Federal support for public broadcasting — PBS for video and NPR for audio — is teetering. Since the advent of the two services more than a half-century ago, the annual federal grant has come under attack many times — mostly from conservatives — but has always survived.
The current Congress shows an appetite for “zeroing out” the subsidy and if that happens, you can be certain that President Trump will support it.
A couple of weeks ago, the Pew Research Center released the results of a short study about the public’s interest in federal support for public broadcasting. The study, conducted between March 10th and 16th, showed a plurality favored continued federal funding by a margin of 43% to 24%, with 33% unsure.
As you might have guessed, self-proclaimed Democrats or those who lean Democrat favored support by a margin of 69 to 5, while self-proclaimed Republicans or those who lean Republican were against federal support by 44 to 19.
Three points stood out to me as a researcher. Rather than accept what was reported in the trades, I reviewed Pew’s release on their website. Pew is one of the top survey research operations in the country and allows you to see far more of the “inner workings” than other survey organizations, including the actual questionnaire.
Pew asked respondents whether they had heard of NPR or PBS, regardless of whether they used the services. While only 15% had not heard of PBS, 42% had not heard of NPR. A Pew study in 2019 put the NPR “hadn’t heard of it” number at 44%. In other words, in a national study, more than four out of ten respondents had not heard of National Public Radio! NPR has been around since 1972, yet after more than a half-century, a quality survey finds more than four out of ten Americans can’t identify NPR!
Since Arbitron/Nielsen added noncommercial stations in the published ratings (the stations were always there, but the results were not part of the public release), some public radio stations have consistently finished in first place on a P12+ or P6+ total week basis or at worst in the top five in their markets. And for years, the two biggest draws on public radio have been national shows, All Things Considered and Morning Edition, both of which use the NPR branding extensively. Yet Pew says more than four out of ten Americans haven’t heard of NPR.
Next, Pew asked the funding question of everyone in the sample including the 42% that didn’t know about NPR. As noted above, one-third weren’t sure and you can bet the vast majority of the “not sures” didn’t know about NPR.
My issue with the question is that PBS and NPR were conflated. In other words, users of public TV that don’t use NPR or even know of it may have been in favor of federal support for PBS, but not for NPR, or weren’t sure. While I greatly respect Pew’s methodologists, this question should have had two parts. I’d be willing to go on DraftKings, FanDuel, or BetMGM and put a few dollars on a lower federal support number for NPR.
There’s another insight here concerning conducting surveys today. Pew is open about their results and this study was part of their ongoing American Trends Panel (ATP). ATP is done mostly online with a small telephone component. The sample size for Wave 165 of the ATP (this study) was 9,482. That’s big and the response rate for those who were asked to do the survey was 90 percent (base of 10,576).
However, the “P” in ATP stands for panel which was recruited using other methods and Pew publishes the stats:
- Cumulative response rate, ATP Wave 165
- Weighted response rate to recruitment surveys: 11%
- % of recruitment survey respondents who agreed to join the panel, among those invited: 73%
- % of those agreeing to join who were active panelists at start of Wave 165: 35%
- Response rate to Wave 165 survey: 90%
- Cumulative response rate: 3%
The true final response rate for the study was 3%. Yes, 3%, which in today’s environment is decent. If you think Nielsen’s PPM response rate is higher, I have a couple of bridges you may be interested in purchasing. And don’t look at the Nielsen SPI (Sample Performance Indicator) because that inflates the true response rate even though many SPIs are in single digits.
I’m not showing these numbers to embarrass or denigrate Pew or Nielsen, but rather to highlight how hard it is to get people to take part in surveys. Further, always look closely at how the questions were asked. In this case, the support for federal dollars for NPR may be buoyed by support for Masterpiece Theatre or Nova…we don’t know.
As a longtime media researcher, here are my key points:
· Fifty years on and over 40% of the US population doesn’t know what NPR is.
· Whether or not you think NPR is valuable, there is a huge negative perception when only 19% of those on the right believe federal support is warranted.
· NPR has a trust issue as a news source. PBS won on “trust versus distrust” for news by a margin of 41 to 15. For NPR, the margin was 29 to 14. Another 14% weren’t sure if they trusted or distrusted NPR and again, 42% didn’t know what NPR was.
· Among Republicans or those who lean Republican, NPR news lost on trust by 26 to 12, while for PBS, the margin was just 26 to 23 in favor of “distrust”. Democrats and lean Democrat trusted NPR news by a margin of 47 to 3.
If public broadcasting loses federal funding, results like these will explain a great deal, while Pew’s openness also shows just how hard it is to do quality survey research work in the 21st Century. Most of all, when presented with survey results, ask questions.
Let’s meet again next week.
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