Listener Feedback
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009It’s been a busy day of listener feedback in the WGAN Newsroom.
This morning, we received a call from someone upset over our characterization of a robbery suspect as an “African-American”. He suggested there was no way of knowing if the person was American or not, and that we should have simply said the person was black.
In this case, I was the anchor who had written the story. The choice to use the term “African-American” was deliberate on my part. The decision was partly because the suspect was also described as wearing a black leather jacket and I didn’t want to use the word “black” twice in the same sentence. Upon some reflection, I understand the caller’s point. That being said, I felt I made a reasonable assumption based on the information we received from the Auburn Police. Their release indicated the suspect was “black” but made no reference to nationality. Given that information, and given that the crime happened in Auburn (America), I used the characterization “African-American”. I’m interested to get your feedback.
The second call to the newsroom was by a listener extremely upset over Glenn Beck. She wanted to know what would cause us to stop airing the show. My answer, as it is to everyone who has an objection to one of our talk hosts:
WGAN’s programming decisions are based on what we believe will attract the widest audience possible. Those decisions are either validated or discounted by audience surveys, conducted independently by a company called Arbitron. Based on those “ratings” advertisers choose to invest in our programming to reach our audience, which they perceive to have value because of its size relative to the total population of our marketplace (greater Portland). If the listeners do not choose to tune into the program, it will be reflected in our ratings, which usually means advertisers will be less inclined to invest in our programming. A combination of poor audience numbers and lower advertising investment would ultimately lead us to change our thinking.
The woman interpreted this to mean that if advertisers stopped spending money on the Glenn Beck show, this would remove the show from WGAN’s airwaves, going so far as to reference the advertisers who have stopped purchasing air time on Glenn’s Fox program. She did not give me the opportunity to explain as she then ended the call, but if I had the opportunity I would have told her that advertisers rarely purchase specific programs on WGAN-more often, they purchase the station as a whole and run ads all day long. More importantly than that, though, is that she already has the power to dictate what happens on our airwaves-by not listening, she is making a choice. If enough people make that choice, then we will make changes. Boycotting advertisers is counter-productive: it hurts the advertisers, many of whom are local businesses who are just trying to promote their products. I guess my message is: if you don’t like our product, don’t punish someone else’s product to make a point to us. Not listening gets the point across much more directly.
Our final call to the newsroom today came from someone who had a concern about a story we ran about Senate President Libby Mitchell’s bill to extend paid sick time to employees of Maine businesses. He pointed out that the companies themselves, not the state, would be responsible for the paid sick time, and felt it was important for us to mention. Upon review of this story, we realized we could have been more clear on this point and have made changes for future newscasts.
Got feedback on any of these issues? Let us know.