A Place in Question

At 7:32, on an ordinary Thursday morning, tragedy forever transformed the wooded, hillside community of Springfield, Oregon. The shooting deaths of two students and the injuries to another 22 at Thurston High shocked, stunned and eventually renewed a town KLCC calls its local community. The stories that were told would resonate across America and the world. That day the place in question was ours.

The events unfolding then and through the following week amplified the changing role of local service in public radio. While the national press was flying in, our KLCC volunteer reporter was already on the scene. We pre-empted our music programming for a live call-in within four hours of the shooting, to help begin the public process of examination and grief.

To us, this was not just another national tragedy. This is our home, and the people involved are our friends and neighbors.

We like to think we did our best to serve the very pressing and real needs of our audience – that, on this day in May, our local programming was personally important in the lives of our listeners.

Unfortunately, AUDIENCE 98^® tells us that, on any other day, our listeners are more likely to find our national programs more important. They engender more loyalty and a stronger "sense of community" than our local programming.

Why don't our listeners share the value of localism that many of us bring to our jobs?   First is a difference in mindset.  But second is a failure of priority.

The definition of "local" has changed over the years, both for our listeners and for public radio stations. Listeners are now defining themselves by their shared interests, as signal expansion is extending our services beyond city, county and state lines. Our experience of the world has grown larger, while the corner store, neighborhood tavern and ward politician have diminished in importance.

Under the wider umbrella of our signals listeners who prefer network programming (chiefly news) have found social and cultural values that match their own. The same cannot be said for those who prefer our local programming. AUDIENCE 98 tells us that listeners who do find local programming more important listen mostly to music – and say that music on public radio is not particularly unique.

AUDIENCE 98 did not ask any specific questions about local news, so we still need to ask: What value does local news have in our listeners lives?

That brings us to priorities – the second reason localism may not be as important to our audience as it is to us.

Over almost 30 years the national networks have succeeded in bringing an audience to our radio stations. With resources and efficiencies unmatched by any station they deliver a quality, consistent product that is preferred by our listeners. No wonder that our listeners have formed a community of shared values, beliefs and interests around these programs.

We have failed, for the most part, to develop an equal local franchise to serve that community of interests.

• AUDIENCE 98 suggests to me, as a journalist, that I must acknowledge that my news operation may not be up to the network mode. Other program directors can make their own assessment of their own shops.
  
  
• AUDIENCE 98 also suggests strongly that if our listeners are to find our local service important, we must refine our mission and editorial content to serve their needs and interests at the station level. And spinning discs with personality may not be enough to accomplish that.
  
  
• If public radio stations are to survive in a future of increasing globalism, digital transmission and converging technologies, we must be willing to invest in local talent to improve the quality and meaning of that which only we can provide – truly local content.

KLCC once considered itself a community radio station because it tried to serve many communities with a checkerboard of programming. AUDIENCE 98 tells we already serve a community of interests in public radio – one audience with many different needs.

When this community searched for the information and support it needed at the time of the Springfield tragedy, I hope they found in KLCC a personally important source. But I also know they relied heavily on NPR, television, cable news, and two local newspapers. If I want my listeners to consider our programming valuable, my service must always match the quality of theirs.

When your local community needs you will you be prepared to serve it well?

Do you have the staff and programming in place to respond to an incident of high, local impact?

Do we really know what our audience might want if we asked them about local service?

AUDIENCE 98 is not the Holy Grail. It can't tell us whether to add the new network show, or which local program to develop. But it should serve to remind us that what a program does is more important than where it comes from. It can grow a community.

– Don Hein
Program Director, KLCC
AUDIENCE 98 Associate

Audience Research Analysis
Copyright © ARA and CPB.  All rights reserved.
Revised: September 01, 2000 12:38 PM.