Know The Audience

Excerpts from a General Session at the
Public Radio Development/Marketing Conference:
Washington, DC – July 18, 1998

Delivered by David Giovannoni

Written with the assistance of the AUDIENCE 98 Core Team:
Leslie Peters and Jay Youngclaus

Let’s begin today with a question.

Who do you respect the most in your field?
Who do you think is the best?

Don’t answer out loud but think about it.

• Who do you turn to with your development questions?
  

• Who would you send to sell a major account?
  

• Who is it can excite a room when they talk about membership?
  

• To whom would you trust your next direct mail piece? Or your next renewal campaign. Or your next on-air drive?

Many people come to mind. But I’ll bet there’s one thing that the person you’re thinking about has in common with the leaders and mentors in other people’s minds.

This person knows public radio.

This person knows the audience.

The person you respect most has probably been working in public radio for eight, ten years or more. It’s in their veins.

• They know what underwriters appreciate about our audience.

• They know what listeners appreciate in our service.

• They know how our programming distinguishes us from our competitors.

• And they can wax poetic on the importance of our programming to listeners and society.

In short, the best Development professional are those who know the audience the best.

And today, we’re going to add to that knowledge.

We get our facts from AUDIENCE 98 – the most comprehensive study of the public radio audience to date.  AUDIENCE 98 is a joint venture of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Audience Research Analysis, and 91 leading stations across the country.

Almost 8,000 listeners participated in the national component of this study.

• They told us what they listen to and what they don’t.

• They told us who they are, and who they think we are.

• They told us what they think about themselves, and they told us what they think about us.

• They also told us whether they recently gave to public radio – and if so, how much.

And because we have this information at the level of the individual listener – we can get a pretty good answer to this question:

What makes a person ready to give?

What turns a person into a giver?

AUDIENCE 98 tells us that people support public radio for some very explicit reasons:

1. They listen. Public radio serves them. It is a very real presence in their lives. Now that’s pretty obvious to everyone today but 15 years ago, believe it or not, it was an open question as to whether non-listeners would give. Today we’re certain – they don’t. That’s because

2. People who give to public radio rely on our service. By that I mean they listen so frequently that public radio is the soundtrack of their lives. Givers tune in an average of 11 times a week – often every day each week – and most hear more than five or six different programs or formats on your station.

3. Givers consider your station personally important in their lives. Not only is it a presence, it is a valued presence that would be missed deeply were it to go away.

4. Givers believe that listener support is vital – and that government and institutional support are minimal. A person’s understanding of our listener-supported nature is as powerful a predictor of giving today as it was ten and 13 years ago, when we found the same thing in AUDIENCE 88 and the CHEAP 90 studies. In addition, AUDIENCE 98 confirms what we saw a few years ago – that a drop in government support will cause more listeners to give.
   

These are the things that turn a person into a giver. Notice the green part of this pole. Each component of giving – listening, reliance, and personal importance – is founded squarely on our program service. This is a key point, and we’ll get back to it in a minute.

But first, let me mention briefly some of things we looked at that do not turn listeners into givers:

• A person’s sex doesn’t matter.

• Neither does his or her age.

• Once again we determine that giving is colorblind.

• Formal education is irrelevant.

• So is a person’s VALS Type.

Fact is, if a listener characteristic is not on the chart, it simply doesn’t matter. We know this because we checked. 

Let me add one fine point. Listeners who live in households earning more than $100,000 a year are a slightly easier touch; these listeners are ready to give just a little sooner than others. However – and this is important – like most Americans, most of our listeners just don’t make this kind of money. Income does not cause giving.

That said, AUDIENCE 98 verifies what we all know is true – that a person’s income does influence the size of the gift.

People who have more money can give more money.

But let’s be clear about what AUDIENCE 98 is saying.

The motivations and mindsets that cause giving are independent of a person’s means. All listeners, regardless of their incomes, can be motivated and educated to give to public radio.

We've all seen how this plays out – with the student or the retiree who gives $25 but who really doesn’t have it to spare. In this case income limits the gift; but the point is, appreciation of the programming causes it.

Let’s look at other listener characteristics that influence the size of a person’s gift.

For every $10 that the AUDIENCE 98 Giving model can explain, we see that

• FOUR dollars are influenced by listeners’ household incomes;

• THREE dollars are influenced by their reliance on the service;

• TWO dollars are influenced by the importance of the service in their lives;

• and, if they’re Actualizers, they’ll give us an extra buck.
  

Let me be clear about this.

• Being an Actualizer doesn’t cause a person to give.
  

• VALS type – like income – does not cause giving.
  

• But as you know, our audience is full of Actualizers. And if we’re talking to one, we have a good shot at lifting the gift by 10 percent.

How can we use this information to influence the size of the gift?

• We can increase a giver’s reliance on our service and its personal importance in his or her life. These two motivating factors alone account for half of the gift size.

• We can’t alter a person’s income, but if we know it, we can pitch at a more appropriate level – a level that resonates with the listener as an affordable amount, worth paying, for the service provided.

• We can’t alter a person’s VALS type, either. But like I said, Actualizers come with a 10 percent premium built in.

These are just a few ideas as to how to apply these facts. There surely are many more applications to the findings.

Before moving on, let’s summarize what we know about giving:

• The amount of money a person makes, and his beliefs about where our money comes from – each of these can influence his readiness to give and the size of his gift.

• But a listener’s use of our programming is the primary motivation for giving, and the primary determinant of gift size.

• On this chart, programming concerns are colored green. You see they dominate the "readiness to give" pole on the left, and make up half of the "size of the gift" pie on the right.

• Programming concerns include a listener’s reliance on the service, and his belief that it is important in his life, that he would miss it deeply if it went away.

• Again – not only do programming motivations cause the gift – they strongly influence its size.

We can speak to these motivations in our appeals for support. Again, that’s why it’s so important to know our audience – to know what motivates giving – to understand why people pay for something they get for free.

Now let me ask a question that I incessantly ask PDs.

• What happens when we interrupt a program service?

• What happens when we change the sound and sensibility of the service that a listener has tuned in to hear?

The sudden removal of programming – what I call programmatus interruptus – can take many forms.

• Switching from classical music to blues, for instance – or from NPR news to bluegrass – either of these will cause a sever case of programmatus interruptus. It’s like changing the station on a listener without his or her consent.

• Another form it can take – Switching from a regular program to a pledge drive – especially if the drive withholds what the listener tuned in to hear. Again, it’s like changing the station.

• Or how about an underwriting spot that sounds like a commercial. It may not interrupt the program per se, but the sound and attitude that it conveys invades the sanctuary that listeners seek in non-commercial radio.

When our program elements ring false – when we take away the very service we’re asking listeners to support – we’re just making our own jobs harder.

We don’t need AUDIENCE 98 to tell us that. This is simple common sense. But by re-focusing our efforts on the fundamental reasons listeners give, AUDIENCE 98 points the way for development professionals to become programmers in their own right. Because

When we improve the program service, we increase listener support.

PDs aren’t the only ones who control programming. Whenever we run an on-air drive, whenever we put an underwriting spot on the air – we control the station’s programming, we control the service that listeners are hearing.

AUDIENCE 98 has a lot to say about how we can improve our areas of programming in the service of listener support.

On-air drives, for instance.

On-air drives are wonderful things. People call the station and promise to send us money. Is this a great country or what?

We know why on-air drives work.

• They’re efficient – where else can we find THE target audience of people most motivated to give?

• They’re effective – they provide the raw material upon which we can build databases for off-air fundraising.

• They’re inexpensive – air time is free.

If we didn’t already have on-air drives, we’d have to invent them.

However, when we talk to listeners objectively about on-air drives, they tell us, in no uncertain terms, that our drives are in serious need of re-invention.

Their reason is obvious and their reasoning is impeccable.

Pledge drives interrupt the program service – the very thing listeners tune in to hear and voluntarily pay to maintain.

Air time may be free, but our drives extract more than money from listeners.  No doubt about it – listeners understand our need to do drives, but they strongly resent having their programming interrupted.

The fallout is neither trivial nor benign.

• Half of our listeners say they listen less or tune out during drives. Even if they’re expressing their attitude rather than their actual behavior, the message is clear: Pledge drives are damaging our long-term relationship with our listeners.

• Six-in 10 listeners tell us that drives are not getting any easier to listen to.

• Three-quarters say on-air drives are getting more prevalent. And they may be: During the year, a typical station broadcasts one hour of active appeals for every 29 hours it’s on the air.

Clearly, we’ve got to harness the productive power of on-air drives while minimizing their destructive power.

The key is to make fund drives better programming – and we can do that by bringing them into closer alignment with the values and motivations that truly cause listeners to give.

There’s a lot of experimentation going on today that seeks to improve the programming of on-air drives.

This is a worthy pursuit with a payoff.  AUDIENCE 98 finds that when listeners believe drives are getting easier to listen to, they are more likely to stay tuned and listen.

When we make our drives "better" in listener’s minds, we’re doing a number of things:

• We’re avoiding the listener resentment that drives can cause;

• We’re keeping people listening, so there are more people who hear our appeals for support;

• And by reminding listeners why they give – of demonstrating good programming to them rather than by taking it away – we can make our drives even more compelling, even more productive.

Again, by knowing our audience we can craft not only pitches, but entire drives that resonate with listeners’ motivations to give. This programming is under our absolute control. And if it isn’t, it should be.

AUDIENCE 98 also asks listeners what they think about underwriting. The first thing we find is something we can take to the street:

87 percent feel positively about companies that support us.

I’ve never pitched a potential underwriter, but I can imagine this would be a very positive point to make.

We also asked listeners:

• if they think underwriting is becoming more prevalent,

• if they think underwriting is becoming more annoying, and

• whether they are concerned that underwriters may force changes in our programming.

These are things that worry us. But do they worry listeners?

We find that listeners are of two types. Almost half say that on-air spots are more prevalent; are more annoying; do threaten to force changes in programming.

These listeners seem a little uncomfortable, or maybe anxious is a better word. That’s why we call their concern Underwriting Anxiety.

The fact is – most listeners say on-air mentions of business support are getting more prevalent. And at most of our stations, this is simply an observation of fact.

The key difference between these two groups is this:

Listeners with Underwriting Anxiety are 12 times more likely than others to say that on-air credits are getting more annoying.

Why did we even ask these questions? We asked because of our concern – our own anxiety – that the growing number of underwriting spots may be causing fewer listeners to give.

Here’s what we find.

Underwriting Anxiety is not causing fewer listeners to give, or to give at lower levels. At least, NOT YET.

However – when we ask listeners to look into the future – would they be less willing to support public radio if even more businesses were to support it – here’s what they tell us.

Listeners with Underwriting Anxiety – those most annoyed by the spots today – say definitely. Yes! Put on too many spots and their future giving is at risk.

This may sound nuts, but in my opinion this is the most timely news to come out of AUDIENCE 98 yet. The timing is perfect: we’re at a point where this problem is making itself known, yet we’re not yet at the point where it’s hurting us.

Underwriting Anxiety is a shot across our bow. It’s fair warning. It’s listeners saying look, if that underwriting gets any more annoying – I’m going to have to reconsider giving.

And why shouldn’t they? When spots interrupt the programming folks expect to hear, or when they clash with the values listeners expect from our programming – is anyone surprised that these things may affect people’s willingness to give?

Our task is to turn underwriting credits into good programming before this problem gets out of hand and comes back to bite us.

Frankly, I don’t think it will be that hard to do, and do well.

Because we know the audience.

AUDIENCE 98’s information arrives at a great time. In fact, I can’t think of a better time to bring the audience’s perspectives to bear on a field rife with experimentation and creative new ideas.

This is an exciting time to be a development professional. And it reminds me of my experiences a few years back.

15-20 years ago we were exploring how to apply audience data toward public radio’s ends. We knew that commercial services like Arbitron could provide valuable information that could help us to know our audience – and at the time this was brand new information. We also knew we could learn a lot from the techniques used at commercial stations.

Our motives were good and our purposes were pure. We knew there were data and techniques out there that we could use; all we wanted was to apply them to public radio’s ends.

That’s why it was so hard to understand the opposition from managers and PDs.

They were concerned that data gathered for commercial ends, and techniques invented for commercial purposes, would turn us into commercial radio.

They feared that in our earnest yet zealous search to understand and serve more listeners,

• we would forget what public radio’s mission is,

• we would compromise the programming that makes it unique,

• and we would sell out what endears us to our listeners.

I said then, and I say emphatically to you today – We will never forget who we are as long as we rely on listeners for support.

That’s because listeners are the final judges of our programming. The service it provides and the values that it embodies are why listeners support us today and into the future.

What is true for programming is just as true for development.

Today, as we refine old techniques and explore new ways to groom givers and underwriters, we simply can’t forget who are listeners are, why they listen, and why they give.

Look at the unfortunate case of public television – at it’s best it’s unparalleled in quality – but when it forgets, it’s virtually indistinguishable from half a dozen commercial cable services – the Home Shopping Network included.  And in too many viewers’ minds – that’s not television worth paying for.

• We work against ourselves when our fundraising techniques forget who we are or ignore what makes us unique.
  

• We work against ourselves when our fundraising clashes with what makes us special – or compromises the mission, or sells out the soul of the public servant that our listeners value so highly.

I would encourage each of you – as I was encouraged years ago, and as I know the person you respect most would tell you today – to know your listeners as well as you know your craft.

And always, please, remember – anything in your craft that works against listeners, also works against the ultimate viability of public radio itself.

Development is at the forefront of technical innovation in our industry today. New ideas and techniques are shaping public radio’s financial future. Our development efforts make possible a financial stability the likes of which public radio has never seen.

And I can’t express how pleased I am about this. Movement to a listener-sensitive economy frees us from the shackles of political subsidies, focuses our efforts on our listeners, and forces us to be the best public service we can be.

That’s a terrific place to be. I envy you for it, and I thank you for it.

For More Information

Givers & Giving.  The key findings presented here are based on AUDIENCE 98's Givers and Giving reports.  The first asks the question, "What causes a person to become a giver?"  The second asks, "How do givers decide how much to give?"

• Becoming a giver requires climbing the Stairway to Given.  The Giving Model addresses the finer points of gift size – including some thoughts on affordability On the Occasion of Giving.

• The listener traits that do not influence giving are told in The Sign of a Giver and What We Didn’t Find.  A parallel inquiry into the station traits that do not contribute to turning listeners into givers is related in Why Stations Succeed (And Other Myths).

• Cause and Catalyst reminds us that fundraising efforts offer the catalyst, but a listener's longer-term relationship with all programming on the station is the cause of his or her support.  That's why It Don't Mean a Thing When Those Pledge Phones Don't Ring.

• A Sense of Community suggests that the "personal importance" of a station in a listener’s life embodies a sense of citizenship in a virtual community of public radio listeners.  Caveat Venditor (Seller Beware) melds our listeners’ sense of community with their deeply held values and casts serious ramifications for on-air pledge drives.

On-Air Drives.  AUDIENCE 98 examines The Effects of On-Air Pledge Drives On Listeners.

• The inherent strengths and weaknesses of on-air drives are addressed in "point-counterpoint" fashion: on air drives work because they hit the Bull's Eye; but notable Collateral Damage is the result.

• The problem lies in a single pitch’s inability to distinguish between givers and non-givers.  How Many Listeners Are Givers? makes the dilemma explicit.

• Driving Home The Numbers, stations are in pledge mode one out of every 29 hours they are on the air.   How much do these drives really disrupt listening?  Triangulating On The Effects Of On-Air Drives offers several answers.

• News/Talk listeners are no more willing than music listeners to stay tuned.  Formats And Fund Drives begs the question, Where Do We Go From Here?

Underwriting. AUDIENCE 98 examines the Low Anxiety underlying listeners' perceptions of underwriting.

• Listeners and Underwriting Anxiety: It's Got Them Under Their Skins.  What sounds are annoying listeners and leading to this problem?  We don't know but some excellent ideas for further research are presented in Coping With Underwriting Anxiety.

 

Audience Research Analysis
Copyright © ARA and CPB.  All rights reserved.
Revised: September 01, 2000 12:38 PM.