Sticks Survey

U. S. villages and farms buy a large chunk of the consumer goods sold in the U. S. Last week a research committee, jointly sponsored by CBS and NBC, made public a report which gave a partial answer on how well radio was doing its job interesting and selling the farmer. The committee's researchers conducted 20,362 personal interviews on farms and in communities of less than 2,500 population in 96 sample counties scattered throughout the 48 States. What they found out, they consider a fairly accurate slant on the radio habits of the nation's 9,470,000 rural radio families:

> Sixty-nine percent of all rural homes have radios, highest sectional percentage, 96%, prevailing on the Pacific Coast, lowest, 53%, in the South. Of the rural radio families, 82.1% have automobiles, 16.5% of them with radios. Some farmers have sets in barns, on tractors and even in backhouses.

> In the Central States 12.8% of the radios are tuned in Monday to Friday at or before 6 a. m. Latest risers are on the Pacific Coast, where only 3.4% tune in at six. By 9 a. m. 25% of the radios in every U. S. village and farm are blaring; between 12 and 1 p. m. 28.1% are going; at 8:00 p. m. the peak is reached, with 61.7% of all sets in operation. By 10 p. m. most of the listeners are off to bed. But during the average day 89% of all rural U. S. radios have been turned on for a total of four hours, 47 minutes.

The committee asked no ruralite what his favorite programs were, but each household was asked whether it kept on hand any packaged cereals, coffee, cleanser; canned soup, milk, tomato or fruit juice; wrapped bread, kitchen or toilet soap; toothpaste or powder, face powder, lipstick or rouge. These are prime radio-advertised products. When the report was published the answers to this question were not included. The explanation: "It was believed . . . that pride would tend to inflate the figures of usage, particularly of products like lipstick and rouge, face powder, etc."

Less reserved or more inquisitive, CBS, whose supplementary survey used the same interviewers, quizzed 10,273 of the same people, last week let go all answers it could get. These would have CBS customers believe that fully four-fifths of all rural homes use packaged soap, cereal, coffee, cleanser; 92% use toothpaste or powder, 77% wrapped bread; that 89% of rural women use face powder, 66% lipstick or rouge. Least used were canned soup (49%), canned tomato or fruit juice (46%), condensed milk (37%). For CBS, the interviewers found out that 80.9% of the families questioned listened to CBS's ace, Major Bowes. NBC conducted a supplementary survey, too, by mail over a redefined rural area, wound up confident that NBC's and radio's No. 1 attraction, Charlie McCarthy, is outhitting the Major in the bush leagues as well as everywhere else.

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