March 27th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
The Wittenburg Trail web site pointed to a statement written by David Strand, available on lcms.org.
Strand delivers some hard numbers on Issues., Etc., which I appreciate. Unfortunately the listening numbers for the radio show come from Spring 2004 and 2005. The petition at the moment has 4x the number of average listeners from three years ago. The live internet stats are more recent, about 64 average listeners for the Monday through Friday slot.
Personally, my listening is left out of the statistics. The corporate firewall and my real job prevent my listening live, so I download the show and listen that way. Download statistics would be interesting.
I understand the Synod’s desire to make the most of the dollars it collects from member churches. I am concerned with the use of the term “shortfall,” as if it expected Issues., Etc., and KFUO to make a profit. If that were the case, the radio station and the show wouldn’t need the Synod. I imagine there are plenty of LCMS programs “mission movements” that have large deficits worthy of equal consideration.
Pastor Wilken has a statement of his own. His patience is to be commended.
Update: Pastor Weedon has posted Issues, Etc., MP3 download statistics. Wittenburg Trail has combined the numbers into a graph that shows the number of Issues, Etc., downloads in comparison with everything else KFUO offers.
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March 27th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I’m not sure they can even track the downloads. Yes they can go to iTunes and see those numbers, but what of us that just leftclicked them into a folder to be burned onto a CD for the ride home.
I often listen to the show back in my lab, but in the commen work area, it would’ve been inappropriate to do so even if my nickname for years has been “Father Frank”. Nobody would have minded but it would have been like those annoying knocks on the door Saturday morning with people blabbering on about some tower to be watched.
Podcasts were how I listened to Issues, Etc. I suspect we were not the only ones.
I would love to see all the numbers (financial and otherwise) for all of KFUO. The big questions still go unanswered. And since our beloved synod is being run by numbers guys who love to count things, one would think that such information would gladly be distributed.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
“I’m not sure they can even track the downloads. Yes they can go to iTunes and see those numbers, but what of us that just leftclicked them into a folder to be burned onto a CD for the ride home.”
Any web server can keep a log of URLs that have been clicked. It’s harder to see what was completely downloaded, but seeing what was accessed at what time is fairly straightforward.
March 27th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
In that case, we have another omission. This just keeps getting “better”.
Oh, wait, maybe he doesn’t know that either… I mean, if he is just too inept to consider podcasts as a viable media outreach tool, shouldn’t we give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows nothing of how url clicks can be tracked.
That’s what we do, we give the benefit of the doubt that he is not capable of knowing how this works, even though people like David L. Strand is supposed to be an Executive Director for the Board for Communication Services.
March 27th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Having some interest in commercial radio, and knowing how quite a bit of this works, I have to honestly say, in my opinion, Mr. Strand is not being completely honest. Actually, I think this letter shows many things to me, none of them being good.