WHERE DOES YOUR FOUNDATION PROGRAM OFFICER LIVE? IT MAY AFFECT THEIR OPINION OF RADIO

In early December we featured an interesting question raised by Pierre Bouvard on his blog [link] about why commercial radio seems to get cut out of ad buys placed by New Your City ad agencies. 

Bouvard’s theory is that buyers in NYC don’t listen to radio when they commute to and from work.  Instead they use public transportation (subways, etc.) where they don’t hear radio. Bouvard believes that ad buyers don’t buy time on radio because they don’t listen it themselves despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

Bouvard used the chart on the left to make his point. It shows the proportion of people who use public transportation versus people commuting in cars. The data comes from the US Census Bureau. As you can see, the commuting pattern is much different for NYC than the other nine markets listed and the national average.

Based on this info I wondered aloud whether people who work at foundations that provide public media funding might also follow the same trend. After all many foundations are located in Manhattan. Some are in the same zip code as ad agency media buyers and likely also ride the subway to get to and from work.

I decided to see what proportion of foundations that are major financial supporters of NPR are in NYC. I looked at a list of NPR’s foundation funders and randomly chose ten foundations whose names are well known to NPR listeners.

They are Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, Lumina Foundation, The Melville Charitable Trust, Open Society Foundations, The Wallace Foundation and Walton Family Foundation.

Five of the ten are located in New York, often within short walking distance from the big ad agencies. The remaining five are in the Bay Area, Miami, Chicago, Indianapolis and, of course, the Walton clan is in Arkansas. Can we assume that folks at the NYC foundations, perhaps the Program Officer for your program or project, also commutes to work on the  subway, not in a vehicle with a radio?

Now comes new research from NuVoodoo Media Services [link], that probes Bouvard’s theory. NuVoodoo (pronounced: new voodoo) is a good company with a lousy name that specializes in quick turn-around perceptual research.

NuVoodoo surveyed 423 advertising decision-makers nationwide, included marketing executives, media buyers and planners, ad executives, creative directors and business owners to test the validity of Bouvard’s theory. The study found that ad buyers who don’t listen to AM/FM radio during their commute to work are about half as likely to include radio in their ad plans.

On the other hand, media decision makers who commute by car are 75% more likely to have radio in their media plans than their public transit colleagues.

This is not proof of causality but it is a close correlation.

NuVoodoo opined that media buyers must realize that most Americans commute by vehicles and do hear radio more than any other audio sources.

The findings bring up questions about how in touch New York media strategists are with the majority of the Americans.

Is the same true of Foundation folks based in New York? Maybe Jarl Mohn, CEO at NPR should commission research to find out.

ERIK LANGNER GIVES US THE LATEST ABOUT VUHAUS

I just saw an interesting interview [link] with Eric Langner, the head of Public Media Company, by my friend John Schoenberger, Triple A reporter for All Access Media about public media video site VuHaus [link].

Here are some highlights from John’s post:

SCHOENBERGER: Give us an overview of what VuHaus mission is all about.

Eric Langner

LANGNER: VuHaus is a collaboration of the country's leading public radio music stations, and through our growing national music network, we are helping to launch the careers of emerging artists in markets all over the country, while providing our audiences with a new music discovery destination to learn about the amazing talent that our station partners are working so hard to uncover.

SCHOENBERGER: How did you get involved?

LANGNER: VuHaus is managed by my employer, Public Media Company, and over the past 12 years, I've been fortunate to work with most of the VuHaus stations in various capacities. So as VuHaus' brand manager, Mike Henry, and I developed the original VuHaus concept, there was already a long history in place with the founding stations' GMs, and also with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has been a generous supporter of VuHaus from the beginning.

John Schoenberger

SCHOENBERGER: You are a year-and-a-half in now, tell us how VuHaus is doing.

LANGNER: From the very beginning, VuHaus was incredibly fortunate to attract an amazing and committed team of professionals who bring deep expertise in the music and digital space. As a result, we have been able to attract and build out our network by adding a great group of mission-focused stations that share our commitment to artists and music discovery. We recently launched our 14th partner in Houston, and have another seven stations that are getting ready to join our collaboration. Each of these stations have PDs, MDs and producers that are literally experts at spotting and developing talent in their communities. So with each new station that we add, the VuHaus network benefits from this very active human curation, which means we are persistently introducing our audience to new and amazing artists from every corner of the country.

SCHOENBERGER: What have been some of your biggest challenges?

LANGNER: As with most start-ups in the media space, we are doing our best to navigate an environment that seems to be in constant flux, and dominated by just a handful of massive companies. We feel great about our non-profit mission to develop the careers of emerging artists and to become a premier destination for music discovery. And there is no denying the quality of the incredible and exclusive performances that our stations are producing on a daily basis. Our challenge is in letting more people know what we are up to and encouraging them to engage with us and our content.

SCHOENBERGER: VuHaus has gotten two grants from CPB. What other sources of income keep the service going?

LANGNER: VuHaus' revenues are derived from three sources: philanthropy, station fees and sponsors. In addition to CPB, we have received generous support from the Wyncote Foundation and the FJC Foundation. And through sponsors, we have been able to support our costs to live stream our stage at SXSW and other live music events around the country.

SCHOENBERGER: Tell us about the new Song Of The Day initiative and how it is reaching beyond the current participating stations.

LANGNER: We launched Song of the Day with the goal of increasing exposure for our artists by providing all CPB-supported public broadcasters with a fully-curated daily feature. We already have more than 35 stations participating, and each day, our PD, Mark Abuzzahab, selects a different performance that is then distributed to them through our embeddable player. The stations are then able to promote these artists on their social channels to drive new and younger audiences to their websites to see these videos. On occasion, instead of featuring a song, we offer a live webcast of a concert, which we are planning to do again next year for our SXSW stage.

SCHOENBERGER: VuHaus has started doing live streaming events. Has that boosted site views?

LANGNER: We love live streaming! Yes, live streaming does boost traffic, but more than that, it offers a great opportunity for us to work directly with the artists and labels to promote and drive attention to these performances. We are doing four to five live streaming events each week, and this brings an exciting energy and suddenness to the experience we offer to our audience.

SCHOENBERGER: VuHaus initially launched with radio stations only but, of late, you have expanded the type of media companies that are involved. Tell us about the evolution.

LANGNER: This is a really exciting new trend to watch in public media. Public broadcasters have limited shelf space in their broadcast schedule -- there's only 24 hours in a day. However, there are a growing number of public television stations and public radio news stations that are also committed to supporting local artists and becoming a resource for their local music ecosystems - this is a critical space that commercial media has abandoned.

So we were really excited to add station partners like WGBH (Boston), Oregon Public Broadcasting, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Vermont Public Radio and Houston Public Media, which are all known for their news and information and/or PBS programming, but are also doing amazing work developing emerging artists. It's our hope that VuHaus, and the experiences of these stations, serves as a catalyst for an even greater number of public stations to consider deepening their coverage of the local music scenes in their communities.

SCHOENBERGER: How is the cooperation of the participating stations/media groups evolving?

LANGNER: Unlike news stations, which have NPR, and public television stations, which have PBS, the music stations had no national organizing principal before VuHaus. So although our initial focus was on aggregating and curating video content, we have quickly grown to fill this void. We are now working hard with our stations to deepen our collaboration through concerted efforts around fundraising, marketing, live events, and music rights.

SCHOENBERGER: What lies in the future for VuHaus?

LANGNER: We have several new initiatives that we are developing that we are really excited about. Unfortunately, they remain top secret! But I promise they will include hundreds of new and amazing performances from some of the most promising bands emerging across the American musical  landscape.