May 10, 2004 - by Stephen M Brown

(Editors note: This letter by Steve Brown is posted for informational purposes only and does not reflect the opinions of OUT FM. Steve Brown, elected to the LSB for a 3 year term from the List-Prog Slate calls for Arbitron radio rating data to be purchased by the Pacifica Foundation to help it make decisions about programming changes. During the struggle to reclaim Pacifica from the corporate hijackers, there was much criticism of the hijackers for making use of data made for commercial stations to make decisions about Pacifica programming. A link is provided here for people to get a grounding in the issues surrounding the critique within a tutorial. Finally a link is provided to Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin's PowerPoint charts showing rising listenership at all Pacifica stations since 1998, with WBAI leading the way with a 60% increase in listenership. Blacks and Latinos make up 49% of the listening audience. Quotes from Steve Brown used in the report are in bold and in red)

From: "Stephen M Brown" <sbrown13@nyc.rr.com>
Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 03:36:15 -0400

Carol Spooner reported some significant programming changes recently made at
KPFA by the new Program Council. She said that it will "monitor" those
changes to gauge their success.

Good idea, except -- how does the KPFA Program Council propose to monitor
the success of its proposals? There is no reliable way to do this -- except
with Arbitron. But Dan Coughlin and Lonnie Hicks, along with some or all
of the GMs (and most vocally the program director of WBAI) have long sought
to prevent Pacifica from accessing Arbitron data.

What are their reasons? They offer three.

1. WE CAN'T AFFORD IT. This is simply not true. Arbitron's cost is
ridculously affordable, especially in light of the many questionable and
arguably less important things the foundation finds money to pay for. At
only $6,000 for an entire year, I assure you that this is not what keeps us
from renewing Arbitron.

2. IT IS NOT ACCURATE. This is also not true. Arbitron is deemed accurate
enough, and indispensible, not only by virtually every non-profit radio
station in America, but also by nasty greedy profit-minded stations, to whom
accurate ratings information means money in their pockets, and who therefore
would not be paying any to a service that did not deliver such accuracy.

Arbitron is also the only game in town. Surely whatever its accuracy may be,
it is greater than our present methods of assessment, which amount to little
more than a program director's wetting his finger and sticking it up in the
air to test the wind. Of course, not having verifiable program data allows
a PD to make self-serving statements about the size and demographics of the
listenership and the success of this or that favorite program, secure in the
knowledge that, without verifiable data, no one can offer credible
contradictory opinions.

3. ARBITRON WILL CHANGE OUR STATIONS from being content- and quality-driven
to being ratings-driven. Or, put another way -- if ratings are constantly
staring us in the face, there will be an irresisitible pressure to dump
worthwhile programs that do not attact large audiences.

That would certainly be a good reason to avoid Arbitron -- if it were true.
But it is not true.

If a program deserves to be on the air because of its quality and content,
but Arbitron reveals that it is not attracting a large audience, this should
be a signal -- not to dump the program -- but to divert more station
resources towards promoting it better, so that it will attract the audience
it deserves. By using Arbitron, we will be able to track how successful we
are in growing the program's audience. If Arbitron indicates that the
audience is still not growing, we will know that it is the particular method
that has failed -- NOT the program -- and so we will keep trying new methods
until we find one that works.

How we use Arbitron is our decision. It is also our decision about "whether"
to use it.

So far, we have made the wrong decision. From personal observation I can say
that not having Arbitron has worked to the terrible disadvantage of WBAI --
but to the great advantage of its program director, Bernard White. For there
is no independent standard by which to evaluate his performance, or to hold
him accountable for the success or failure of his programming, and any
increase or decrease in our listening audience.

At WBAI, the program director constantly makes false and self-serving
statements about the supposed growth of his listenership and the success of
the program changes he has made. I do not mean this as a personal attack,
but as a peformance evaluation -- for I know that his statements are false
because I have looked at the relevant Arbitron reports for WBAI -- whch
management prevents the station from obtaining or looking at. The figures
are shocking. When they were shown to the PD, he denied them, stated they
were "not accurate," and that he knew better.

How could he know better? He declined to say. And so WBAI remains at the
mercy of an agenda that serves its program director at the expense of the
station and its listeners. Just for the record, here IS the record, for
WBAI.

Over the last three years (as it has been argued strenuously by me and
others) the PD's programming changes have been abitrary and seemingly driven
by cronyism. Here is one particularly egregious example: Not long ago, the
PD kicked off the air from its Wednesday time-slot, with no warning or
notice, a program of 25 years' standing, that had the largest audience and
the biggest fundraising revenues during those 25 years of any program on
WBAI (but whose producer the PD has a personal dislike for, which he has
indulged explicitly and often, on the air, in violation of the station's own
rules against personal attacks). What program did the PD put in its place?
Ignoring the outraged (and individually signed) protests of an amount of
listeners equal to the entire paid membership(!) of WBAI, the PD replaced
that show with another very much like it, except that this new show is
hosted by -- I am not making this up -- the PD's own personal physician!

Ultimately, the unfair and arbitrary programming changes, and the overtly
anti-White and anti-Semitic attitude of the new hosts and their program
material, succeeded in causing forty-four thousand (44,000!) WBAI listeners
to take the time and the effort to register their disapproval by individual
protests to the PD, which he either ignored, or rebuffed with threats. Was
it mere co-incidence that during this period, according to Arbitron, large
numbers of our audience were driven away (driven, in fact, to the local NPR
station, whose figures rose as ours fell)?

What are those figures? The numbers that document the above claims, which
otherwise would be unfounded assertions no more credible than those of the
program director, follow, as reported by Aribtron:

In the last year alone, WBAI's listenership fell by nearly 18%. It fell by a
similar amount in the year preceding. Today WBAI's audience share is
literally "off the charts" -- that is, virtually too small even to be
measured. We are dead last of all the stations in our signal area. We
actually attract a smaller percentage of our signal area audience than the
smallest and weakest college station. Yet at 50,000 Watts, we are a
transmitting powerhouse! Our signal can reach a potential radio audience of
21 million, and a "real" radio audience (i.e., the number actually listening
to their radios during any average quarter hour of the day) of 15 million.

Yet the embarrassing fact is that our station's AQH ("average quarter hour")
listening total for Fall 2002 was an infinitesimal 16,700. That means, out
of 15 million people who are actually listening to their radios during any
average quarter hour, only 16,700 were tuned to WBAI. Or just one tenth of
one percent. Nevertheless, pitiful as this was, by Winter 2003, the number
had fallen even lower -- to an AQH of only 13,800. A drop of nearly 18%.

How is it possible that with a signal of 50,000 watts, we have an AQH
audience of only 16,700? Whereas NPR (broadcasting over WNYC), with a feeble
signal of only 5,000 watts (just one-tenth our power), is reaching over a
million listeners per week? These are "our kind" of listeners -- and. in
fact, many of them WERE our listeners, until they left us for NPR.

Yet, incredibly, the program director continues to proclaim, completely
contrary to the known facts, that our listenership has actually GROWN. I
must therefore conclude that he is in serious denial. To conclude otherwise
would be to accuse him of intentional deceit. Which, since I cannot read his
mind, I have no right to do.

Nor would I welcome such a conclusion. For I would not appreciate being
deceived by the program director about what goes on at the station any more
than I appreciate being deceived by George Bush about what goes on in Iraq.
Nor, I believe, would the LSB or our listeners appreciate being deceived in
such a manner.

The only solution to "monitoring" the success of any program adjustments,
let alone the health of a station, is to subscribe to the Arbitron reports.
Only then will we know who our listeners are, what they want, and how well
we are meeting their needs and fulfilling our mission.

Arbitron can give us this information. How wisely we use it is up to us. Are
the Local Boards -- and is the PNB -- willing to make it a "matter of
policy" that each station subscribe to Arbitron?

Steve Brown

Stephen M Brown
sbrown13@nyc.rr.com