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CAUGHT WITH YOUR HOOPER DOWN; A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!
by John C. Abbott, ©2013
(From Radio Recall, April 2013)
The scene is the boardroom of Amalgamated
Fondulator. Present are AF's Marketing Manager
and CEO, AF's advertising agency Sandbar
Quagmire, Flotsam and Jetsam, the lawyers from
Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, and the program
director from MBC - Monolithic Broadcasting
Company. The discussion centers on the small
fortune that AF is being asked to renew the 13-
week contract for the Fondufalor Weekly Comedy
Review, starring Rocko Romulus and his Mighty
Radio Review Actors.
The AF folks are nervous; $5,000 per week will
buy altot of fondulators. The going is rough for
the MBC folks and the advertisers. Finally
Snidely Farquhar, Fondulator's CEO finally asks
the pivotal question:"How do we know that
anyone is even listening to this program?"
That question was asked almost from the first
days of radio, and continues to be valid today.
The question originally arose due to the unique
nature of radio. The manager of a stage theater
vaudeville show or cinema can easily tell what is
selling by counting the ticket sales at the end of
the day.
Radio was different. Other than the programs
which had a real studio audience - who may have
been paid or otherwise lured into the studio, and
who were definitely queued as to when to applaud
and when to laugh, there was no real way to tell if
anyone was listening, unless you irritated
someone - then you got a letter!.
This was a scary situation for the sponsor, as
they were the ones who were footing the bill for
the program. Fortunately, during the period of
roughly 1920 through the early 1950's there were
several ways to determine who was listening.
Three different companies, Crossley, Hooper and
Neilson, undertook the task of trying to quantify
just who was listening.
Archibald Crossley
Archibald Crossley was a researcher who
started his own firm in 1926 to do consumer
surveys. In 1927, Crossley was asked by a
national company who was using radio
advertising to confirm the reception of their
programs in the markets where their ads were
sold. What Crossley found was a scandal - a
fraud on the part of local stations that took the
company's money for the ads, and then
substituted ads for local companies. Crossley's
reputation was madel
Using the fallout of the scam, Crossley
started a telephone sampling of listeners to
establish a program's popularity - and invented
the word "ratings· in the process. The popularity
of his surveys grew and in 1930 he started
network surveys in 33 cities. In 1934, the
American Association of Advertising Agencies
(AAAA) and the Association of National
Advertisers (ANA) established the Cooperative
Analysis of Broadcasting (CAB) whose goal was
to finance and marKet Crossley's surveys.
The Crossley Ratings were an audience
measurement system created to determine the
audience size of radio broadcasts between 1930
and 1935. Crossley conducted tests by calling the
homes and asking them what they had listened to
the previous night, so-called "counting the house"
or "Next Day Recall" Business was good, but
there was change in the wind by the name of
Claude E. Hooper.
Claude E. Hooper
Hooper was a Wall Street account exec until
the depression took away most of Wall Street.
Looking for a job, Hooper remembered a course
he had taken at Harvard which was taught by Dr
Daniel Starch. Hooper contacted Starch, and
joined his company, Daniel Starch & Staff as a
salesman for Starch's services, which included
radio surveys.
Along the way, Hooper met L. Montgomery
Clark, and the two of them formed Clark-Hooper
Inc. in 1934 to perform magazine based research.
Hooper realized earty on that the magazines were
upset that radio was stealing advertising dollars
and that the magazines felt that the Crossley
studies were misrepresenting radio's popularity.
Hooper and Clark ultimately came out with
"Yardsticks of the Air" in 1934, which suggested
that a better way to survey listeners was to use a
technique called "Telephone Coincidental" which
was based on calling listeners while a program
was on the air. This technique avoided trying to
recall what was listened to last night.
The C. E. Hooper Company was founded in
1935. after Clark and Hooper broke up, and
Hooper set out to provide information on
popularity of radio programs. The information
Hooper gathered allowed the radio networks
(NBC, CBS, ABC and Mutual) to charge
advertisers based on the popularity of a program,
with more being charged for a popular series than
a less popular series.
Crossley tried to distance himself from the
term ·Crossley Ratings· but Hooper was a born
salesman and realized the value of calling his
product "Hooperatings" Such was the influence
of Hooperatings that President Roosevelt
recognized them as the major rating system
within the industry. Roosevelt's recognition
allowed Hooper to participate in radio audience
measurements for the President's radio
addresses. Ultimately, seven of the top ten
Hooperatings were speeches given by Roosevelt.
In 1948, as the radio networks began venturing
into television, Hooper began measuring TV
ratings as well. However, in February 1950, the
company was bought by competitor A.C. Nielsen.
A.C Nielsen
Nielsen founded Nielsen Media Research in
1934, and his research area was tracking grocery
and pharmacy purchases. In 1943 Nielsen
branched out into radio using a devise called an
Audimeter to monitor when a radio was turned on,
how long it was on. and to which station it was
tuned to. Interestingly, Hooper had looked at this
device with Clark in 1936 and determined that it
had one flaw - it did not tell if anyone was actually
listening to the radio.
Nielsen was successful, but wanted to
expand, so in 1950 they bought C.E. Hooper
This purchase. along with their move into
television in 1948 allowed Nielsen to ultimately
become the primary source of audience
measurement information in the television
industry around the world. Along the way, radio
ratings gave way to TV ratings.
Hooperatings
Hooperatings were a hot topic during the
1940-195O's. However some radio actors did not
feel so approvingly of the rations. Bob Hope for
example called the Hooperatings "an ulcer with a
decimal point." Fred Allen. one of radio's most
active intemal critics also skewered the ratings. In
a skit with Edgar Bergen set in "heck" - hell did
not exist on radio· Charlie McCarthy asked Allen
how he had gotten so low. Allen replied, "I was
going along minding my own business. and the
new Hooperating came out."
After Allen claimed he could disprove the
Hoopers and failed, he was said to remark, "The
next time you see a radio comedian gray before
his time, his cheeks sunken and his step halt,
please understand that he isn't dying. His wife
hasn't left him. His children aren't sick. He isn't
going bankrupt. He's been caught with his
Hooperating down, that 's all. During Allen's last year on the air when he
was competing tooth-and·nail for ratings with Stop
the Music, a bad joke was usually followed by a
comment that it would have a bad effect on his
Hooperatings.
But it was not only the actors who watched
the Hooperatings - the networks eyed them as
well, sometimes to their detriment. More than
once the networks would juggle the schedule by
moving programs around to try and capture a time
slot· sometimes with disastrous results. "Network
Radio Ratings. 1932·1953" by Jim Ramsburg
details the Hooperatings by year, and details the
efforts of the networks to try and capture a time
segment.
The Hooperatings also played a part in
several major changes in the industry. In 1946,
Bing Crosby wanted to pre-record his program
onto tape. This was anathema to the ABC, who
wanted live programming, but Bing won this battle
by tying his recorded shows to his Hooperatings;
Bing agreed to return to live broadcasts if his
Hooper dropped below 12. It came close (12.2)
but an infusion of big-name guests - and higher
ratings· saved him and changed radio.
Likewise, when William Paley stole Jack
Benny from NBC in 1949. the sponsor. American
Tobacco, made Paley promise to pay them for
every Hooper point that Benny lost. Ultimately,
Paley never had to pay anything.
On a side note, the Hooperatings evaluated
only programs with sponsors. For that reason,
the author's favorite program, Yours Truly, Johnny
Dolllar only got a Hooperating once - during the
1952-53 season when it was sponsored by
Wrigley's. During that year, YT JD ranked 22nd -
tied with Fibber Magee and Molly - with a
Hooperating of 6.3. That rating was good enough
to get it into the top 25 programs, but not good
enough for a sustaining sponsor Even so, the
program lasted until the end of radio drama in
1962.
The Hooper, Crossley and Neilson ratings for radio ceased to be important in 1950, when
Neilson bought Hooper's network business and
concentrated on television. Hooper was still
around, but he concentrated on surveying local
radio.
Postscript: After looking at the "Hoopers" for their program.
Amalgamated Fondulator opted to move Rocko
from the radio studio to his favorite chair in the
unemployment office. The Hooperatings were off
the scale - the low end of the sale, so AF opted to
pull their sponsorship, and put the money into a
new line of fondulators. Such was the power of
the ratings, they allowed a sponsor to determine
who was listening, and by inference, how popular
their program was. So if you were not popular in
the polls, you risked a fate worse than death -no
radio program, or even worse, a move to
television!
Sources:
Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953 by Jim
Ramsburg
www.JimRamsburg.com
Audience Ratings: Radio, Television, Cable -
Revised edition by Hugh M Beville. Jr
(Googlebooks)
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