1GUYS IN SUITS WITH CHARTS:

A significant change in the practice of U.S. public radio during the 1980s was the ac-ceptance of audience research as an essential management function. In commercial broadcasting the need for audience research has long been evident: to provide the institu-tional knowledge used by advertisers and broadcasters to buy and sell audiences (Beville, 1988; Buzzard, 1990; Webster and Lichty, 1991). For many years, however, public radio managers widely resisted the conduct and application of audience re-search as marking the ascendance of market considerations over public broadcasting’s social and cultural imperatives. Nonetheless, during the 1980s what has been described as a “research revolution ” swept across U.S. public radio (Giovannoni, 1991, p. 19). To-day, audience research is extensively used by public radio managers, both network and station-based, when making decisions about programming and fundraising, and a cottage industry of consultants has emerged. The degree to which audience research has been embraced by the public radio community became evident when research consultants Tom Church and David Giovannoni were honored with awards for service to public radio during the 1994 Public Radio Confer