From the MCRFB web staff:
A 1965 Pulse Report: Audience Characteristics of Nine Detroit Radio Stations; Surveyed 1964 – 1965 for WKNR
Motor City Radio Flashbacks had just recently acquired a copy of the Detroit 1965 Pulse Report for radio station WKNR. You can find the report in the menu on the left, noted at the bottom bar under:
WKNR-AM: WKNR Pulse Survey 1965
This ’65 radio Pulse report gives a graphic, comprehensive study of where WKNR stood with its listeners overall, both by demographics and through the station’s ratings in the Detroit market during that time. The Pulse report was primarily based on which radio station Detroiters listened to (from 9 radio stations listed at the time) when this survey began in December, 1964, and by the time it was completed in January, 1965.
Questions in the survey varied in how listeners responded when polled individually in Detroit and in two surrounding counties. The percentage numbers was drawn collectively after the survey was conducted in Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties.
The WKNR listeners response were predicated loosely by the simple (and pre-selected) Pulse questions in general. You will note questions to the respondents as surveyed varied, such as:
What type of automobile WKNR listeners were driving during the time; which department stores they frequently had shopped; which lending institution did they bank; whether they owned their homes or not; what type of career jobs respondents occupied; and what range of yearly household income listeners generated for their families.
In reading into this manual, this survey is in a sense, historic today. If all else, it reflects by percentages and demographics by numbers, of what mostly comprised of the basic lifestyles of Detroiters and the city’s population in that time, based on the questions answered. In contrast, this manuscript is a look back in how we lived in the Detroit area some forty-seven years ago, when this Pulse report was first commissioned in the interest of the Knorr Broadcasting Corporation and its holdings. It was a study implemented directly for station management. Ultimately, it gave a larger window where they stood as a broadcasting medium to a community it once served.
But this was Detroit in 1965. And it was a city which at one time stood tall, was well and vibrant with a population of 1.5 million residents.
In his forward, Walter Patterson, Executive VP for The Knorr Broadcasting Group, had stated, “…we have lived in this market for so long we knew what everybody was doing, what they liked, and what they disliked. We knew, that is, until, after a cold impartial, three-month study of the market, we discovered that our feelings about the market were technically and practically unfounded.”
While the survey was centered primarily for WKNR and of its Detroit listenership (please read the WP foreword), it also included the listeners’ taste in how well they were receptive to each of the other eight radio stations which had spanned the AM dial at the time, respectively. Each given answer was accrued and tabulated, as finalized, through the numbers Pulse had polled for this WKNR study in December 1964 into January 1965.
As to where the station had stood in the ratings overall, by mid-1965, according to the Billboard trade publication dated July 17, 1965, WKNR was the most listened to radio station in the Detroit metropolitan area. Number one in the radio ratings at 44%. Still, as it was, when this survey was first conducted from December 1, 1964, through January 31, 1965, WKNR was on top in the battle for the Top 40 crown in the Motor City. The Pulse study was completed and finalized for WKNR in March, 1965.
You can now view the entire WKNR Pulse Study in its entirety, by clicking here. This study gives an insightful view in how effective the radio medium had become for the “radio time buyer” (the advertising sector) overall in general. It was based on the nine stations as polled, based on the nine stations’ own numerical ranking and based on the nine stations’ popularity overall during a given broadcast day when this Pulse was authorized by the Knorr Broadcasting Corporation and WKNR for 1965.
The bound manuscript is complete and is presented here in its entirety.
The report is 75 pages in length. In reviewing, again, this radio manuscript presentation is 1960s Motor City historic, inasmuch how Detroiters lived here in their city during the mid-decade. Spanning the radio dial 1964 and 1965, this was Detroit in time and place according to PULSE.
MCRFB ADDENDUM: Along with this particular manuscript, there are two photographs seen on the very last page, on page 75. Just who were these three lucky 1964 WKNR Beatles concert winners, faces without names, seen accompanied with Bob Green . . . and one wonders what had become of these three young ladies and, where are they today?
Nearly five-decades later, we are left to only speculate and wonder.
