A local public media organization had been investing considerable resources into its newsroom, leveraging a highly-trusted brand and ownership of multiple content platforms (TV, radio, and digital properties). New leadership at the organization sought the assistance of City Square Associates to develop a data-driven strategy for growing its audience in the coming years, and connecting its unique news content with news consumers from the market that have the appetite for it. The broad idea was The PBS NewsHour, public broadcasting’s marquee national news program, regularly conducts research among news users in order to understand their current needs and preferences. But as news audiences continue to move from linear to digital media platforms, it has become especially important to understand the profile of news users who are consuming a show like the NewsHour on a non-owned media platform like YouTube.
to have audience research that would answer this fundamental question: Which groups within the general population show the best potential for becoming regular consumers of their news content, and what would it take to reach them?

In order to do this, City Square collaborated with the program’s digital team to design a method for delivering the survey link to its YouTube audience via pinned message in the platform. Using this approach, we were able to reach over 1,000 viewers of the PBS NewsHour on YouTube, alongside of nearly 2,000 viewers of national and international news shows in the general population, and another 10,000 others who interact with the brand on its owned channels. The result was an illuminating portrait of how the NewsHour’s YouTube audience compares with its audience on other platforms.

We were able to establish clearly that YouTube consumers of the NewsHour’s content share many of the same vales that viewers of the NewsHour have on other platforms: esteem for the show’s balanced perspective, in-depth coverage of important issues, and emphasis on civil discourse. At the same time, the research confirmed our hypothesis that aggressive promotion and distribution of the NewsHour on this non-owned, non-linear media platform was helping to build an audience that is considerably younger and more ethnically and racially diverse than the audience found on traditional, linear television.