Broadcasting Telecasting (Apr-Jun 1957)

TRADE YOUR MIRROR FOR A WINDOW To know radio's prime customer: the loyal soap opera fan WHY are so many ad people and broadcasters uninformed about the listener to the daytime radio serial? puzzles Louis Hausman, vice president, advertising, CBS Radio. Speaking in St. Louis last Friday at the American Women in Radio & Television convention, he put some facts on the table: soap operas have a loyal following among "middle majority" women, the class that accounts for 65% of the buying in the U. S. market. Mr. Hausman's advice is excerpted herewith: A FEW YEARS back, the purely economic basis of population classification began to be extended to include social and cultural characteristics as well. Perhaps the outstanding marketing concept emerging from these new approaches was that of "the middle majority"— the socio-economic equivalent of the political "center." The "middle majority" includes some 65% of the U. S. population the backbone of the mass market. Dr. Burleigh Gardner, U. of Chicago, executive director of Social Research Inc. — which developed the concept of the "middle majority" — listed the important characteristics of the middle majority woman. He noted such characteristics as, (1) a high moral sense of responsibility to home; (2) living in a somewhat limited world bounded by home and family and slightly timid outside that world; (3) little interest in civic work, theater and such publications as the New Yorker; (4) prone to fall into accepted patterns of conformity. Dr. Gardner also noted two other characteristics of the women in the "middle majority." He found that they listen to soap operas ("Soap operas," is his classification. We, in broadcasting, prefer to have them known as "daytime dramas"). And he pointed out a characteristic of transcendent importance: The women in this group control the family spending. And don't forget: One important characteristic of these women is that they do the buying for their families. If listening to daytime serial programs is such a common denominator of these women, we as broadcasters and business people might be able to learn more about these women if we understood these programs better. The Size of Daytime Serials Let us examine some of the quantitative dimensions of these daytime serials. CBS Radio is in a particularly good position to do this because dramatic serials represent the single largest segment of our daytime broadcast schedule. And they are important to U. S. women. The ten we broadcast every weekday between noon and 2:30 p.m. get the biggest nationwide audiences in radio; the stations that carry them, by and large, get the biggest local audiences in their individual communities; and the advertisers keep them in a virtually sold-out state. Every weekday, almost 10 million different people (mainly women) listen to an average of four CBS Radio serials. In one week — the programs reach over 18 million different listeners — with an average of 10 episodes heard per listener. And in four weeks — ■ they reach more than 28 million different listeners. Obviously, when audiences develop to this size, they include all age groups. Actually the audiences to the daytime serials, by age group, pretty much parallel the population of this country. They are not merely people who started listening many years ago and are continuing to listen through sheer inertia. In brief, daytime serial dramas — the soap operas, if you will — Page 80 • April 29, 1957 consistently and continuously reach firmly into the massive bloc of listeners that represents the majority of the nation's sales. And within the middle majority, from day to day, this programming is constantly renewing itself with fresh audience accruals. But numbers alone are not the index of the vitality of these programs. Other elements give marketing meaning to the role of these programs as an avenue to the great "middle majority" that makes up 65% of all U. S. homes. What is it that these programs do for their listeners and what have they done for them so successfully for such a long span of time? Professor George Smith of Rutgers' psychology department, gave the answer in a single sentence. "In a way, the daytime serials serve the same function in our time as the morality plays did in medieval times." These programs, in other words, give their listeners understandable statement and interpretation of ethics and morals in a world where the perception of principle is frequently a little fuzzy. Professor Smith then goes on: "Women find reassurance as well as guidance for their practical conduct in such definitions, of which there is an abundance in the daytime serial programs. Moreover, they are particularly receptive to such lessons, from this source, because the daytime serials treat the problems of women and their role in the family with great sympathy." Dr. Gerhardt Wiebe, a social psychologist now with Elmo Roper, pointed out that "even a woman who doesn't listen every day can maintain her sense of identification with the people of the drama. Whenever a woman tunes in, be it daily or intermittently, she does it in the mood of asking a neighbor 'what's new with you?' " There is a great deal more on this subject which has been studied in depth. But I think the important thing is when you compare the psychologists' evaluation of the women who are our advertiser's customers, the women whom we deliver at 30 and 40 cents a thousand — with your attitudes and interests, you find that they just don't match. Women in Two Distinct Worlds And this helps explain why I think women in broadcasting have not realized their full potential. I conjectured that most women in broadcasting know relatively little about these [daytime serials] programs and, most important, hold considerable disdain for the content and treatment of these serials. I had a survey done among a group drawn from your membership. I wanted to find out how much women in broadcasting knew about these progams. We did a very simple questionnaire in which we listed our ten daytime serials and the names of 20 characters appearing in them. We asked the respondents to match the characters to the programs. Only one thing surprised me — the high rate of return. 205 out of 243 — better than 84% — replied. Some 50% of the respondents sent back the questionnaire without any fill-ins at all. Nor was this just plain laziness. Because they didn't merely put them in the return envelopes and drop them in the mail. Most of them wrote comments and most of them signed the questionnaire. Of those who did attempt a score, the average correct answer total was 3.3 out of a possible 20 — and about 10% got five or more right. There was an isolated few who got almost all of them. Most of the reasons offered for the inability to answer were, in essence, "I'm a working girl. How would you expect me to know the answers." Many of them said that they have never listened to the programs. And these replies came from network people, station people, agency and public relations people, specialists in women's Broadcasting • Telecasting