Pacifica radio is activist radio, it is not just simply about people sitting around the radio waiting to be tallied-up by the arbitron bean counters, it is about people being directly engaged in activism in various immeasurable ways, to be sure, many progressives do no really listen but the fact that tens of thousands took the streets of Berkeley in 1999 when the station was under attack by people bearing Arbitrons is a testimony both to the political meaning of arbitrons and the deep level of influence in and importance to the progressive community (certainly in the San Francisco Bay Area) of KPFA/Pacifica - indeed many journalists who now work in mainstream radio and gave sympatheic coverge to Pacifica during the crisis, were trained at KPFA.
>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] WBAI crisis
>Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 16:31:05 -0400
>
>The management of WBAI - the station where I do my show - won't pay for its
>Arbitron ratings, because they're allegely too expensive ($6,000, out of a
>budget of some $3-4 million) and sinister (creeping commercialism and all).
>It claims rising listenership, on the basis of undisclosed evidence. But
>according to someone who's seen the numbers:
>
>>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.
>
>This is a scandal and an embarrassment. But almost no one within the
>station, or the whole "Pacifica community," wants to talk about them. You
>quickly get tagged as a racist, elitist, or sellout.
>
>Doug
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