Obituary: Joanne Church, Small Station Ratings Advocate

In Maryland, Joanne Church, the President of Radio Research Consortium (RRC) and a leading figure in bringing audience measurement data to individual public radio stations in the US, has died this week aged 75, after a short illness.

After graduating in 1971 from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. with a BA in Political Science, Church worked at radio ratings firm Arbitron (now part of Nielsen) for ten years, designing data processing systems and managing Production and Radio Market Reports. She co-founded RRC in 1981 with husband Tom, and immediately partnered with Arbitron to negotiate a group purchase of audience measurement data, making it affordable for individual public radio stations. The firm also ran workshops to educate public radio managers and programmers in working with audience metrics like 'Cume', 'AQH' and 'Share', and produced Audience Ratings: A Primer for Non-Commercial Stations, in 1986 in collaboration with consultant Peter Dominowski.

After Tom's death Joanne became RRC's President, in 2005, and the following year she led a coalition to renegotiate the Arbitron deal when changes threatened to derail the provision of key data. In 2008 DRNO covered the signing of a multi-year deal allowing RRC to sublicense data for the top 50 markets from Arbitron's diary and Portable People Meter (PPM) syndicated radio ratings services to non-commercial stations and their supporting organizations. As recently as 2020 Joanne and the RRC renewed a version of the agreement, now with Nielsen, allowing the sublicensing of the latter's system of rolling sample ratings, Continuous Diary Measurement.

She explained the importance of the data in the business of smaller players: 'As non-commercial stations seek underwriters and plan programming and marketing strategies, we can provide them with the sophisticated insights that put radio on a level playing field with other forms of media'. RRC today has more than 300 subscribers among public radio and non-commercial religious broadcasters nationwide. Joanne's contributions were recognized with the Public Radio Regional Organizations' PRRO award in 2008.

Stephen Schram, Chair of the RRC Board, comments: 'Joanne Church's reputation as a gentle but mightily informed presence in audience ratings and measurement gave individual stations market intelligence and insights they could not have easily achieved without RRC's collaboration and negotiation'.

RRC's Carol Jacobs will now serve as Acting President, and the company says it will 'soon' announce the hiring of a Chief Operating Officer. Memorial arrangements for Joanne Church are not yet finalised but will be updated at www.rrconline.org .

Thanks to RRC and to www.radioworld.com for information in this obituary.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.