Yardstick to Radio

In the battle of Press v. Radio, the latter has lately seemed to be gaining ground. On one front the Press-Radio pact, designed to put Radio on a starvation diet of newscasts, virtually broke down last spring. Last July, on another front, Editor & Publisher took its first calm view of newspaper-owned radio stations, advised publishers not to be caught napping if and when new wavelengths are available.

One organization, however, which can be counted on to yield no quarter is the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Last year ANPA's advertising bureau head, William A. Thomson, decided to take a critical look at Radio's offhand claim of "millions of listeners." The fruits of that investigation appeared last week as Yardsticks on the Air, a pamphlet published by ANPA, which struck the year's hardest wallop at Radio as an advertising medium.

Biggest point: "In the years 1928 to 1933 inclusive, 635 advertisers used national broadcast advertising. By 1934, 448 of these advertisers had abandoned Radio--187 remained on the air." Having thus put a finger on "broadcast mortality," as Radio's weakest spot, Yardsticks on the Air posed a series of pertinent questions:

How Many Homes Have Radios? Answer: 19,001,592. or 58.4%. This figure does not represent maximum potential circulation since no network claims to cover every square mile of the U. S. For 79 selected programs, the networks claim an average "listening area" of 12,489,886 sets. But all sets are not running all the time.

How Many Sets Are in Operation? To answer this question, ANPA hired the investigating service of Clark-Hooper, Inc. During 22 weeks last winter pleasant-voiced agents of Clark-Hooper made 400,000 telephone calls to radio homes. At any given time between 7 and 10 p.m. an average of 36.4% of the radios were turned on. During the best broadcasting hours, therefore, advertisers compete for an average audience of 4,546,318 homes. But all the listeners are not listening to the same thing.

How Many Sets Tune in to an "Average" Program? According to Clark-Hooper, 9.1%. Thus ANPA arrived at the figure of 1,102,606 for the number of sets tuned in on the average program. That is 3.3% of all U. S. homes.

How Many Programs Are Successful? Of the 79 programs, 25 reached more than the average audience, 54 reached less. A few programs attracted most of the audience and one program attracted 71.4% while it was on the air.

What Does It Cost to Go on the Air? For the 79 programs the average cost was $8,052 per broadcast for time and talent. For the nine most successful programs the average cost was $13,961 per broadcast.

Yardsticks on the Air concluded that most radio advertisers spend a great deal of money competing for an audience which is monopolized by a few popular programs.

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