PBS television, which was the first to embrace these theories, has recently been having meetings where managers admitted this strategy has failed to increase audience, according to a staffer of PBS' Frontline. What it is doing is replacing devoted and grateful audiences who did not have their informational needs served elsewhere with less loyal audiences whose less specific needs are more easily satisfied across the broad spectrum of available media. Not coincidentally, Chadwick is now in the number two spot in Pacifica, and poised to take over as Executive Director in the wake of the removal of outgoing CEO Pat Scott, who implemented these new programming policies. David Giovannoni is also among the professional programming consultants that have been employed by Pacifica, paid for with the donations of the constituencies Pacifica was planning to abandon. The more programming skirts the edge, the more people will be excluded.
CUME is a reasonable goal.
CUME refers to the total number of people who listen to the station over the course of a week, in the terminology of audience research consultants. Most everybody who believes in the ideas of social justice, peace, creative empowerment and self-education articulated in Pacifica's founding mission would be pleased to see these ideas spreading in wider circles throughout the populace. The statistical information upon which these consultants base their theories, the Arbitron ratings, suggest that it is not increasing the audience. KPFK's most recent CUME statistics, according to the Winter 1998 Arbitron survey, show a weekly audience of 134,000 in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In the Winter 1994 survey, before these changes were made, KPFK's CUME was measured at 145,400.