CPB audience research under review, not dead

Originally published in Current, Nov. 19, 2007
By Katy June-Friesen

Portions of CPB’s research into public TV’s primetime audience preferences will go forward as planned while others are under internal review, corporation spokesman Michael Levy told Current last week.

Public TV programmers, who met earlier this month in Tucson, were concerned the research would not continue, based on a CPB exec’s comments at an earlier meeting.

David Liroff, senior v.p. of system development and media strategy at CPB, told station and PBS reps at an Oct. 22 meeting that audience research was being put on hold while funding for it was reviewed, according to people present.

“We were surprised to hear it and concerned,” says Jennifer Lawson, g.m. at WHUT in Washington, D.C., and an advisor to the project who was at the October meeting and now understands the research is not being canceled.

Malcolm Brett, head of Wisconsin Public Broadcasting, says CPB is just assessing spending on the research, which he believes has been valuable for national decision-making. “PBS, CPB and the producing stations have a shared frame of reference for understanding the audience,” he says, “and a shared starting point for discussions about what shows they ought to be pursuing and how they should be developed.”

In response to declining pubTV viewership and membership, CPB has funded a series of studies over the past four years to learn more about viewing behavior of the primetime pubTV audience and its various segments. The work also included publications and meetings to disseminate the findings and discuss their strategic implications.

The research project has been the most comprehensive in public TV’s history and required substantial spending. In fiscal year 2006, CPB paid more than $988,000 to consultants City Square Associates Inc., Knowledge Networks/Statistical Research and Nicholas Schiavone LLC. For this year, the CPB Board approved spending $400,000 to continue the work in August.

And the programmers found the project useful. “We’ve made some great progress toward understanding our audiences better,” says BaBette Davidson, v.p. of The Programming Service for PTV in Tampa. “I can see outcomes in the way individual stations are scheduling, the way PBS is scheduling, and the way we’re promoting things.”

The way ahead

Basic “AAU” (awareness, attitudes and usage) research about viewers’ attitudes toward television, their favored genres, viewing behavior and motivations—which began in 2004 and was repeated in 2006—will resume in January, as planned, Levy told Current.

However, CPB is reviewing spending on the “strategic framework” meetings with programmers and producers where the research results are discussed, leading to program strategies and production funding decisions.

Ditto the package of research on the “enthusiastic and open” segment of the pubTV audience—a cluster of people identified in the research who watch a lot of pubTV and have a positive attitude toward it, particularly for history and nature programming. CPB circulated RFPs for both these projects, with August submission deadlines.

“CPB constantly assesses its initiatives to ensure that we are providing the best possible product on behalf of our partners and key stakeholders in the public broadcasting system,” Levy said in the statement to Current. Internal review is “simply a stage in the ordinary course of business in CPB’s decision-making process.” It does not mean “reassessment,” he said.

Liroff chose not to comment further and pointed to Levy’s statement.

Framework: strategy based on research

The AAU research, which will move forward in January, has guided two strategic groups convened by CPB—production leaders and station execs—in decisions such as WGBH’s upcoming rebranding of Masterpiece Theatre. The research had confirmed the drama series remains one of pubTV’s six strongest series “brands” in viewers’ minds.

For 2007, the strategy and station advisory groups’ strategic framework laid out plans for putting the research into action. The first three priorities were:

“Fulfill commitments made to launching the new science series and strengthening the core brand offerings.” This refers to PBS’s fall launch of Wired Science and to strengthening core programs such as Masterpiece, Mystery!, Nova and Nature.
“Continue and extend efforts to make public television programs more accessible for audiences navigating a complex digital landscape.” This means helping viewers find and remember scheduled pubTV programs, which assists in strengthening core “brands.” Based on 2006 findings about how viewers find programs they watch, a working group on program accessibility is creating a set of best practices for helping viewers find pubTV fare. An RFP to do qualitative research for CPB on accessibility closed Nov. 16.
“Make the historical documentary and natural history genres the next areas for special investment consideration.” Several audience segments seem to have greater appetites for history programs than pubTV can now fulfill.

Research on other priorities of the framework is under review at CPB:

“Complement the current focus on the Innovating & Inclined [audience segment] with parallel efforts to build frequency and loyalty among the audience segment known as the Enthusiastic & Open.”
“Create a sustainable model for continuing strategic audience research and measuring performance.” This suggests continuation of AAU research as well as the strategic framework process.

Christopher Schiavone, whose company City Square Associates has facilitated the strategy sessions and submitted a proposal to play that role in 2008, says the advisory groups “are the main reason the research has been so impactful. Because they’ve been the ones to shape the research agenda on the back end and then tease out the strategic implications on the front end, the [pubTV system] has received . . . not just a whole pile of data, but relevant knowledge and thoughtful recommendations based on that knowledge.”

To create a “sustainable model” for audience research, Schiavone says, it’s important that the strategic planning continues—whether his company gets the contract or not. “The research is not an end in itself; it’s there to inform strategy.”

Lawson says the AAU research will be particularly helpful for gauging what the audience is up to before and after the 2009 digital transition.

“One of the comments I made at the meeting at CPB,” says Lawson, “was I certainly hoped that that would not be [stopped] because one of the other extremely valuable aspects of this research is the fact that these AAU studies have occurred every other year,” she says. “So we have a baseline . . . and the next major shift will occur in February of 2009. When we do the research again in 2010 . . . we’d have some consistent point from which to measure the effect of the analog shutoff.”

Davidson, a member of the subcommittee looking at the “enthusiastic and open” group, is interested to learn what will happen with particular segments after the shutoff — television’s biggest transition since the coming of color.

“It really is a momentous occasion that we’re going to be able to track these people and see how the digital transition actually affects not only their viewing, but their perception of public television,” Davidson says.

“We have this wonderful once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she says, “to watch our audiences pre-digital transition and after the digital transition.”