what the listener wants: i

Irish Jesuit Province

What the Listener Wants: IAuthor(s): Victor CurranSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 83, No. 971 (Jul., 1954), pp. 263-267Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516772 .

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Radio

WHAT THE LISTENER WANTS?I.

By VICTOR CURRAN

ONE of the most devastating criticisms that can be made of

any radio station or system is that it does not take any real

account of what the listener, whether he be high-brow or low

brow, or any brow in between, wants to get when he twiddles the

knobs of his radio set. Those who have been working at radio, on

both sides of the Atlantic, have learned that even they, who put

programmes on the air, have no easy way of finding out what the

people want.

When the BBC began to work in 1922, and when Radio ?ireann

as it was to become, began to function four; years later, there was

the sketchiest way imaginable of finding out what public taste was.

Listener Research, or Audience Research as it was later called when

the needs of TV came to be reflected and assessed, began as; late as

1936.

Was there any real need for this? Lord Reith, who was the power at the head of the BBC for the greater part of his fife, wrote, in

a stimulating book called Into the Wind, that the idea was that they should put on the air the very; best that could be got in each and

every branch of knowledge and entertainment, and to avoid what

might be hurtful. "

In earlier years, accused of setting out to give the

publia not what it wanted but what the BBC thought it should

have, the answer was that few knew what they wanted, fewer what

they needed. In any event, it was better to over-estimate than to

under-estimate. If another policy had been adopted?that of the

lowest common denominator?what then? Probably nobody would

have protested; it would have been quite natural." So writes Lord

Reith, and I would suggest that if Lord Reith were to be put at

the head of Radio Eireann, and were to say precisely that, there

would be vigorous protests; yet, for the greater part of its existence

as Ireland's radio service, that has been the Radio ?ireann policy, even if nobody said so.

The BBC, and, of course, Radio ?ireann, has used what Lord

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IRISH MONTHLY

Reith himself has well termed "

the brute force of monopoly "

to

get the listener to accept what he has been given. Needless to say, there have been squawks now and then, but, on the whole?at least

in the case of the BBC?the listener is largely satisfied. By the time Listener Research had been set going in England in December,

1936, radio workers knew that there was a gap of some size between

themselves and the listeners. But even when the plan had been set

going, and even when it had been made more efficient, there was no hesitation in saying, as the BBC itself said in a carefully

measured statement to thai Beveridge Committee of Inquiry in 1949, that

" The place of Listener Research within the BBC can only be

freed from all ambiguity by stating unequivocally that even if it

revealed that a majority of the public were opposed to a policy which was being pursued by the BBC in a particular matter, or

disliked a series of broadcasts which was on the air, that would

not in itself be considered a valid reason why the policy should be

reversed or the programmes withdrawn. This is not to say that

the Listener Research findings would be ignored; they would be

considered with the utmost care and weighed with other considera

tions which were relevant. But the decision, when taken, would

be a responsible decision, come to in the light of what was

considered ultimately to be in the best interests of the public and

of the service."

The Radio ?ireann authorities have never been forced into a

forthright statement of all-over policy, but I think if one were wrung from them, it would not be much different from what the BBC

says.

In December, 1953, Frank Scully, in a Dublin Sunday paper, wrote that

" not ten per cent, of the criticism levelled at Radio

Eireann, and at the people who run it, has come from people who

know what they are talking about." A week later a correspondent voiced what is, I think, the opinion of a great number of listeners. "

No doubt Radio ?ireann cannot please everybody," he wrote.

"But if 90% of the listeners enjoy a particular kind of programme

they are entitled to hear it, whether it be good radio or not."

Let me pass by the question that is really behind this, namely,

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RADIO

what is, and what is not, good radio, and see how, in fact, both the

BBC and RE get to know what the listeners want on the air.

Listener Research, or Audience Research, if you will, is the

BBC's own baby, and it can best be studied as it functions in

Britain.

Two methods are used: firstly, a measurement of the general interests by

" random samples "; and, secondly, a study of the

returns from a Listener Panel. It is really a bit of a misnomer to

talk about a "

random sample ", for the sample is, in fact, very

carefully taken. It works like this.

Every day a cross-section of the public is asked about their

previous day's listening or viewing. In this way, every day's broad

casting is covered. The survey sounds the public taste by

questioning about 3,000 people a day, and as there are different

people every day, close on a million people are questioned in the

course of the year's work. Always, the question is the same? 4i What programmes did you listen to yesterday?"

The questioning is done by BBC interviewers, specially trained

for the work, scattered all over Britain, who record the answers

people give them on special log-sheets on which all the programmes that have been broadcast are given. Each interviewer is told that

he, or she, must question a certain number of people, each day, and

he is given a guide to the kind of people they must be?so many men,

so many women, for example, so many from each age-group, so

many unemployed. In this way, it is thought that a representative cross-section of the British listening public will be got.

As soon as each day's log-sheets are returned to the central offices,

the number of the people recorded as having listened is counted,

broadcast by broadcast. Thus, for example, ten per cent, of the

listeners may have listened to a music programme on the Home

Service, two per cent, to a serious talk on the Third, and forty-five

per cent, to a comedy on the Light Programme. Thanks to the laws

of sampling, these figures may be, and are, taken to apply to the

whole adult population of Britain; so that it is held that a broadcast

that has held the attention of ten per cent, of the listeners interviewed

has, in fact, been listened to by ten per cent, of the whole population.

The BBC itself claims that this study shows the relative pulling

power of each and every Radio Programme, and of the three services

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IRISH MONTHLY

normally heard in Britain. But a check on these figures is provided by the Listening Panels.

The Listening Panel is a voluntary body of 3,600 listeners drawn

from all parts of the country. Every effort is made to see that all

possible shades of .opinion get a hearing and representation, and

"brow-level" is carefully noted. Every week each Panel Member

gets thirty or so short question-forms, each of them referring to a

coming broadcast. The programmes covered by these thirty-or-so forms are as varied as possible, and, in the course of just one week,

they may range from a big boxing commentary on the Light to a

Bach recital on the Third.

The Panel Member is not asked to listen to the radio any more

than he usually does, and he is not asked to make a special point of listening to any broadcast. What he is asked to do is to pick out

of the thirty forms those that appeal to him; and these only he

returns to the BBC at the end of the week. What the BBC wants

from him is a frank expression of what he PERSONALLY liked or

disliked, and why. Panel Members are not asked to pontificate in

a professional critic's way, but rather to say how the broadcast in

question struck them as LISTENERS pure and simple. When the

answers are collated, the report which can then be drawn up will

show a fair, balanced picture of the members' views, showing what

the majority thought, but being fair to the minority views, too. Thus,

more than fifty broadcasts get a reasonably accurate commentary: and what Maurice Gorham himself has called a commentary in both

WIDTH and DEPTH can be got.

Mr. Gorham himself, who was intimately connected with Listener

Research in Britain when it started, has said, in, The Sound and the

Fury, that

To study these figures day by day, seven days a week, gave

you a feeling of being in touch with your audience much more

satisfying than depending on letters, which are often written by minorities, or by taking the opinions of the comparatively few

people around London whom you can meet yourself.

When Mr. Gorham himself was head of the Light Programme Listener Research showed him that serious music, in the shape of a

programme called " Music in Miniature ", was able to chalk up a

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ART

listening audience of 12%, even against the formidable opposition of Tommy Handley's ITMA.

AU this has relevance for Radio ?ireann, especially since Mr.

Gorham himself has become the director of Broadcasting. Many

changes have been brought about, Undoubtedly, there are many more changes yet to be made, and many improvements to be made,

too, but I think it is fair to say that there has been more than

reasonable progress made since the "

new regime "

came into power

just over a year ago.

(To be concluded)

Art

AN T?STAL AND THE VISUAL ARTS By BRIAN O'DOHERTY

AMONG the widespread vulgarities of the second national

Festival there were some manifestations which, unlike the more

ephemeral trappings of manufactured rejoicing, deserve further

evaluation, comment, criticism and, on occasion, congratulation. Dur

ing the Festival period a visitor to Dublin who was interested in such

things could select from or work through an unprecedented and quite magnificent list of exhibitions. This was, to be brief, as it should

be. The only chance An T?stal has of survival is that it becomes

primarily cultural; visitors to this country have, no doubt, troist

streams, bicycle races and golf balls at home, but they have not got, for instance, Mr. Jack Yeats, the Sir Alfred Beit Vermeer, or at thr

moment I am writing, the Klee drawings. At the Royal College of Surgeons there was on display a wonderful

little forest of bronze statuettes of the Renaissance. This was,

perhaps, the most important exhibition of sculpture ever held in

Dublin.

It is necessary to state a few facts here. As I have indicated, this

was, in the true sense of the word great, a great exhibition; it was

displayed with much ingenuity?unfortunately, the room was not

ideal, one lacked silhouettes; it was, incredibly, ignored by nearly

every art critic; it was poorly attended; it was held in Dublin, and

Dublin treated this accumulation of High Renaissance splendour in

miniature with indifference!

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what the listener wants: i

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