How Many Listeners?

"Radio exists," says Claude Ernest Hooper, "only in its statistics." There is every reason why he should say so: Hooper is Radio's No. 1 Statistician. On the basis of his reports, radio men hire & fire talent, buy & sell time, and set their watches.

Last week, confident of his hold on the industry, Mr. Hooper announced a boost in prices, as of July 1. Hooper's fortnightly "telephone coincidental" surveys will cost subscribers an average 15% more.

Biggest howls came from the four networks, whose bills will be doubled (from $2,700 to $5,400 monthly). The Statistician had a ready answer: the networks, with an avid interest in every Hooperating, ought to pay more than the advertising agencies, with an interest in only a few.

Radio, as Norman Corwin has observed, "long ago conspired in its own enslavement by raising to Godship Hooper . . . and basing its main thought and operations upon a schedule of percentages." And Hooper has been in a pretty good position to name his own price since his only major rival, the industry-financed Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting, Inc., folded last September.

The Hooperatings on which radio bases all its calculations are nothing more than a number of answers to telephone calls, translated into percentages. In 36 cities*--spots where all four networks are in equal competition --Hooperaters go to work twice a month, calling random numbers from the telephone directory. The quizzers ask stock questions ("Are you listening to the radio? To what program? What station?"). The Hooperaters are mostly retired telephone operators ("the Bell system turns people into absolute automatons").

Beating Out the Figures. The "telephone coincidental" reports are gathered, run through I.B.M. machines, beaten into percentages and published every two weeks in "the pocket piece," a small green booklet that is every huckster's Bible. Every network hour is tabulated and every commercially sponsored program is rated by "points." Example: the 31.1 top mark of Bob Hope in the last Hooperating means that 31.1 out of every hundred persons telephoned while the Hope show was going on told the Hooperaters that they were listening to Hope. People who did not answer the phone were counted as not listening to Hope.

Hooper makes no attempt to judge a program's merit. The only thing radio men are panting to know is: "How many people listened?" The service makes no claim even to an answer on that. Each Hooper point does not necessarily equal a million listeners (e.g., 31,100,000 for Hope). Hooper says that that rule-of-thumb may be true, but as far as he is concerned, it is just a huckster's sales pitch.

Going on ten years old. the Hooper agency employs 500 people (including twelve experts in New York whose only function, says Hooper, is to smooth the ruffled hair of hucksters). Its income last year was $983,000. For 1947, things are looking up.

* In 32 other cities Hooper provides surveys for local stations.

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