Listeners

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door. . . .

Radio is like Walter de la Mare's night-foundered traveler: it is never quite sure just who hears it. But last week radio found out several significant things about its unseen listeners.

Daylight Saving. Radio programs have always slumped in spring, presumably because the annual change to daylight saving time confused millions of listeners who couldn't locate their favorite programs. C. E. Hooper, Inc., announced that this May (with no changeover from War Time to D.S.T.) listening was down only half a point from April. Last year the drop for the period was 7.3 points. There had been no drop this year when the nation went on War Time, because every clock moved up.

For stocky, cocky C. E. Hooper, head of one of radio's two big program surveying concerns (the other: Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, which gets out the "Crossley" ratings), the results were a personal triumph. He had long maintained that, since daylight saving means little to 70% of Americans except through their radio dials, broadcast schedules ought to stick to standard time.

How Many? Hooper, Inc. also had a partial answer to the most tantalizing question of all: How many people hear a broadcast? Since no one knows the exact number of radio sets in the U.S. there can be no really accurate estimate of the total number of listeners. The results of the Hooper surveys represent a percentage of the total homes in the listening area.

Hooper last week announced the results of what he called "an attempt to do the impossible"--to estimate the number of adult listeners for each of President Roosevelt's fireside chats since 1936. To delegates at the N.A.B. convention in Cleveland, he distributed a red-white-&-black graph (a copy of one already presented to the President), which traced the listening history of Roosevelt broadcasts.

Starting at a low of 6,300,000 listeners (Hooper rating, 9.7) on June 10, 1936, the President wandered over graphic foothills for four years, suddenly leaped to a peak of 42,500,000 listeners (57.0) for the Stab-in-the-Back broadcast of June 10, 1940. As national self-absorption went down, Presidential audiences went up-- 43,900,000 (59.0) for the Arsenal of Democracy Speech; 53,800,000 (69.8) for the Declaration of National Emergency; 62,100,000 (79.0) for the War Message, Dec. 9.

Basic figure in such audience estimates is the Hooper rating, a percentage arrived at by the simplest of cross-section sampling. To get a rating, 120 Hooper field workers (all former telephone girls) in 32 key cities make phone calls at a rate of 3,000 an hour during the broadcast being checked. They ask three questions: "Were you listening to your radio just now? To what program? Over what station?" Homes which don't answer are counted as non-listeners.

From the Hooper rating, Hooper statisticians worked out the estimated audience for each Roosevelt speech by giving due weight to consideration of season, network, region and day of the week, time of the day, other factors. Major difference between the Hooper and the C.A.B. system, which is more often quoted in the industry, is that all Hooper calls are made during the broadcast (coincidental method), C.A.B. calls are made after the broadcast (recall method).

Some post-Pearl Harbor developments according to Hooper:

> Networks now carry three more hours per week of evening news broadcast than on Dec. 7, but there are no more news listeners. Individual news program ratings have dropped.

>Ratings of plays on the air are rising steadily, with no sign of listener surfeit.

> Concert broadcasts have increased in number, but have fewer listeners.

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