Driving Home The Numbers

How does your station compare to others when it comes to time spent pitching?

When AUDIENCE 98^® asked subscribers to its listserv for on-air fund drive information, people at more than 80 stations responded.  Although this may not be a representative sample of the public radio system, these statistics offer an instructive overview of on-air drives.

Eight-in-ten stations conducted two or three on-air drives in 1997.  Some ran only one.  One station did five separate drives.

The average drive on a station was eight days long.  The average station broadcast pleas for fees 15 hours a day averaging 19 minutes of pitching each hour.  These totals translate into per station averages of about 21 days, 300 hours, or 5,700 minutes of on-air fundraising in 1997.

What does this mean?  Let’s put it in context.

Stations in our survey are doing fund drives roughly one out of every 29 hours that they are on the air.

The annual extremes range from

• A low of eight to a high of 42 days of on-air fundraising.

• A low of 112 hours to a high of 555.

• As few as 1,400 minutes to as many as 13,700 minutes of actual pitching per year.

The high – 13,700 minutes – is equal to nearly an hour for every day the average American commutes to work.  Gives a new meaning to the phrase "pledge drive", doesn’t it?

– Jay Youngclaus
AUDIENCE 98 Core Team

Behind the Numbers

Stations heading networks were counted only once so as not to unduly influence the findings.   For example, while Peach State Public Radio has 13 stations, Peach State is counted once, not 13 times.

In each case, respondents reported: (1) dates of all on-air drives in 1997; (2) the length in days of each drive; (3) the average number of hours in active fundraising per day; and (4) the average number of minutes pitching per hour.

 

Audience Research Analysis
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Revised: September 01, 2000 12:38 PM.