NAB reports (Mar-Dec 1933)

audience. The potential coverage, I think, is certainly the first step. MR. WEBER (N. B. C., Chicago) : Going one step further in view of the criticism of 100 miles and so forth, I would just like to ask one question. In your plan, I believe you wish to develop a formula for the measurement and comparison of stations. Your field intensity offers you the first factor. I would like to know what your plans are in using the other factors, what weights are to be apportioned, suc-h as the hours of operation and other things you mentioned. MR. CAMPBELL : I think any answer to that question would have to be given four or five years from now. There are so many factors obviously that we can ’t answer it. I think station personnel is a tremendously interesting fact. I have in mind one station, a small mid-western station under one management that got $65 for a fifteen-minute program plus talent. The same station is there today, the director is gone, and today that station is selling time and talent for $15. It is the same station in the same field. MR. HOWLETT: Not talent. MR. CAMPBELL: That certainly isn’t due to variable fac¬ tors in field incidence or anything like that. There are so many factors that any one or two or three are obviously far from a solution. MR. WEBER : 'I understand you intend to adopt some formula for measurement of stations, and until such time plans that have been worked out are the best. MR. CAMPBELL: To set up a formula. That is already determined by the engineers in microvolts per meter. MR. WEBER: You have no positive position to your tech¬ nical equipment, hours of operation and other factors; take in¬ to consideration the comparison. MR. CAMPBELL: If I were an advertising man, I would take those facts and perhaps use my own judgment on them. MR. WEBER: You couldn’t call it a complete station survey. MR. CAMPBELL: It would cover a potential survey only. MR. PHILLIPS: You make the statement, Mr. Campbell, people like loud stations. As I gather now, you say they shop for programs. How do you feel they listen, more by feature than by stations or vice versa ? MR. CAMPBELL: That is a question that will have to be answered both ways. In New York, where they have a wide variety of programs and things like that, they will shop for programs, but as a general proposition, when they go to turn on the radio just for radio, they will tune in the loudest station. That is the point I make there. I think that has been brought out on several occasions. MR. HOWLETT: I would like to inject perhaps a different thought into this. I am in perfect agreement with the for¬ mula being made for the judging of the value of a station, not necessarily comparison with another, but a formula. It should be very simple inasmuch as any true test of a station is worth most, we have found today, if it is made consistently at not too widespread periods, hence the expense involved is a very considerable item. I think we should get this settled one way or another very quickly. So long as we permit the industry to be agitated as to what is the correct formula, what is our coverage, how we measure it, just so long will we keep it a subject of agitation in the minds of the adver¬ tising agency. They are perfectly satisfied when the Audit Bureau of Circulations says we have 250,000. Beautiful! What is that 250,000? Well, that is 250,000 people who buy the newspaper. They have no assurance of how many of those people were home the night the newspaper was delivered or of those who were home that read the newspaper that night, or those who were home and read it that turned to the page the ad was on, or those who were home and read it and turned to the page, saw the ad and read it. You can reduce that thing down to a point just as indefinite as anything we do. I am opposed to a constant disturbance within the industry by a seeking to try to make formulas and to get proper measurements that settle this thing. Let’s settle this thing one way or the other quickly so we can get down to business and not be at the mercy of the advertiser and the professional researchers and survey makers, who each have a theory that keeps the waters boiling up until we ourselves, as I notice from some of the gentlemen here, don’t know where they stand. You can find out marvelous things and we have conducted such a survey as Mr. Harlow conducted some time ago with the largest, with the biggest program in town, I should say it was, with the largest number of listeners. It showed that that station carrying that program had, I think, at the time 93 per cent of the listening audience. So the tele¬ phone service showed. We continued the survey through the Research Bureau of the Telephone Company a half-hour longer, and at the end of the half-hour that station’s listeners had dropped to 7.3 per cent. MR. CAMPBELL: Exactly. MR. HOWLETT: How are you going to measure that? MR. PATT : I think Mr. Campbell’s conclusions in his re¬ port are pretty accurate. I don’t think we can say that any one kind of a survey; it is the survey. I think we have de¬ scribed in this little discussion three kinds of surveys — the engineering survey, which gives us our potential audience; the telephone survey, which gives us an actual audience for a particular day and not necessarily that same program tlie following week, and a questionnaire or interview survey, which gives us some indication, not an accurate one, either, Mr. Harlow, not entirely accurate, about station popularity in gen¬ eral. I think all three of those surveys have merit. I think that more or less all of us have indulged in one or more of them. I know we have tried all three of them. MR. EETZER: I would like to hear from Dr. Jansky on the subject. I feel he could give a contribution to the con¬ versation. CHAIRMAN CARPENTER: Dr. Jansky. DR. JANSKY: In our work, in its very early stages, we face the necessity of defining, if you please, the effectiveness of the station in such way as will permit us to compare the effect of one station with that of another for regulatory pur¬ poses, to show what the effect would be of changing the power of the station, of changing the frequency of the sta¬ tion or of changing its location from the standpoint of the number of people who could receive that station. That work was first done from a purely regulatory stand¬ point. We found that there was some demand for that kind of information from the standpoint of the commercial field. We found there was a need in the broadcasting industry for something, the nearest possible equivalent to the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s statistics in the newspaper field. We felt that there was a need for the development of a yardstick which would permit comparing station A with station B, in addition to showing absolute results with respect to the effec¬ tiveness of the station. Two requirements stared us in the face. The first of those requirements was that the yardstick should be capable of in¬ terpretation in terms understandable to the station manager, the advertiser and the agent. The second requirement was that it should be capable of uniform application to all sta¬ tions. We set about trying to develop that yardstick. The preliminary work had to be done before we surveyed our first station. Having done that, preliminary work, adopted the terms primary and secondary and given to them qualita¬ tive definitions, we set out to apply our standards. We sub¬ mitted the results of those studies on a limited number of stations to the Radio Committees of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. It has been under consideration by those com¬ mittees and by the association since that date. The results of that consideration you know. Since that time, we have gone on measuring other stations, applying exactly the same standard to station A, station B and station C, and certifying to it. We felt that we had to do that if the result was to be of value. We did not expect by so doing to accomplish any definite, conclusive results in any short period of time. We did not expect to supply the answer to a maiden’s prayer and tell the advertiser and the agency all that we know they wanted to know about broad¬ casting. But we did hope to supply a yardstick capable of accurate application to stations which would enable the sta¬ tions and the advertisers and the agencies to use as a bjsis for further research and development to give them more and . Page 148 .