach to determine that those who are committed to the arts think that the arts are very important? The same CAG member also pointed to polls showing that 84% of Atlanta area respondents regarded arts and culture as very important and 75% said that they would pay higher taxes for arts and culture.

Supposing that, contrary to what every social scientist knows, such numbers can be taken at face value, it is still puzzling to figure out what sort of recommendation to the Programming CAST the numbers would support. The polls in question are not even about broadcast programming. Yet Mr. Taylor enthusiastically encouraged the CAG member to provide him with the data, having seen fit several minutes earlier to exclude discussion of evidence that was actually about WABE's own programming.

Mr. Taylor mentioned at the end of the meeting that, in setting up CAG, he had modeled it on WNYC’s approach. However, the community group at that station "deliberates independently of station management and WNYC's Board of Trustees, determining its own agenda and electing its own leadership." (source: WNYC website)

It is clear CAG at PBA enjoys no such independence, since its agenda and its access to information about the station's programming is so narrowly circumscribed by the Board and Mr. Taylor.

The tight leash on which CAG has been kept deviates in spirit and in word from what was promised when the Board first publicly announced one year ago that a community advisory group would be formed.

WABE Arbitron Ratings
APRI wants to thank AETC Board Member Ed Baker for providing us with a recent, partial TAPSCAN/Arbitron radio listenership survey conducted in metro Atlanta. As you’ll see below, Mr. Baker clearly discussed doing this with Milton Clipper before releasing the data to us.

And while we agreed not to share actual survey numbers with anyone else, we are sure Mr. Baker would not mind if we reported that APRI’s basic contention is clearly corroborated by the survey – namely, that WABE ranks amazingly high when it airs NPR news during both morning and afternoon drive times.

However, during the 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. time slot (all of which consists of Second Cup except the last hour), WABE listenership falls off dramatically.

Our assertion is that WABE reaches many more listeners – and thus better serves our community – when it airs NPR programming. The drive-time programs also include local news and traffic reports, which are community services in their own right.

Further, we feel certain the majority of individual donations to WABE come during NPR programming. That is, listeners are voting with their pocketbooks for the programs they want to hear. We have tried to get fund-raising data from station management to support this contention, but we have been unsuccessful.

In fact, Mr. Baker spoke to Mr. Clipper about this request as well, and Mr. Clipper told Mr. Baker to have APRI call him directly to discuss the matter.

APRI phoned right away, but after a month, Mr. Clipper has yet to return our call.