Daniel Starch's 1928 Survey: A First Glimpse of the U.S. Radio Audience

Abstract

In 1928, the fledgling National Broadcasting Company hired Boston-based marketing consultant Daniel Starch to conduct the first wide-ranging survey of the national radio audience. Starch oversaw more than 5,000 interviews of U.S. radio families living in states east of the Rocky Mountains. The survey's findings provide a glimpse of the early network radio audience prior to the Federal Radio Commission's 1928 reorganization of frequency and power allocations and the industry's subsequent expansion. This paper examines Starch's findings and places them within the historical context of the developing radio industry.

Notes

¹The Starch report's title page is prominently labeled “CONFIDENTAL AND FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY.” The present analysis is based on a copy found serendipitously among the papers of former NBC network executive E. P. H. James and hereinafter cited as Starch, 1928. The report is now more widely available since being reproduced in Volume 5 of Sterling's historical document compilation, The Rise of American Radio (2007).

²That is, only one station at a time was to use the frequency. At first, some clear channel frequencies were shared by two stations that were required to divide the broadcast time.

³Starch continued to conduct advertising and audience studies for many years after his 1928 survey. These included an expanded version of his original NBC study to include the Pacific states, and a series of national audience surveys for CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., & Starch, 1937; Sterling, 2007).

⁴For example, in 1924, three Detroit radio stations (KYW, WDAP, and WJAZ) made over-the-air announcements asking listeners to write in and describe what type of music they wanted to hear. As a result of their 12-day campaign, the stations received over 250,000 pieces of mail from all 48 states, the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, and five foreign countries. The top response was “popular music,” listed by 29% of the respondents, followed by “classical music” by 24.7% (McDonald, 1924).

⁵At the end of the 1920s, RCA and its subsidiary, NBC, carefully cultivated an image of corporate success and, in 1927, the network's budget for promoting and advertising itself was more than $2 million. RCA was considered a blue chip investment and in the frenzied Wall Street trading leading up to the 1929 market crash, the company's stock skyrocketed from $85 a share in 1928 to $549 just a year later (Allen, 2000; Archer, 1939).

⁶States excluded from the survey were WA, OR, CA, NV, ID, UT, and AZ. The territories of AK and HI were also excluded.

⁷Two years later, the decennial census found a similar geographical pattern of radio adoption. Taken in mid-1930, the census reported that more than 12 million U.S. households (40.3%) had a working radio (Craig, 2004).

⁸It is unclear whether respondents interpreted this question to mean ownership of their current set or any radio. That is, if a respondent had owned a radio for 5 years, then recently upgraded to a new model, how would he/she answer? The interviewers may have had a better idea of this question's meaning and clarified it for respondents.

⁹The “short talks on interesting subjects” category listed by 39.9% may have included news and public affairs programs, but it could have also included messages promoting a sponsor's product or service. For examples of later surveys finding news popular with listeners see Cantril & Allport, 1935 and USDA, 1946.

¹⁰ The Farm and Home Hour was aired as a sustaining program until after WWII, when the decline of network radio led to its demise as a daily program. It continued as a once-a-week sponsored show until 1960 (Greenfield, 1971). For one contemporary account connecting the Starch survey results to NBC's development of agricultural programming, see (“New agriculture,” 1929).

¹¹The NBC programs to which the question alludes were as follows: The Eveready Hour was a 60 minute variety show sponsored by Eveready batteries airing on Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m., Eastern Time. “Damrosch” refers to The National Symphony Orchestra, a 60 minute program of concert music sponsored by RCA and airing on Saturday nights at 8:00. The program featured NBC's own symphony orchestra and the network's music director, Dr. Walter Damrosch. The General Motors Program was a 60 minute musical variety show at 9:00 on Mondays. Collier's Hour was a 60 minute variety program sponsored by Collier's magazine on the Blue network Sundays at 8:15. The Maxwell House Hour was 60 minutes of concert music on the Blue network Thursday at 9:00. The Goodrich Silvertown Zippers was a 60 minute musical variety show sponsored by Goodrich Tires on Wednesday nights at 9:30. The Ipana Troubadours was a 30 minute musical variety program sponsored by the toothpaste maker on Wednesdays at 9:00 (Summers, 1971).

¹²Only “Damrosch” was not a brand name. The Damrosch program was sponsored by NBC corporate parent RCA or, as it was generally called in 1928, “the radio company.” This made using the corporate name to identify the show awkward and confusing, so the distinctive name of its host became the identifier. Walter Damrosch later hosted several other musical programs on NBC, including a popular daytime series for children.

¹³“D-X” is radio operator's code for “distant transmission.” For a firsthand account of this practice by an early listener, see Johnson (1974).