RETURN OF THE SUCCUBI

posted by James Reel

    The latest steaming pile of manure from the public radio system’s Radio Research Consortium is a series of cowpie reports collectively called Audience 2010, masterminded by audience researchers George Bailey (of Walrus Research) and David Giovannoni. The first thing you have to remember is that these guys and their employees are consultants, not radio practitioners, and consultants are usually people who have failed to succeed in a particular field (or have no experience in it), and now teach the techniques of failure to gullible, insecure professionals.
    Giovannoni, you may recall, is the man who has dedicated his life to making public radio sound more like commercial radio, shifting its mission away from serving unserved audiences toward padding the ratings books with listeners, simply to build the potential base of donors. Problem is, listeners don’t become donors unless they believe in what they’re listening to, and the techniques advocated by Giovannoni and company don’t create an audience of true believers. Despite his protests to the contrary, Giovannoni has spent the last several years belittling music programming and advocating the establishment of all-news/talk formats in public radio, which means that instead of doing something different, stations that follow his advice are now merely adding to the talk radio babble. Not much is setting these public radio stations apart from their commercial competitors now, except that unlike rabid right-wing talk radio hosts, NPR reporters drone, and have no audible commitment to what they’re doing.
    So now Bailey and Giovannoni announce that, after many, many hours of “research” and focus groups, they have discovered that public radio’s audience is declining because stations are “losing loyalty.” Well, surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say before he became Giovannoni’s intellectual model. When public radio stations start doing essentially the same thing commercial stations do, why should listeners remain loyal?
    In an interview in Current, Bailey and Giovannoni talk all around the issues, but explain absolutely nothing. The first sign that these are the wrong men for the job—as if Giovannoni’s inadequacy and hidden agendas weren’t evident as long ago as the late 1980s—is Giovannoni’s answer to the question, “How big a deal is this decline?”
    Says Giovannoni, “Each public broadcaster has to answer that question for him or her self. How much money do you need to run your station next year? That’s how big a deal it is. How long can you afford to subsidize your new national program? That’s how big a deal it is. How long can you stand to become increasingly less important to the American public? That’s how big a deal it is.”
    Then there’s this remark from Bailey: “In all my time working with public radio, I’ve always found people start to pay attention when there are financial consequences. And we set that up in the very first report—there’s going to be a gap between the station’s potential revenue from listeners and increasing expenses.”
    Their first priority: raising money. For Giovannoni and his acolytes, that’s the foundation of everything. Stations need lots and lots of listeners, so there will be a bigger pool of contributors to support programming that will lure lots and lots of listeners. If you don’t attract a substantial audience, you are “increasingly less important to the American public.” Just look at the numbers—they tell the whole story.
    Well, maybe that kind of thinking will get you through Statistics 101, but it can’t help you conceptualize and operate a vital resource like a public radio station. Using paint-by-numbers kits won’t make you a Rembrandt.
    When the interviewer for Current tries to ask if there might ever be important programming that needs to be aired even though it could lose the mass audience, the smug consultants merely laugh at him. In their simplistic formula, programming proves its quality by attracting a large audience. These guys simply cannot comprehend arguments to the contrary, because all they understand is statistics, not content, not mission, not interests that do not conform to what the masses will settle for.
    These men selectively use statistics to make assertions that conform to their mass-market perspective, and dismiss objections to their shoddy thinking because the objections aren’t supported by their interpretation of the numbers. Giovannoni is proud of his research methodology, but his thinking methodology has always been inadequate and circular. It’s appalling that station managers have ever taken him seriously.
    Go read the article for yourself, but don’t expect to glean any facts from it. The article is accompanied by unlabeled, meaningless graphs and much bluster from the consultants, but not a shred of real analysis—mainly because the consultants admit they couldn’t detect any clear patterns in their research. “You’re in trouble, and it’s up to each station manager to figure out why,” they tell us. What the hell are these guys getting paid for? They must be driven out before they complete the destruction of public radio that Giovannoni and Tom Church began 20 years ago. It’s too bad Giovannoni doesn’t have a heart we could drive a stake through.