Sponsor (Nov 1947-Oct 1948)

listeners are people . . . V^ It'N tiiiK^ for a iK'1%' and iiKire realiNtie ni4si»«iir4'iii«^nt of ra«lu»*!< aii«lioii4*o over-oil Radio homes are no longer an acceptable base upon which to report broadcast advertising coverage. Although the family has been an accepted unit for this purpose for most of the past 26 years, advertising researchers are now finding that multiple-set homes and TV are breaking up listening homes into people. These analysts realistically claim that the "radio home" has always been a misnomer. The home is one thing during the before-8 a.m. hours, another in the spans between 8 and noon and 1 and 5 p.m., still others at noon, from 5 to 6 p.m., and between 6 and 1 1 p.m. Clearly, with each change of the available audience, the radio home, for the purpose of counting listeners, changes. The radio home concept has resulted in the underpricing of the 7 to 8 a.m. hour in most station rate structures. Without a comprehensive study of individual listening habits, it's impossible to decide what other hours of the day are also underpriced — or overrated. Although research thinking has been along these lines for a number of years, advertising agencies have evinced little if any interest in discovering what would happen to the ratings of their programs were they translated into listeners instead of homes. Newspapers use "families" as a circulation index device (with which agencies have been satisfied), despite the fact that media research men know that the pass-on readership of a newspaper is seldom of full family proportions, csp)ecially morning papers. Magazines in general have been realistic. Most "slick" publication claims are 28 reported in terms of readers. Lz/e, Saturday Evening Post, many weeklies and monthlies have spent hundreds of thousands discovering just how many readers they have per copy. The family has in the past been an accepted measuring unit because broadcasting is invited into the home. It still enables the Columbia Broadcasting System, for instance, to claim that it is the network where 99,000,000 people gather every week. This 99,000,000 figure is simply the number of families who listen each week to CBS multiplied by the median number of persons per family (3.15) reported for the U. S. by the last U. S. Census. This median, broken down by area type, indicates that the urban family is composed of three persons, the rural nonfarm menage has 3.12 persons, and the rural farm unit has 3.71 persons. However, a check of C. E. Hooper's last audience composition figures (March 1948 quarterly report) indicates that only one program. The Shadow (MBS), hit the full national family figure in listeners per set. The Shadow was reported at that time to have 3.08 people listening per radio home with a set in use. This 3.08 figure is better than the median size of the urban family, which according to the census is composed of just three. The Hooper 36 4-network ratings are made only in cities. The low for listeners per home in this Hooper study was recorded for Lora Lawton (NBC), a daytime serial which averaged 1 .28 listeners per set. The great mass of programs are within the narrow range of Lum and Abner's 2.03 and the Gene Autry Show's 2.96. There are ver>' few programs that have radio families identical in composition listening even if the total number of listeners is used as a denominator. When the "total" figure is dissected into terms of women, men, and children the radio "family" becomes more and more of a phantom measure. Onl>' ten programs on the networks average one or more men among their listeners. These are Satn Spade with one man among its 2.76 listeners per listening set. Fitch Bayidwagon with one man among 2.67 listeners, the Gillette Parade of Sports with the top in masculine attention, 1.17 males for its Friday night segment of 2.32 listeners, and Drew Pearson (Lee Hats) with 1. 10 men out of a 2.50 audience. There is one man among 2.63 listeners for Gang Blisters, which recently has found a new sponsor. At the time Hooper's survey was made, Waterman (fountain pens) was the advertiser. Out of Jack Benny's 2.84 listeners per listening set, 1.02 are men. Other programs which appear to have masculine interest include Coca-Cola's Pause That Refreshes on the Air (CBS), with a male audience of 1.03 out of 2.85 listeners, The Shadow (MBS), mentioned previously, with 1.06 males, and Walter Winchell, with 1.08 men out of his 2.67 dialers despite the fact that he is selling a cosmetic line. Although 80^ of the buying of airadvertised products is done by women, products like men's clothing (Drew "Homes" overshadow most radio thinkins. BeFore NBC's 4-networlc rating board. Ken Dyke, administrative vp, and Mel Beville, research director, are thinking in terms of listeners SPONSOR