WGBH versus WBUR

[Aaron Read]

You were close!  It's Meghna Chakrabarti.  :-)

http://www.wbur.org/people/mchakrabarti

Also, Donna nails it with her quote about it being a "marathon, not a 
sprint".  WBUR listeners aren't just listening to NPR news and talk, 
they are *WBUR Listeners*.  The only way they're going to defect from 
WBUR is during pledge weeks and then, possibly, they'll go listen to 
WGBH...assuming WGBH isn't coordinating the pledge weeks, of course. 
And even then, odds are good that they'll defect during the pitching and 
otherwise will stay with WBUR...similarly, even if they switch to WGBH 
for pledge week, there's little guarantee they'll stay after pledge week 
is over.

So it will take time...a lot of time...as listeners who are new to NPR 
listening in general and come to the left end of the dial and find two 
suitable offerings and will pick-n-choose as they see fit.  So very, 
very gradually you'll see WGBH gain more listeners.  Probably they'll 
gain more than WBUR loses, as - again - their gains will mostly come 
from new-to-NPR listeners.

And, I admit, probably one place you'll see a lot of listener swapping 
is during the mid-day hours as people decide they don't like whatever 
topic is on OnPoint that hour and they switch to Diane Rehm (or vice 
versa) and the same for Fresh Air/Radio Boston vs. Callie Crossley/Emily 
Rooney.  And that sort of rapid switching is the sort of thing that'd be 
lost entirely under diaries but will show up under PPM's.  It'd be 
interesting to see how that shakes out, though...whether the topic-based 
switching is so chaotic that it all just evens out in the end?

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron Read                  |  Finger Lakes Public Radio
friedbagels@gmail.com       |  General Manager (WEOS & WHWS-LP)
Geneva, NY 14456            |  www.weos.org / www.whws.fm


Well, one thing that WBUR did was make the Radio Boston program much
more than five times as good. Yes, it's now on the air five times as
many hours per week as it used to be, but the new host, Meghna
Chackrabarti (spelling, someone--PLEASE!), is WAY easier to listen to
(snip)
-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
To: <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2010 10:51 AM
Subject: WGBH versus WBUR


 > For those who didn't see it, this ran in the Boston Herald on
 > Friday, regarding the battle for ratings between established WBUR
 > and newcomer WGBH.
 >
 > 
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1263888&format=text
 >