This is the fifth in a series of essays on the use of Arbitron ratings as a tool for Pacifica programming decision-making. While the information is specific to station KPFA in Berkeley, Pacifica's general trend of dealing with their audiences in the same manner as commercial audiences is clear in these reports.

SUBJECT: TIME AND PLACE

First, a note about the previous installment. In the Walrus report, I find a graph showing KPFA's and KQED's Metro Cume Ratings over the past decade. The values shown here do not match my memories of the figures given out during the 1980s, but I cannot find my old documents, so I will assume that Walrus has it right. They show KPFA rising steadily from a rating of 1.4 in 1984 to 2.5 in 1992, falling back below 2.0 in 1993, and then climbing to 2.6 in Fall 1994. This would fit perfectly with my suggestion that KPFA would have lost audience after Clinton's election and regained it subsequently. It's hard to see why a format that led to steady audience growth for eight years then failed for one year and in 1993-95 had been leading to growth again if the explanation is sought only in an outdated approach to radio.

The same graph shows that KQED's rating grew more erratically from 3.3 in 1984 to 6.4 in 1991, stalled for a year, jumped to 7.9 in 1993, dropped back below 7.0 in Spring 1994, and went back up to 8.0 in Fall 1994. First, I'd just note that these erratic shifts in ratings seem to confirm that the Arbitron values from any one survey should not be taken very seriously. Whether they jump wildly because of marathons or other program changes, because of changing current events, or just because of sampling error, it obviously would be foolish to base any major plans upon one or two surveys. Note that KQED's audience jumped from 1992 to 1993, just as KPFA's dropped. Again, this fits with the idea that people seek more mainstream listening fare when they think that they can stop worrying so much about what the government is doing.

If we take this graph at face value, KQED's rating has grown from an average of around 4% in 1984-86 to an average of around 7.5 in 1993-94 (we're talking here about Cume Persons as percentage of population). In the same comparison, KPFA has grown from around 1.5% to around 2.0%. Thus KQED has increased its rating by around 88%, while KPFA has increased its rating by only around 33%. Given that KQED did a major format revision during this decade, eliminating music from its schedule and concentrating on news and talk, it's not surprising that they have a greater improvement than we do. Furthermore, I could make these numbers look very different simply by selecting different start and end points for the estimate (Walrus' graph gives points only for every other year, making it very hard to tell how selective they have been). Given all this possible confusion, it's interesting to note the heading that Walrus puts on this page: "In Ten Years KPFA Has Gained Perhaps One Rating Point While NPR Doubled Its Reach". Even when their case could look quite good with honest figures, they can't resist comparing apples to oranges.

Dayparts
In this section, we'll look at KPFA's audience as it changes during the day. Most commercial stations measure their audiences in "dayparts" such as morning drive, midday, afternoon drive, evening. These "chunks" of time correspond to the shifts of their fulltime on-air personalities, so both personnel evaluation and advertising sales are tailored around the averages for dayparts. KPFA's eclectic schedule requires a more flexible approach, so AudiGraphics uses graphs to present the changes in audience hour-by-hour through the day (Arbitron does not give out audience estimates between midnight and 5 a.m.).

Weekday (Monday-Friday) Listening to KPFA (estimates from graph)

AQH        Persons
5am             500
6am          4,000
7am        12,000
8am        10,500
9am          8,000
10am        7,500
11am        6,500
12 n         7,000
1pm         8,500
2pm         8,000
3pm         8,000
4pm         6,500
5pm         5,000
6pm         6,000
7pm         2,500
8pm         4,500
9pm         3,000
10pm       1,500
11pm          100

The first thing I would note is that this seems to be a fairly drastic shift from the pattern I recall in the 80s (again, my memory may be wrong). I remember midday as having a very low audience, rising again to a peak for the Evening News. These figures indicate that our audience was actually dropping off after the early afternoon music programs, with a scarcely noticeable increase during the Evening News. Figures for Fall 1994 are similar, but with the 7am peak rising only to about 7,500, a valley at 1pm of 3,000, and a peak at 5-6pm of about 8,000. Again, note the drastic differences between the two surveys! The Fall survey is much more similar to what I recall.

What I cannot find in the Walrus report is a similar graph showing the AQH Shares--the really significant figures. Walrus does note: "A *critical* finding: The curve of listening to KPFA generally looks like PUR." In other words, the ups and downs during the day simply reflect the number of people using radios--you cannot conclude that any of our programming is more or less successful than other programming, or that we are gaining or losing listeners at particular times of the day because of our eclectic format. Presumably, our AQH Shares remain more-or-less constant at all hours. Another quote from Walrus: "There are few peaks of tune-in that would indicate listeners seeking out a particular program on KPFA." Or, to put it another way, as Walrus doesn't, there are few valleys to indicate listeners avoiding us.

The Morning
For comparison, in the Spring 1994 survey, KQED's 7am peak in AQH Persons (with Morning Edition) is around 47,000, and their peak during afternoon drive (with All Things Considered at 5pm) is around 26,000. In other words, despite presenting shows that each have budgets far exceeding KPFA's total budget and that are designed to be much more comfortable listening for the average person, KQED is able to draw only around four times the average audience that KPFA does.

It will be interesting to see whether the current changes in the Morning Show (eliminating long segments of a single person talking, trying to have two hosts and two guests exchanging short lively "soundbites" whenever possible, keeping segments on a single topic to no more than 20 minutes, and interspersing serious (depressing) topics with light "people" stories) will significantly increase the audience. I can imagine such cosmetic changes perhaps drawing 25% more listeners (while people like me stop listening), but I find it hard to imagine that KPFA can ever come close to matching the draw of Morning Edition.

Weekends
Quickly, here are the AQH Persons figures for Saturday and Sunday from the Spring 1994 survey (estimated from a graph):

          Saturday Sunday
5am              0          0
6am              0       500
7am          500     4,500
8am       5,000    12,500
9am      10,000     6,000
10am      9,500     4,500
11am      9,000     1,000
12n         2,500     6,000
1pm        4,000     4,500
2pm        4,000     4,000
3pm        4,500     4,000
4pm        4,000     4,500
5pm           500     2,500
6pm        4,000     1,000
7pm        2,500     1,000
8pm        2,000     1,000
9pm        1,000        500
10pm            0      1,000
11pm            0      1,500

Well, this looks like impressive evidence that Johnny Otis, Mary Berg, and Robbie Osman were the big weekend audience draws. For comparison, KQED's Saturday peaks were 40,000 at 10am (Car Talk) and 22,000 at 6pm (Prairie Home Companion). On Sunday, KQED peaked with 29,000 at 10am and 17,500 at 5pm (I'm not familiar with the programs at these hours).

Sampling Error
Before you put too much stock in this, however, note that the figures for Fall 1994 were quite different, with KPFA showing a Saturday peak of 13,500 at 9am, dropping to around 9,000 from 11am to 1pm, to around 3,000 from 2pm to 5pm, and then to nearly zero after that. On the other hand, the Sunday figures in the Fall 1994 survey show about 9,500 listeners from 7am to 10am, a jump to 17,000 at noon, back to 9,500 at 1pm, a dropoff through the afternoon to 3,500 at 4pm, a peak of 6,500 at 6pm, around 1,000 to 2,000 through the evening, and a jump to 7,000 at 11pm. How can two consecutive surveys give such different results? Walrus admits that sampling error is probably the major cause. It also says in passing that the AudiGraphics report labeled Spring 1994 is actually an average of Winter and Spring 1994 (making it even harder to correct for preemptions, and the data even more outdated). Despite this attempt to correct for sampling error, it's clear that you can't put any real faith in the values for Saturday and Sunday beyond noting that the most popular programs tend to show up that way consistently. (Averaging over five days of the week makes the Monday-Friday figures five times more reliable, and hence fairly consistent from survey to survey, although even there the deviations during non-peak times of the day are significant.)

Well, I'm a cynic, but my conclusion is that the Arbitrons don't tell us much more than what we already knew: our audience is bigger for the Morning Show and Evening News (and for shows in similar time periods on weekends), but these peaks really are mainly the result of the fact that more people are listening to radio at those times. It's quite possible that any show put in those time slots would (after a period during which its fans find it) draw a similar audience.

I see little in these surveys to provide any "scientific" justification for tinkering with the schedule. I do think that changes are good, but they really must be based primarily upon the intuition and creativity of the management and programmers. Attempts to rationalize changes as responsive to surveys I would argue are just evasions of responsibility.

However, we've still not gotten to the data that management cite for many of their changes. They're going to even finer levels of detail to look at geographics and demographics, based upon even tinier subsets of the survey data (hence even more subject to sampling error). Those are the topics of over 90% of the Walrus report that management used so heavily.

Geographic Data
In this section, we look at the geographic distribution of KPFA listeners as described in the Walrus report.

Arbitron breaks down some counties into Western and Eastern sections. It also identifies some regions as HDBA (High Density Black Area) or HDHA (High Density Hispanic Area); in such cases the remainder of the country or half-county is described by the term "Balance". For example, Alameda West HDBA is the portion of western Alameda County (mostly Oakland and Berkeley) with a high density of African American residents. Alameda West Balance is the portion of western Alameda County that does *not* contain concentrations of black or Hispanic population.

Here are the counties or subsets that contain the largest percentgages of the overall KPFA Cume Persons (different persons per week):
17% Marin
16% Alameda West Balance
16% Contra Costa West Balance
15% Sonoma
14% San Francisco Balance

Poor Showing in Black and Hispanic Areas
Thus, 78% of KPFA's listeners live in Marin or Sonoma Counties or in the non-black/non-Hispanic areas of western Alameda, western Contra Costa, or San Francisco counties. In regard to black or Hispanic listening areas, Walrus says only: "For example, only 3% of KPFA's listening audience resides in Alameda West HDBA."

By ZIP codes, Walrus locates the bulk of KPFA listeners in:
19%    945xx
18%    949xx
17%    941xx

Figures based on the Spring 1994 AudiGraphics report (in turn based on Fall 1993 and Spring 1994 Arbitron surveys):

                                          Percent of
                                      Listeners Listening            TSL

Inside Metro Survey Area        94            98             5:23
TSA outside MSA                     6             2              2:11

Marin                                      12          17              7:12
Alameda West Balance             20          16              4:17
Contra Costa West Balance        6          16             13:11
Sonoma                                  10          15               7:30
San Francisco Balance             12          14               5:56
Santa Clara West Balance          9            6               3:23
San Mateo Balance                   6            3                3:10
Alameda West HDBA               5            3                3:37
All Other Counties                  20           10               2:34

945xx                                    14           19               7:04
949xx                                    15           18               6:20
941xx                                    18           17               4:50
947xx                                    11           10               4:48
954xx                                     7             9                6:12
946xx                                   11             8                3:37
940xx                                     8            4                 2:56
951xx                                     4            3                 3:39
All other ZIP prefixes             12          13                 5:28

94705                                     3            5                 8:18
94114                                     3            4                 7:53
94618                                     4            4                 4:31

Walrus says: "You can use geographical information to understand your audience. The folks in Marin are not considered to be among the oppressed masses, correct?" Well, in fact there is Marin City, but my experience working in the subscriptions department tends to support Walrus' interpretation here: KPFA has not been very successful in attracting an audience among the minority and poor people we seek to serve. Our listeners, like our subscribers, come overwhelmingly from the relatively well-to-do areas in the East Bay, North Bay, and San Francisco/Peninsula.

Still to come, quick looks at what Walrus said about KPFA's core vs fringe listeners, and about other stations to which KPFA listeners also listen.

MORE ON ARBITRON

We believe decisions about our stations should be made by the representatives of all the communities that have a stake in Pacifica, and should occur in an open, accountable, community-oriented process . . . something now lacking at Pacifica.