GIOVANNONI: “A MOST TROUBLING SIGNAL IS BEING SENT BY THE CORE”

David Giovannonl

David Giovannonl, one of the most influential people in the formative years of public radio, reappeared last week with an op-ed in Current [link} about changes in listening to NPR News stations since the on-set of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Giovannoni’s message was both troubling and instructive: People who are in public radio's core and fringe cohorts are listening less to NPR News stations than they were prior to the disruption caused by the virus. Plus, listening by fringe listeners declined substantially after the pandemic hit.

(Explainer: “Core” listeners are people who listen more to one station than any other – their first choice, so to speak. “Fringe” includes all other listeners than the core.)

According to Giovannoni, the rapid change was due, in part, to people working from home instead of commuting to jobs. When people are not in vehicles they tend to listen less to traditional radio.

The changes in lifestyles after the pandemic took hold in mid March, caused 43% of fringe listeners of NPR News stations to vanish. This is important because fringe listeners are a major portion of the “reach” of NPR and the gateway for listeners to become members.

Giovannonl based his analysis on Nielsen PPM data from March, April May and June for 91 full or part-time NPR News/Talk stations in 45 markets. In his op-ed, he said there is no guarantee that the missing listeners will come back if or when the Covid-19 pandemic eases:

“Without daily opportunities to listen in cars and offices, more than half of NPR News stations’ away-from-home tune-ins disappeared, taking with them 15 million out-of-home listener-hours.”

“We might have expected listeners to pick up the slack at home. Some did, but their aggregate increase of only 2 million at-home listener-hours left NPR News stations about 13 million listener-hours short — a loss of a quarter of all listening to NPR News stations.

Giovannonl is also concerned that that the size of NPR News stations core audience is not growing like it had been for most of the past four years.

Spark News is seeing the same trends. 

We published the chart on the right earlier in July showing the decline in estimated weekly listeners (“cume”) by 15 of the most influential NPR News/Talk stations.

We compared the number of estimated weekly listeners in the February Nielsen PPM ratings with Nielsen data from June. 

All 15 stations had fewer weekly listeners in June. 

Estimated weekly listeners for the 15 stations combined dropped about almost 20% during the February to June period.

Of course, almost all radio stations – noncom or commercial – have lost weekly cume listeners because of changes caused by the pandemic. If the pandemic continues indefinitely, which is a real possibility, traditional broadcasters will need to make hard choices such as whether to stay in business.

Giovannoni summed up his Current op-ed with this cautionary remark:

“The headlines three months into the pandemic aren’t encouraging. The Core’s reliance on NPR News stations is still strong but weakening. It is unknown whether these essential listeners find NPR News stations less listenable, less compelling or less relevant.””

DAVID GIOVANNONI TODAY

It is good to see David Giovannoni back in action.  Now he is reprising his “speak truth to power” role when it is really needed.

Giovannoni retired from public radio research in 2006. He still has the title of President of AudiGraphics Inc., the research company he founded in the late 1970s.

He has followed his passion for historic audio recordings. He is a partner in First Sounds [link], a nonprofit organization with a mission to seek out the world’s oldest sound recordings – wherever they are.

Giovannoni has assembled what is said to be the world’s most significant collection of early cylinders and disc records, which he makes available to historians.

He has been nominated for several Grammy Awards for Best Historical Documentary.  As a private collector Giovannoni has curated two collections that have been inducted onto the National Recording Registry by the Librarian of Congress.

You can read more about his work here.

We found a YouTube video on the First Sounds website narrated by Giovannoni that describes his work with early sound recordings.