radioactivist.net home


WBAI Listenership and Arbitron data

WBAI's arbitrons, 1991-present:

Source: Radio Research Consortium and http://www.radio4all.org/fp/money.htm

*****

The Arbitrons can provide this information. Arbitron data is based on a sample of radio listeners who record when they listen and to which station. It was developed for use in commercial radio but is also used by public stations. Pacifica subscribes to Arbitron, at a cost of about $6,000 per station per year.

Publicly available data includes the "cume" rating (the number of separate individuals who listened to the station in a week between 6 a.m. and 12 midnight), and the Average Quarterly Hour (AQH) rating (the average number listening for at least five minutes in a given quarter hour between 6 a.m. and 12 midnight).

Available to Pacifica but not the public are breakouts of listenership by individual half hours that show how many listen to individual shows, as well as data on demographics.

(For more on arbitrons and issues surrounding their use in public radio, go to: http://www.radio4all.org/fp/money.htm.)

The plot above shows WBAI's listenership, as cume and AQH, for the past 13 years, with a few gaps (Winter 1998-Summer 1999, data unavailable; Winter 2002-Summer 2002, Pacifica did not subscribe). Take a look.

A few things jump out:

  1. Current-day listenership is distinctly higher than in the early and mid-1990s. Summer 2004 numbers seem like a record high.
  2. The current rise in listenership may have begun in fall 2001.
  3. The data is noisy. In other words, it jumps up and down a lot from season to season — because the sample size is not big enough for good precision. For this reason, comparisons of one season to another are not really valid. Better to compare average values over several seasons.
  4. There is a hint that listenership hit a peak in 2002, which would make sense — events following 9/11 would attract people to WBAI. However, this data is unconfirmed (it's from a public email by Steve Brown). During this period Pacifica did not pay for Arbitron.
  5. The most recent number available as of this writing, Spring 2005, is substantially lower than previous quarters.

Some good questions are, if WBAI's listenership has been so high in recent quarters, why does WBAI have trouble meeting its budget? Are there more non-subscribing listeners now, or do people give less, or have costs risen more than listenership? Perhaps more people are listening on account of the Iraq war, but they have not been convinced to join? Knowing the answers to these questions will help in making policy for WBAI.

Spinning the arbitrons

The arbitron data is often pressed into service in the factional struggle at WBAI, generally by comparing one single season to another. This practice is misleading, since the data is not precise enough to draw meaningful conclusions based on one season. It would be nice if management and board members were more careful with the arbitron data.