Public Radio Contributions Up

For all the talk about ending funding to NPR (remember that hubub?), public radio is doing quite well thanks to contributions from their listeners. From this morning's Tom Taylor column...

Not only are some prominent public radio stations regularly scoring the #1, #2 or #3 positions in some very large Nielsen markets – they’re also scoring with the pocketbooks of their P1 fans. A new Corporation for Public Broadcasting study finds that while the number of individual financial contributors to public TV dropped from 3.9 million to 3,030,000 between 2003 and 2013 – the comparable category for public radio shows growth, from 2,520,000 to 2,850,000. And the average amount per contributor is now slightly higher for radio than for TV. Public TV’s getting $134 per person in response to those late-night pledge-a-thons and oldies concerts. Public radio’s harvesting $137. Total support for public radio in 2013 was $1.08 billion, with public TV at $1.69 billion.