By-Products

To develop more exact methods of finding out the who, what, when, where and why of radio listening, particularly on behalf of radio education, The Rockefeller Foundation in September 1937 set up the Princeton Radio Research Project, gave it $67,000 to cover an anticipated two years' work. To its basic problem the project has not yet found all the answers. But it has turned up a mass of "byproduct" information about listener habits, types, preferences. So interesting were some of these by-product findings that The Journal of Applied Psychology delayed publication of its February issue until last month, built an all-radio issue around them.

Some byproducts:

> In the U. S. by 1938 there were 5,000,000 radio-equipped automobiles. The three main arguments against auto-radios are that they divert the driver's attention from the road, prevent him from hearing warning signals, preoccupy him with tuning manipulation. But four counterarguments for auto-radios were found: they 1) induce slower driving; 2) break the monotony of extended or night driving, prevent drowsiness, promote attention, interest, alertness; 3) soothe motorists during extended traffic jams; 4) silence backseat driving. Motor-vehicle commissioners in 38 States failed to find any accidents directly attributable to auto-radios.

> To the morale of an unemployed family, a radio is an important bolster. It is the chief recreation of the family group. It is also a means to parental control, keeps children off the streets, even gets them peaceably tucked in nights on the promise that they can "listen in bed." Loss of the radio from unemployed homes in most cases was considered a final, crushing misfortune.

> Small local stations have greater appeal to low-income groups than to higher earning brackets. Likely reasons: the poor listener likes to hear of advertisers with whom he is familiar; foreign born like local programs in their own language; farmers like to hear folksy shows, Bible-hours that never get on the chains.

> In tests conducted with Dartmouth undergraduates, advertised products were best remembered when the commercial announcements appealed to selfesteem. Other appeals, in order of their persuasiveness : prestige, health, universality, sex, efficiency, economy, beauty, safety, comfort.

> Among The Book-of-the-Month Clubbers, tests for "radio-mindedness" (defined as an "active, participating interest" in radio programs) showed subjects 27 or younger to be the most radio-minded.

> Reported well under way was the Princeton Radio Research Project's special Study of Mass Hysteria, investigating last fall's Orson Welles's invasion-from-Mars broadcast which deceived hosts of U. S. gullibles, including a dauntless pair of Princeton scientists who set right out to see what they could see.

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