Expect the lemmings to follow

The Current editors Mike Janssen and Steve Behrens recently interviewed public radio researchers George Bailey and David Giovannoni "who are wrapping up their Audience 2010 inquiry commissioned by pubradio’s Radio Research Consortium." The study was done to probe for a recent decline in public radio listening (more specifically AQH share) during the last two years.

There's a lot to digest here, so I'll respond later. I just wanted to leave these quotes for all to ponder:

"Nearly half of listening to pubradio stations last year was to stations that lost loyalty over the previous year."

"Being so highly invested [in it], many broadcasters resist the fact that listeners tend to value local programming less than they value national programming."

Bailey: "The fact that some of the NPR news stations are doing well and some are not, and the same with the other formats, indicates that public radio really can support a variety of formats and maybe even serve a variety of audiences with those different formats, but that within any one of those formats there’s a variety of right and wrong ways to do it. So I think it’s positive that there’s a lot of opportunity for a range of formats in public radio."