KPFA October 1996 Marathon an analysis by Beedleumbum Larry
The October KPFA marathon
was a success, going over the extremely high goal of $400,000 in pledges
(in 16 days of fundraising). This seems to confirm station management's
claim that the audience has not decreased as a result of the programming
changes made in the past few years.
Here are the daily pledge totals as posted in the public area of the station:
Wed Oct 02 $33,045
Thu Oct 03 28,794
Fri Oct 04 23,520
Sat Oct 05 13,450
Sun Oct 06 14,845
Mon Oct 07 15,757
Tue Oct 08 31,850
Wed Oct 09 30,213
Thu Oct 10 22,882
Fri Oct 11 19,801
Sat Oct 12 12,872
Sun Oct 13 13,671
Mon Oct 14 17,250
Tue Oct 15 40,559
Wed Oct 16 37,266
Thu Oct 17 53,275
THON TOTAL $409,445
CHANGES IN PATTERNS OF PLEDGING AT KPFA SINCE THE 1980'S
As a former worker in the subs department, it is interesting to me to note that weekdays are now the main source of pledges. When I began entering pledges into the computer in the early 1980s, Sundays were typically the biggest pledge days with over $12,000, but weekdays would rarely reach $8,000. Weekend days (which now contain a lot of the old programs) haven't improved much, but weekdays (where programming has been changed drastically) are now routinely exceeding $25,000, something we once would have thought absolutely impossible.
To put it bluntly, any hopes any TBK members have had that the changed programming would fail to bring in pledges, thus forcing management to move back toward the old programming, are clearly contradicted by the evidence. If the programming is indeed "watered down" or moved a bit to the right, that clearly has not hurt the income.
One big factor here is the great success in fundraising of the early afternoon sequence of Jerry Brown followed by Flashpoints. The Morning Show also did relatively well in this marathon, suggesting that it has now found new listeners to replace those who drifted away as it switched to shorter segments, frequent news headlines, refusing to allow any one speaker to talk for long without interruption, etc.
DATA AND ANALYSIS ON LISTENERSHIP
An editorial correction at the end of the Letters column in the Nov
13 issue of the SF Weekly says:
In "Trivia Matters" ("Unspun," Nov. 6), KPFA's listenership was reported to be 30,000. In fact, it has 22,000 subscribers and 150,000 listeners.
No source is given, but I certainly would assume that they checked these figures with KPFA management before publishing the correction. If so, these give us some idea of current trends.
Subscribership reached a low of around 12,000 in the early 1980s, climbed through the late 1980s, and grew considerably during the Gulf War. The 1992 KPFA Annual Report claims 20,000 subscribers. Thus the figure given in the SF Weekly would represent a growth rate of 500 subscribers per year over the past four years, down from roughly 800-900 subscribers added per year over the decade before 1992.
The listenership of 150,000 (presumably what Arbitron calls a cume) would represent about 2.5% of the potential audience. Over the past 20 years, KPFA's cume has bounced around between 2.0 and 2.5, much of the variation being statistical uncertainty in the Arbitron sample, and much of the rest apparently correlated with political climate (those who think of themselves as having progressive politics tend to listen to KPFA more when they feel that political activity is urgently needed, and they tend to listen to other stations more when they feel a bit more complacent about the situation). Given recent political events, I'd certainly expect KPFA ratings to be hovering near the high end of the range (not too much complacency out there about President Bill watching out for our interests, I'd say).
So, if these figures really did come from KPFA management, they would seem to contradict the claim that recent changes have produced great increases in the audience. They're not much different from what I would have expected without any unusual change in programming.
People asked some questions about the October KPFA marathon results. I've done some breakdowns of the information that was posted at the station, and I'll try to get the main info written up and posted sometime soon. Just one quick point about the use of premiums: For the overall marathon, the average pledge was $79, so obviously the vast majority of pledges involved premiums. Only about 5% of the money pledged was in the form of Budget Subs ($25) or Regular Subs ($45); there would also be some small pledges of odd amounts ($20, $30, etc.) but those were not listed separately on the summary sheets prepared in the phone room during the marathon. It seems safe to say that 90 to 95% of the pledges would have been eligible for premiums (not everyone takes an offered premium, but most people do).
41% of the pledges were listed as "new subscriptions" (that is, the pledger did not specify that the pledge was a renewal or an extra donation on top of an existing sub), but this is always an extremely unreliable (inflated) figure. When pledges are entered in the computer, many of these "new" subs turn out to be renewals or donations. With 5145 pledges in the marathon (one of three marathons each year) and an apparent growth rate of only around 500 subscribers per year, you can get some idea of the extent of "churning" of the subscriber list -- that is, lots of people subscribe once and then never renew, so that a large number of new subscribers is constantly required just to stay in the same place.
During the times when the phone room was operating (a total of about 260 hours for the marathon), the average was 20 pledges for $1575 per hour.
WHAT PLEDGE NUMBERS REVEAL----OR DON'T
. Again, the reminder that these numbers come from the handwritten logs kept by the phoneroom coordinators during the marathon, and many errors can creep in (for example, in some cases the hourly totals don't add up to the day total). The best results come from analysis of the computer records after all pledges are entered and compared with records of existing and expired subscriptions. These comparisons eliminate many fake pledges, more exactly determine the ratios of new subs to renewals to returning lapsed subscribers, eliminate duplicates or changed pledges that had been erroneously recorded as separate pledges, provide counts of pledges involving premiums, etc., etc. Unfortunately, the present KPFA management, like KQED management, regards such information as "proprietary" and does not want it made public.
I should also, in light of past criticism, emphasize that marathon results are only one of many tools available to evaluate the "success" of programs. I would say that the most important factor is to have department heads and the program director actually listen to the programs and evaluate them (is this an important program? is it creative? is it accomplishing something appropriate for KPFA? if none of the above, does it seem to have the potential to grow into something important? do I have something better waiting for available airtime?).
Letters and phonecalls can help in evaluation, but they usually reflect mostly input from an organized minority with a strong vested interest. Opinions of other programmers familiar with this subject area are one of the best sources of evaluation. Ratings would be very interesting (remembering that you sometimes have strong reasons to want to keep a program on the air, even if it has a small audience, and that having a huge audience is not in itself a reason to keep a program on the air -- presumably KPFA would refuse to broadcast Howard Stern, no matter how high his ratings), but with KPFA's small listenership the ratings become almost totally meaningless when broken down to the level of individual programs. They show little more than what is obvious -- that we have big audiences in the morning and afternoon drivetimes.
Marathon results, because they are based on "voting with dollars," obviously can tend to overrepresent the wealthier portion of the audience. The use of premiums, the "pitching" skills of the on-air people, and the time of day when programs air all affect these totals at least as much as the actual content of the programs.
Still, you do get some idea from these numbers of which shows have strong audience support. Or, if you insist that these numbers are meaningless, you can at least see which shows KPFA management will be identifying as the main sources of income.
First, the grand pledge totals. The following four programs account for 52.3% of the dollars pledged during the marathon (but used only about 23% of the total marathon time):
Pledge $ Pledge Count Avg Pledge % "New" subs
-------- ------------ ---------- ------------
The Morning Show $79,730 974 $ 82 28%
Democracy Now 50,970 463 110 29%
Flashpoints 46,474 544 85 35%
We the People 36,740 486 76 55%
No pledge "pitches" were made during the Pacifica Network News, so we have no measure here of its possible audience appeal. However, it is clear that the main financial support for the station is coming from the 7-10 am and 4-6 pm timeslots, which of course are the morning and evening drivetimes when radio in general has its largest audiences.
Until a decade ago, the Evening News (6-7 pm) was the highpoint of the evening in both ratings and pledge income; now it falls far below the earlier evening shows in pledges, though I'm told that management claims it still has high ratings (ratings information, of course, is proprietary and not available to those outside management). Note that the morning shows seem to appeal largely to existing KPFA subscribers, whereas Jerry Brown (and to a lesser extent Flashpoints) are bringing in a lot of supposed new subscribers.
These four programs account for 48% of the number of pledges made during the marathon, so their domination is not simply a reflection of a wealthy audience. I think that the high average pledge for Democracy Now reflects extensive use of a multi-cassette premium offered for a large pledge.
Jerry Brown's show has a somewhat lower average pledge, but still only 5% of its dollar total came in the form of $25 and $45 pledges.
The following programs extend this list down to a cumulative total of 82.9% of the marathon pledge-dollar total (asterisks indicate marathon specials; the others are regular programs):
Pledge $ Pledge Count Avg Pledge % "New" subs
-------- ------------ ---------- ------------
Music of the World $19,245 247 $ 78 43%
*Carolyn Myss 14,915 122 122 37%
*Ralph Nader 10,820 133 81 44%
KPFA Evening News 9,379 138 68 38%
Free Form Music Mix 8,790 133 66 57%
The Johnny Otis Show 8,707 147 59 54%
Across Great Divide 8,430 91 93 27%
*Marilyn Waring 7,115 73 97 26%
Dead to the World 6,958 100 70 41%
Your Own Health... 6,719 110 61 36%
Blues by the Bay 5,690 93 61 65%
A Musical Offering 5,495 71 77 35%
Sleepers, Awake! 4,275 67 64 27%
First Light 4,250 54 79 44%
La Onda Bajita 4,085 94 43 80%
Each of the other programs brought in less than 1% of the pledge dollar total. Only two other programs brought in as much as 1% of the pledge count total, each with 52 pledges: America's Back 40, and The Gospel Experience.
Of course, some of these programs had many more hours on the air than others, so it's also of interest to look at pledge dollars and counts per hour.
PLEDGES PER HOUR---SHOWING INDIVIDUAL PROGRAM SUPPORT
Continuing the analysis of the KPFA October 1996 marathon, now looking at pledges (count and dollars) per hour, which gives some idea of how strongly the audience reacted to each program.
Here are the programs ranked by dollars pledged per hour (asterisks indicate marathon specials; the others are regular programs):
$/hour pledges/hour % "new" subs avg pledge hrs
------ ------------ ------------ ---------- ---
*Marilyn Waring $7,115 73 26% $ 97 1.0
Democracy Now 4,248 39 29% 110 12.0
Flashpoints 4,225 49 35% 85 11.0
*Jerry Mander 3,775 44 52% 86 1.0
*Carolyn Myss 3,729 31 37% 122 4.0
Your Own Health... $3,360 55 36% $ 61 2.0
The Morning Show 3,322 41 28% 82 24.0
*Poetry Special 3,240 28 21% 116 1.0
We the People 3,062 41 55% 76 12.0
*Aristide 2,185 24 33% 91 1.0
*Ralph Nader $2,164 27 44% $ 81 5.0
Across Great Divide 2,108 23 27% 93 4.0
*Michael Moore 2,095 27 30% 78 1.0
*Howard Zinn 1,925 29 55% 66 1.0
*Caroline Casey 1,778 19 45% 94 2.0
Johnny Otis Show $1,741 29 54% $ 59 5.0
Dead to the World 1,740 25 41% 70 4.0
*Helen Caldicott 1,640 25 41% 66 1.5
A Musical Offering 1,374 18 35% 77 4.0
*Alabama Burning 1,253 15 52% 82 1.5
Pig in a Pen $1,231 21 44% $ 60 2.0
*Michael Parenti 1,155 20 60% 58 1.0
Blues by the Bay 1,138 19 65% 61 5.0
Panhandle Country 1,130 17 35% 66 2.0
New Dimensions 1,093 15 30% 73 2.0
Music of the World $1,069 14 43% $ 78 18.0
Sleepers, Awake! 1,069 17 27% 64 4.0
*James Baldwin 1,055 15 60% 70 1.0
*Dynamite Women 1,054 13 48% 80 2.5
Forms and Feelings 912 7 33% 130 3.0
America's Back 40 $ 863 13 48% $ 66 4.0
*Barry Lynn 853 10 80% 85 1.5
KPFA Evening News 853 13 38% 68 11.0
*Women Material World 830 11 27% 75 1.0
La Onda Bajita 817 19 80% 43 5.0
Radio Nation $ 783 9 36% $ 83 3.5
*Winona La Duke 753 11 45% 68 2.0
The Gospel Experience 696 13 73% 54 4.0
Audio Evidence 640 10 47% 64 1.5
In Your Ear 617 9 43% 66 3.0
Reggae Experience $ 591 11 57% $ 56 4.0
*Latin Music Special 588 11 62% 52 4.0
*Sheila Chandra 588 10 63% 62 2.0
Cover to Cover 570 8 50% 71 0.5
Terra Infirma 560 7 28% 78 2.5
Friday Night Vibe $ 545 14 89% $ 40 2.0
Free Form Music Mix 517 8 57% 66 17.0
Seventh Generation 488 9 24% 57 2.0
*Music Special (Chuy) 475 9 50% 53 2.0
Bonnie Simmons Show 445 8 40% 59 2.0
*Jonathan Mann $ 430 7 29% $ 61 1.0
First Light 425 5 44% 79 10.0
What's the Verdict? 423 7 21% 60 2.0
Ritmo de las Americas 410 8 47% 55 2.0
Bay Area Health Awrns 378 5 50% 76 2.0
Sing Out! $ 294 5 43% $ 56 4.0
*Campaign Debates 284 5 44% 63 6.0
Salsa Picante 218 5 67% 48 2.0
*Earthquake 195 2 50% 98 1.0
*Native Americans 177 3 40% 53 1.5
Ears Wide Open $ 173 3 40% $ 52 3.0
Waves 140 3 33% 47 2.0
*Rhino Poetry Series 63 1 100% 48 1.5
+Africa Today $ 0 0 --- --- 1.0
+KPFA Weekend News 0 0 --- --- 1.5
+Pacifica Network News 0 0 --- --- 6.0
+ = No subscription "pitches" made.
One final listing. Here are the programs that made the largest portion of their dollar income from $25 and $45 pledges (i.e., least reliance on premiums):
% 25&45 Total Dollars Avg Pledge
------- ------------- ----------
Salsa Picante 72% $ 435 $48
Friday Night Vibe 58% 1,090 40
La Onda Bajita 48% 4,085 43
Ears Wide Open 31% 520 52
Waves 25% 280 47
Gospel Experience 21% 2,785 54
PLEDGE FULLMENT AND BILLING
15 or so years ago, before credit card and EFT payments, KPFA fulfillment on total pledge dollar amount would approach about 80% after four to six months (remember that some part of the pledge amount was for payments of $10 per month over the next 12 months, but I think I corrected for that in calculating the percentage paid). After Bill of the Month pledges were de-emphasized (where once they had been pushed as the ideal) and Visa/Mastercard payments were allowed (providing instant payment, minus the merchant's discount, which was never subtracted in our subscription department calculations), the long-term collection rate rose to around 85%.
As I recall, at the time those were regarded as amazingly good figures by people I talked to from other non-NPR stations. It seems to me that I recall some people talking about 50% or 60% collections at their stations.
I am not privy to the statistics for marathons within the past 10 years or so. My guess would be that heavy reliance on credit- card payments and on EFT would have brought the collection rate up a bit, but I doubt very much if it has reached 90% after a month (unless 90% of the money is collected instantly on credit cards). After all, most people delay at least a few weeks in sending payment after they get a bill.
The studies I did in the early 80s indicated that collection rates were significantly higher (and about identical) on pledges made for premiums or during "matches" than they were for pledges with no extra incentive. There was also a great variation in collection for different programs. In general, the collection rate was lower for programs aimed at lower-income audiences and for programs featuring popular or dance music. (That's a "politically correct" way of saying what we really usually said "in-house," which was that the collection rate was low on "third-world" programs, particularly music programs.)
I really can't say what's happening now, but I can't imagine how you
could get a 90% return except with almost universal use of credit cards
(or with very low-pressure pitching aimed only at a hard-core audience).
PREMIUM POLICY AND OTHER STRATEGIES
The normal policy is that the station must get several free copies before a premium is approved, and extra copies must be available at low cost (for example, "radio station price" on CDs). However, exceptions are made -- for example, videos and other high-priced premiums may all be purchased "at cost" or whatever. Among the most popular premiums in each marathon are cassettes that KPFA prepares from speeches, popular programs, etc. These are purchased from a duplicating house. I noticed in this marathon the extensive use of multi-cassette sets for Democracy Now, "Voices of Pacifica" (from the archives), etc., packaged in plastic "boxes" with cover sheets (perhaps xeroxed, or cheaply printed in black and white).
At any rate, it certainly is true that premium purchase is an ever-increasing cost of each marathon. Other premium-related costs include packaging, postage, and additional staff time involved in handling the computer entry, inevitable complaints and returns, etc. (KPFA does ask programmers to turn in the padded envelopes and boxes in which they receive books and CDs and such, and those are recycled as much as possible for mailing out premiums -- our listeners mostly are favorably impressed by getting a recycled package rather than a new one, which might not be true everywhere; also, most of the work of putting the premiums in packages and affixing address labels is done by volunteers).
In addition, there are many other marathon-related costs: advertising; hiring extra staff to supervise the phone room volunteers; staff time in entering pledges in the computer, printing bills, and processing payments and premium mailing labels; printing of various forms used for on-air and phone-room as well as billing; costs of extra phone lines and the 800 number; purchase of syndicated programs; costs of special marathon programs produced locally; paid-staff time devoted to preparing and doing marathon programming and pledge "pitches"; etc.
An ideal accounting system would offset all of these costs against the marathon income and give a better idea of financial reality. As far as I know (I haven't been "on the inside" at KPFA for a long time), nothing approximating that exists. Although KPFA now runs on an annual budget well over a million dollars, it still operates in many ways as if it were a little volunteer operation. The bookkeeper didn't even get a computer until a few years ago. Certainly, I don't think there is any effort to explore whether premiums are cost-effective. In my experience, management has been
(1) too busy to explore such questions, and
(2) hostile to any such studies that might show that their apparent success is really not so impressive. I know that years ago it was a major struggle to get them to consider evidence that the sacred tradition of the Bill of the Month Club (pledges of $10 per month, for which monthly bills were sent) was actually producing less money than $60 pledges paid up front (the BOMC was eventually dropped, but soon replaced by Electronic Fund Transfer, which also involves heavy expenses to collect the promised income, but has the advantage that the subscriber must go to a great deal of effort to stop the payments).
Management also tended to look only at the fact that they obtained a
certain amount of income from a telemarketing campaign, totally ignoring
the fact that 80% of that income went to pay the fees of the telemarketing
company, and that more than the remainder was used up in billing and collecting
the money.
The real questions that need to be asked are something like this:
With answers to all of these questions, you could begin to make realistic decisions about the kinds of fundraising offers and activities that are most productive. However, this would require a fancy accounting system where every expenditure and every hour of staff time is assigned to some particular project, and that in turn would require more staff time, investment in bookkeeping staff and software, and management with time to consider and understand the resulting information and make reasonable decisions based on it. I don't think any of that is likely to come along soon, unless Pat Scott succeeds in upgrading KPFA/Pacifica to the corporate model.
Meantime, decisions about fundraising methods will continue to be made
mostly on gross income and on people's personal hunches about what is working
and what is not.
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