Programs/Content

Arbitron reports new benchmark for pubradio news/talk audience

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Audiences for news and talk stations delivered more than half of public radio’s listening in 2012, according to Arbitron’s annual study on public radio audience trends. The average quarter-hour (AQH) share, an Arbitron term describing the percentage of public radio listeners who tune to a specific format, hit 51.7 percent for pubradio news and talk stations last year, an 2.7 percent increase from 2011 and a precedent for the growth of public radio’s most powerful format, according to Arbitron’s “Public Radio Today 2013.” The study, which looked at audience trends across all stations and formats in 2012, found that public radio’s total audience remained at 32 million, or 12 percent, of all radio listeners. The number of weekly listeners grew by 7.5 percent, or 1.2 million, to a total of 18 million. Triple-A stations contributed to the gains by boosting the format’s weekly cume to 3.4 million listeners, an increase of 8.7 percent.

Programs/Content

WXPN offering XPoNential Triple A stream for HD broadcasts

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Philadelphia’s WXPN began independent syndication of XPoNential Radio, its 24-hour stream of Triple A music programming,  after NPR discontinued its service providing packaged HD Radio feeds to member stations. XPoNential Radio offers a blend of “blues, rock, world, folk and alternative country,” according to a news release announcing the new syndication offer.  WXPN General Manager Roger LaMay said about 20 stations already subscribed to the stream. “With XPoNential Radio being the most popular of the HD streams NPR offered, we decided to offer it on our own,” LaMay said. “It’s a 24-hour, plug and play stream that can be used on an HD2, HD3 or for streaming on the Internet.”

The stream, which is priced at $3,000 a year, is an inexpensive way to bring the music to NPR news stations, LaMay said. Subscribers have the option of picking up the stream via Content Depot or via satellite.

Programs/Content

For WAMU and its listeners, HD Radio means more slices of pie to go around

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As a self-proclaimed evangelist for HD Radio, I am often asked why I have inculcated it so deeply in the workings of WAMU in Washington. We devote several full-time employees to produce more than 50 hours a week of live original programming for our multicast channels — bluegrass and Americana music on Channel 2, and news and information on Channel 3. We further demonstrate our commitment to multicasting on our main channel. For the first year after we started multicasting three HD Radio channels, we spent at least 15 seconds of every hour on our flagship signal cross-promoting Channels 2 and 3, and our hosts still give them at least four spots a day. Reminding listeners of the other offerings in our “radio community” requires a sizable investment in airtime, as well as the traffic department’s writing and logging.