by Judith LeRoy and David LeRoy
info.p@cket 33, January 1998
Background: These data, focusing on differences between member and non-member viewing, are the last from the Baltimore, Washington and San Francisco PTV viewing study project. The data are from Nielsen metered households. Nielsen compared its metered households roster with the membership files from KQED, WETA and WMPB+ and identified those homes which currently are members or recently lapsed members of each station. All statistical comparisons are between households. The data frame was eight straight weeks beginning with the February 1995 sweep and ending after the March pledge drives.
Membership General Viewing Patterns
Members view approximately 15 percent less television than non-members. Figure 1 compares the average for the three markets.
At best, only 10 percent of a member's household viewing is devoted to PTV, compared to about half that amount -- 5 percent -- from non-member homes. In both member and non-member homes, PTV functions as only one of many television services used by the households. Very few homes devote a majority of their viewing to PTV -- member or not.
The Less/More Syndrome
The less/more syndrome characterizes member viewing patterns. As noted above, members view less total television than non-members but more PTV than non-members. This pattern is a "universal" and is not effected by demographics or media variables.
A person who is a PTV member will exhibit two consistent sets of behaviors. Given two persons of the same age, same education, same gender and same cable subscription status, the member will always display the less/more syndrome. The member household will watch less television overall than the non-member. Second, the member will, in an absolute sense, watch more PTV than the non-member. In viewing jargon, the member has less total TV GRPs but more PTV GRPs than non-members.
Figure 2 is an example of the less/more syndrome; it shows the amount of viewing (in GRPs) cable homes devoted to PTV by membership status. (Viewing is measured in gross or total rating points. A rating is the percent of homes that view a station or program. For example, a three rating means three percent of the homes viewed a station on Tuesday evening. Rating points are summed and the totals reflect viewing tonnage. So if station A has 100 GRPs and station B 50 GRPs then A has twice as much viewing as B.)
As the number of viewing choices increases, the amount of time spent with any one program service decreases, be it PBS or CBS. The San Francisco data follow this pattern perfectly. The cable-rejecting homes view the most PTV. Basic homes -- with more choices than non-cable homes but fewer choices than pay cable homes -- view more PTV than Pay homes but less than non-cable homes. Note however, that regardless of the cable status of a member, that member always views more PTV than his/her non-member peers.
Summary Point: To date the best predicator is still having a four year college degree. Age is another good predicator of membership. However, not everyone with a college degree is a member nor every one over the age of 60. So if demographics (age, gender, education and race) have only a limited role in explaining membership status, then some other factor or factors must be posited as influencing people to become members and remain members. Whatever those factors are, they exhibit themselves in a consistent pattern of viewing behaviors with television in general, and PTV in particular, in all of the member/non-member research studies since the very first one with diaries in 1987!
Programs Create Audiences
"You are what you eat" is an old nutritionist's dictum. What a station telecasts determines the kinds of audiences it attracts. PTV has a limited range of genres to offer; hence, its audience skews in predictable directions. Programs create audiences because only certain kinds of people are attracted to programs like The NewsHour, Nova, or Wall Street Week.
Members watch significantly more different program types (drama, news/talk, science etc.) than non-members. And they watch more of each genre than do non-members. Only two program types, in fact, show no differences in viewing levels -- children's programming and how-to series. Members view these two genres about the same as non-members. All other program types elicit more viewing by members.
Summary Point: Members watch more PTV than non-members but more importantly, they view more different types of programs, longer than non-members. No doubt members like and view PTV more often because they like the programs on PTV.
Pledge Drives Attract No New Viewers
Besides comparing member and non-member viewing, another purpose of this project was to compare PTV viewing the month before a drive began with viewing that occurred during the drive itself. We found that, essentially, pledge drives attract no new viewers (defined as households which did not view the station in February).
Pledge drives attract the same cume levels as non-pledge months. What declines in pledge drives is viewing levels (GRPs). (Cume is a percent, analogous to circulation. A 50 cume means one-half of the homes in a market or area view a station.)
Primarily, people monitor pledge drives (surf by with their remotes) and then choose to view an occasional program. Build-up cumes show that members flow into the pledge audience rapidly.
Figure 3 gives the build up cume for San Francisco. The cume measures the number of new and different homes entering the audience on a given day. If the cume is 25 one day and 50 the next, then one quarter of the homes in the market viewed the first day, and an additional 25 percent of new homes viewed the second day, meaning that by the end of the second day, 50 percent of the homes in the market
had viewed the station. Our data indicate that in San Francisco, fully half of KQED's members have viewed by the end of the second day of pledge, and 80 percent by the end of the fourth day. Non-members enter the cume at a slower pace and never quite equal the members' viewing levels.
Figure 4 gives essentially the same data for Washington. This Figure gives dramatic evidence about the impact of UHF channel allocation on a station's reach -- much lower cume levels. But also note that, despite the different cume level, the pattern of households entering the cume is essentially the same as it was in the San Francisco market.
So this data prove, once again, that a lot of homes sample PTV during a drive. The next question is: How much do those homes view during a pledge drive?
Figure 5 displays the number of programs viewed. In this Figure, to be counted in the audience for a program, a home must view 30 minutes or more. In other words, surfing in and sampling a few minutes of a program does not automatically count a household in the audience for that pledge program.
The answer to our question: About a quarter of the members view a lot of pledge (11 plus programs), while 18 percent view practically none. For non-members, about a quarter of them can be described as "moderately heavy" viewers of pledge (six or more pledge programs); an equal percentage view no pledge shows at all.
One feature of pledge audiences is that members gather in the audience for just about any pledge program. However, there are not enough members in any given audience to make a given program a ratings hit. One key purpose of pledge programs is to increase audience size by attracting non-member households.
We discovered that in any pledge audience there are both members and what we dub the immune non-members. These latter viewers we noted above watch a lot of pledge but seem immune to pledge appeals.
To accumulate audience, pledge drives must end up focusing on the lighter viewers of PTV -- those viewing more by accident than design. Channel surfing and word of mouth promotion are about the only effective ways to attract these lighter PTV viewers. Because they are infrequent viewers, once attracted, there is, essentially, one chance (the current program) to reach them.
All of this means future efforts to increase the financial success of pledge drives depends upon reaching a limited (and diminishing?) pool of potential new members. Hence, the efforts to increase the net revenue raised is now a primary focus for many membershi executives.
Last, the smaller the audience for a pledge program is, the more likely it is that this audience will be older and contain a disproportionate number of members. Actually, aside from some children's shows and a rare music, self-help or comedy program, any given pledge program will skew toward an older audience. Even musical programs such as Yanni, Riverdance or John Tesh attract a plurality of older viewers. While pitches in these programs aimed at 35-49 year olds may be successful, money is left on the table because the older viewers in the audience are not pitched to effectively. (These pledge findings are from the PBS/TRAC "Who's Watching and Who's Pledging" studies.)
Key Findings and Suggested Actions
- Members view more PTV than non-members. Members view PTV more often and for longer periods than non-members. Members like to watch PTV!
- PTV membership cannot be predicted by demographic variables alone. Education (a college degree) and age (fifty plus) continue to be our best predictors of membership but the key factor responsible for membership is that a member likes and views PTV programming!
- For members, there are no "pure genre" audiences. Members watch news, drama, science and culture. For example, children's programs do not attract a unique membership. Members who view children's programs also view other parts of the schedule. Put another way, they would no doubt be members with or without viewing any one particular genre; it's the experience of watching PTV.
- Pledge drives attract no new audiences to PTV. Anyone watching a pledge drive also has viewed the station in the last month. Most members are in the pledge audience by the fourth or fifth day of pledge.
- Members view a lot of a pledge drive; about half of the members view six or more pledge programs. Non-members also view pledge drives but in lesser amounts (26 percent view six or more programs).
- The more often a pledge program is telecast, the more its audience ages. That is, the viewers are mostly 50 and 65+. In most instances this also holds for boomer music programs.
- Larger audiences are more heterogeneous in terms of age and gender and this holds true for pledge programs. Large audiences will contain many light PTV viewers, and they view essentially once.
- The smaller an audience is for a program, especially in non-prime time, the more homogeneous is the audience. The smaller audience will contain many members. This means pledge appeals have to be on target for that group or failure is inevitable and prolonged.
- Successful pledge drives require a steady influx of lighter viewers of PTV to hear the appeals. That means that programs appealing to these viewers are needed to attract them.
- As audience fragmentation continues, PTV's audiences will shrink slightly, and the focus of station management should be on reinforcing the brand and positioning the station as a local broadcast service, providing more programming for members and remaining "non-commercial" in on-air look. "We are community."
In non-pledge periods, schedule programs to avoid turnover and that will improve the chances that the viewer will stay tuned. Increasing time spent viewing will build loyalty.
A person who pledges during a drive will not necessarily become a member. Some pledgers become members, others (transactionals) do not. Making the pledge is only the first step in the membership process: Converting them into a member is another matter.
During a pledge drive, promote the prime time schedule's variety. Use the PBS-type program spots around programs of all genres (i.e., Drama spots by Science programs.)
Pledge is scheduled for tranasctional viewers who want the premiums, not members. Front-load everything.
As a drive progresses, the number of members in the audience begins to increase (especially in non-prime dayparts). Some pledge elements might stress: "Time to think of additional gifts? Time for a gift membership?"
This means that pledge program pitches, premium emphasis and talent need to evolve as a program is repeated. Pitches should become more mission oriented, more emphasis should be given to premiums attractive to mostly older audiences, and the talent should become older. When in doubt, the talent should be older and female.
Light viewers need reasons to pledge, but it will be the premium that will drive them to the phone. Open with the premium and build the case later.
Pledge producers, talent and the entire pledge production team must know the target donor group and continually speak to these people when pitching a program.
Programs should be produced that attract younger audiences. This also means that pledge programs need to be heavily promoted - on PTV and through other means - to reach lighter viewers.
Dr. Judith LeRoy and Dr. David LeRoy are co-directors of TRAC Media Services in Tucson, Arizona.
CPB funded this report. Opinions expressed in this report are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and policies of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.