Joanne Church, president of the Radio Research Consortium, died Monday after a short illness. She was 75.
Church and her late husband Tom Church founded the company based in Olney, Md., in 1981. RRC “introduced audience research to public radio,” it said in a news release Tuesday. It partnered with Arbitron, later acquired by Nielsen, in 1981 to negotiate a group purchase of audience data for stations.
“As noncommercial stations seek underwriters and plan programming and marketing strategies, we can provide them with the sophisticated insights that put radio on a level playing field with other forms of media,” Joanne Church said in RRC’s release.
The RRC co-founders also organized workshops to educate public radio managers and programmers about audience metrics. With consultant Peter Dominowski, they co-authored Audience Ratings: A Primer for Non-Commercial Stations.
“Joanne Church’s reputation as a gentle but mightily informed presence in audience ratings and measurement gave individual stations market intelligence and insights they could not have easily achieved without RRC’s collaboration and negotiation,” said Stephen Schram, chair of RRC’s board of directors.
Before her time with RRC, Joanne Church worked for Arbitron for 10 years. She became president of RRC in 2005 upon Tom Church’s death.
“In 2006, Joanne adeptly led a coalition to bring Arbitron back to the bargaining table when changes threatened station access to critical data,” RRC said in its release. “Under her leadership, RRC enabled public radio stations to demonstrate their significant market share to advertisers and underwriters.”
Church graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. In 2008, she received the Public Radio Regional Organizations’ PRRO Award.
“I don’t think there is anyone in public radio today that works so hard for all of us and seeks so little recognition,” said former PRRO Chair Paul Stankavich.
Retired RRC board member Scott Williams described Church as the “quiet radio research expert who helped save his presentation to stations with her meticulous and thoughtful editing.”
Carol Jacobs, RRC’s business manager, will serve as acting president of the company. Updates about memorial arrangements for Church will be posted on RRC’s website.
The former Arbitron, now Nielsen Audio research team had a deep respect for Joanne. I witnessed this at multiple Nielsen Audio – Advisory Council meetings that we both attended. Joanne was a steadying influence to our Public Media Audience Research Committee which grew out of RRC and Station negotiations with then Arbitron toward a new long-term contract that recognized the importance of public media along with the differences to commercial media. Joanne was an integral piece toward consummating that process. She will be missed.