Walrus Research

Localism and Morning Edition – 2007

How listeners evaluate local newscasts and features
within NPR’s Morning Edition

Following on last year’s groundbreaking Sense of Place study, the Local News Initiative’s big research project for 2007 is Localism and Morning Edition.

Morning Edition is public radio’s most important program, yet what listeners actually hear varies widely as stations insert their local newscasts and news features.

In consultation with the Morning Edition Grad School, Walrus Research designed a series of program testing sessions to determine how listeners evaluate the local coverage that stations insert into Morning Edition. Over 300 listeners used electronic response units to enter their moment-to-moment reaction to a variety of airchecks carefully selected from NPR stations around the country.

The research is funded by NPR through its Local News Initiative.

The overall goal of this research:

To build audience for NPR's Morning Edition and to enhance the value of NPR's Morning Edition to listeners, thereby increasing revenue from listeners and underwriters.

Download our complete research report including analysis of data and written verbatims.

Download our presentation from the September 2007 PRPD conference.

Download EARS videographs that show how listeners reacted to airchecks:

Governor 2-Way Interview