A Message for the Masses, but Are They Tuning In?

Does anyone listen to the President's weekly radio address? The broadcast, usually recorded on Fridays as a filler for slow-news Saturdays, is one of the little-noticed but crucial ways that President Bush tries to drive home his message, even if the White House says it has no clear idea of how many people actually listen to it. "I think it's definitely in the millions," said Jeanie Mamo, the White House director of media affairs. But Ms. Mamo, who oversees the radio broadcasts, admitted that she was in the realm of speculation because the White House did not monitor how many of the 14,000 radio stations in the nation carried the president's words. Arbitron, the radio ratings service, did not know either, although Thom Mocarsky, Arbitron's vice president for communications, said there were on average 43 million Americans listening to radio when the address is aired. The bottom line for President Bush is that the huge radio audience is less of a challenge to crack than television in prime time, when the networks sometimes balk at breaking into programming to carry a presidential speech. "It's easier to get five minutes on radio stations on a Saturday morning than it is to shake loose TV time," Mr. Mocarsky said.
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Elisabeth Bumiller]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/politics/17letter.html
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