Some people call it
the “Trump bump,” others call it intense interest in American democracy, but it
appears most NPR News stations are keeping their estimated weekly listeners
from the recent election. Many stations had record high numbers of weekly
listeners and other Nielsen Audio metrics in late 2016. Now they are learning
if their gains are temporary or signs of overall increased interest in public
radio news.
This week Nielsen
Audio is releasing April PPM reports and we will tabulate the results in many of
50+ markets that are measured monthly. Our examination begins today with eight
NPR News stations: WNYC-FM, KPCC, KCRW, WBEZ, KERA, KUHF and WHYY. We are comparing April 2017 estimates with
Fall 2016. To provide additional
context, we are also comparing the April 2017 numbers with Spring 2012 data so
we can observe long-term trends.
On the left is a
scorecard showing the comparison between Fall 2016 and April 2017. Of the eight
stations we examined, 75% saw either gains or about the same number of
estimated weekly listeners since the election.
Two stations lost more than 3%
of their weekly listeners. We will update this scorecard with each new batch of
Nielsen Audio data.
On the right is the
five-year trend comparing estimated weekly listeners in April 2017 and Spring
2012. This is where you can see significant gains in weekly listeners to
News/Talk stations. Seven of the eight stations (88%) gained weekly listeners
and some of the gains were spectacular.
Three stations had
remarkable gains in the number weekly listeners over the past five years: KCRW
had an estimated 222,000 more listeners in April 2017; KQED added 202,900
weekly listeners since Spring 2012; and WNYC-FM’s weekly listeners were up 184,900.
Here are the trends
for the eight stations listed by market size:
WNYC-FM, New York
was down slightly between Fall 2016 and April 2017. However WNYC-FM had 22%
more estimated weekly listeners in April 2017 than they did in Spring.
As you probably
know, KCRW is a dual format station, News and Triple A. Therefore with the
limited metrics available to me, it isn’t clear if NPR News programs out-paced
hours of Triple A. Still, there is serious radio mojo at work for them.
KPCC was down
slightly from the fall and up over 8% since Spring 2012.
WBEZ had nice gains
in weekly listeners from Fall 2016 and Spring 2012.
KQED, now the
station with the largest number of estimated weekly listeners kept their record
high number from the fall. Perhaps the biggest news is their 21% gain in weekly
listeners.
KERA also saw major
growth in their weekly listeners since Spring 2012.
KUHF has had its
ups-and-downs over the past five years but their estimated number of weekly
listeners in April 2017 grew 26% from Spring 2012.
WHYY is the outlier
of this group of stations with the number of weekly listeners down from both
Fall 2016 and Spring 2012.
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