publisher.It is difficult,if not impossible,to determine when the first readership study was done.In most cases,the documents were confidential,and would not have been widely distributed outside the companies that had done the research.Both Leo Bogart and David Nord estimate that newspapers began doing audience studies in the 1930s.The Curtis surveys were done in the 1910s.Even so,others conducted readership research before Curtis.Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern University surveyed Chicago daily newspaper readers for his book Psychology of Advertising in 1908.In 1911,R.O.Eastman of Kellogg's conducted his first study of magazine readers-a post card survey for about fifty members of the Association of National Advertising Managers.See Leo Bogart,Press and Public:Who Reads What,When,Where,and Why in American Newspapers,2nd ed.(Hillsdale,N.J.:Lawrence Erlbaum,1989),p.76;Nord,“The Children of Isaiah Thomas:Notes on the Historiography of Journalism and of the Book in America,”Occasional Papers in the History of the Book in American Culture(Worcester,Mass.:American Antiquarian Society),p.19;Lawrence C.Lockley,“Notes on the History of Marketing Research,”Journal of Marketing,14(April 1950),pp.733-736;C.S.Duncan,Commercial Research(New York:Macmillan,1919),pp.106-109;Robert Bartels,The Development of Marketing Thought(Homewood,Ill.:Richard D.Irwin,1962);W.D.Scott,The Psychology of Advertising(Boston:Small,Maynard&Scott,1908).
Although readership studies of the Post and Journal would later become a regular part of Curtis'research,those two publications were left mostly to the guises of their editors in the 1910s and early 1920s.Although no readership study of the Journal was done until the 1920s,the Curtis advertising department was directed in 1915 to analyze the magazine's editorial correspondence,presumably to gain more-specific information about readers.See“Condensed Report of Advertising Conference,”p.13.They were vastly successful,and the company seemed to see no need to apply extensive research to successful products.Rather,it used readership studies to try to better understand its two newest publications-Country Gentleman and the Public Ledger-publications that,although growing,never met with the immense profitability achieved by the Post and the Journal.Goulden says Country Gentleman was profitable for only twelve of the forty-five years Curt is owned it.The company killed the publication in the 1950s.He also says advertiser support of the Public Ledger never kept up with the spending on an extensive and expensive worldwide news organization that Curtis had formed.See Joseph C.Goulden,The Curtis Caper(New York:G.P.Putnam Sons,1965),pp.36,80.
The first Country Gentleman survey looked partly at reader wants,but it was still primarily aimed at gathering information for the advertising department.The purpose of the survey,Parlin wrote,“was to define the characteristics of these readers,their agricultural activities,their habits of buying,and their interest in the Country Gentleman.”The questions he asked helped define readers as people with money and land,and the ability to make major capital purchases-such things as tools and machinery.More than 90%lived within twenty-five miles of a trading center,indicating that they“can be cultivated for the sale of products having a distribution in city stores.”“An Inquiry Among Readers of the Country Gentleman,”Vol.A,1916,CP,Box 46.A follow-up survey in 1920 sought much the same information,but broke the survey into more geographic areas and identified the brands of products that readers bought.It also sought to determine why non-rural residents purchased Country Gentleman.“The Country Gentleman Questionnaire,”1920,CP,Box 68.
The next year,the readership survey was disguised as a contest,asking subscribers to submit essays about“Why I subscribe to the Country Gentleman?”See“Announcement in the Country Gentleman,”Curtis“Dope Book.”The announcement is in the form of a letter dated April 29,1921.The contest offered$50 for the best letter,$25 for second place,$10 for the next five,and$5 for the next ten.The company received 4,463 replies,which it tabulated by sex,number written by typewriter,occupation,reasons and features preferred.The company conducted follow-up surveys in 1925,1926,1931 and 1940.Digests of Principal Research Department Studies,Vols.I and II(Philadelphia:Curtis Publishing Company,1946),CP,Box 119.The Public Ledger survey didn't seek to define the newspaper's readership-Curtis did that itself in choosing whom it interviewed-but was made instead“to formulate concrete suggestions for the betterment”of the editorial product.How,in other words,could the newspaper attract more readers The survey was made at the request of Ledger editors,and of Cyrus Curtis,who had purchased the newspaper in 1911 in hopes of turning it into a national daily that would help boost the image of Philadelphia.The Public Ledger survey was done solely by interview.Company representatives conducted more than nine hundred interviews in the Phiadelphia region during 1919 and 1920.The most extensive interviews were done with businessmen,political figures,labor leaders,professors and teachers,and women considered to have influence.Brief interviews were done with newspaper sellers and distributors.