ABSTRACT
Audiences are the target of a lot of research. For example, a survey found that 40% of men read on the toilet, whereas only 14% listen to the radio there. 1 Format-oriented books about radio programming tend to treat audiences as different flavors of demographic pie - that is, they describe what kind of audience tends to be generated by which kind of programming. This chapter explores audiences from a "consumerist" standpoint. It looks at the listeners needs, deSires, and expectations, some of them quite apart from the programming radio typically provides. Given the near-infinite variability of human nature, it would not be sensible to expect to find even a simple majority of radio listeners fitting most of the attributes that are described. Matching up formats with the listeners they generate is not the idea of this chapter. Instead, this chapter describes what drives people to listen and respond to radio in the first place, by paying primary attention to human needs, deSires, and expectations.
