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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

5 Questions about the Summer Stealth Drive

As listeners know, our first-ever Summer Stealth Drive was a success. It went over its goal 11 hours early on Monday July 27th, thus eliminating the usual summer 3- or 4-day marathon. Going past the goal is a great boost for the station as we begin our 2015-16 Fiscal Year. For those who want to dive a little deeper, we have some some questions and answers. But first, a couple of definitions:

  • Stealth drive: three weeks of short messages aired during natural program breaks; new on WHQR in Summer 2015
  • Traditional drive: usually a week, with teams of "pitchers" and guests, pre-empting program segments and with more high-intensity messaging

1) What were the final totals, and how do they compare with previous summer drives?

We received $72,222 in pledges as of Monday night July 27th. That was declared the official end of this Stealth drive, though money continues to come in the mail from a letter that we sent out prior to the start. This is our highest total ever for a summer drive. Mail totals were a little down from 2014, but web pledges were way up. By design, we had no dollar challenges in this one, and no telephone pledges. The average amount per pledge from the web was also a record for summertime.

We'll announce contest winners for the iPad and $500 gift certificates from Transplanted Garden, Spectrum, Learning Express and Pomegranate Books soon. Thanks to these businesses for their support!

New member pledges were down a little (see below), but not the lowest for a summer drive. Pledges for News alone strongly outpaced those for Classical Music alone, (60% vs. 7%), but 33% said "Both".

2) How did listeners like it?

Judging from comments on the pledge forms, listener response was strongly favorable. A very few questioned whether "no interruptions" was really accurate (see below), but they were far outweighed by the other view.

But consider this: the Stealth drive took 3 weeks to complete, and resulted in a total that, while very good for summer, is less than half what we typically raise in the fall and spring. In a sense, the many listeners per day who call in or web in during a traditional drive are voting their approval of the station and its potential, even if many don't actively "like" the drive. These two types of results should each be seen in the light of the other.

3) What are the disadvantages?

It's been clear from stations all over the country for a long time that the best (really, the ONLY) way stations can draw NEW members is in the latter days of a traditional, full-fledged 7 day drive. We did have new listeners contact us (55 of them, hooray!) but the ratio in this kind of drive is smaller than in the traditional drives. Even to avoid natural attrition, much less grow, we must see a higher percentage of new members. Also, we simply don't know yet if this approach is one whose novelty will soon wear off, or one we can build on for the long term.

4) What does "not interrupting programming" mean?

We were very intentional in keeping all our messages to 30 seconds or less throughout the period July 6 - 27. And they occurred only in natural breaks in the programs -- time set aside by producers for local announcements, weather, PSAs and the like. In contrast, a traditional drive has multiple voices, pre-emption of program segments, and more high-intensity pitching.

Still, some listeners asked "Why are you interrupting programming to tell us you're not interrupting programming?" To most, we think the distinction is clear.

5) Will we do it again?

Good question. We liked it; we think listeners like it. But we don't want to have it wear out its welcome, or peak in its effectiveness. Given that it took 3 weeks to raise $70,000, it's not clear if 3 weeks would be capable of raising what we generally must have in the fall and spring to meet our budget.

We also love our Partnership Challenge drives in the spring and fall, which brings in hundreds of volunteers from nonprofit groups and gives them great exposure on the air.

We'll be looking carefully at results from Summer 2015 to see what lessons we can learn. And you can help! Send us your thoughts about the campaign, or the station in general, to feedback@whqr.org.

Thank you for a great campaign!