“What Do We Really Know about Daytime Serial Listeners?”

Excerpt from Herzog, Herta, “What Do We Really Know about Daytime Serial Listeners?” In Radio Research 1942-1943, ed. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank N. Stanton (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944) (permission Robert Lazarsfeld and Simon & Schuster) 

Excerpted by Elana Levine

Contributor’s note: Footnotes from the original. I have preserved the style of the original notes. 

A preliminary study based on 100 intensive interviews ¹ suggests three major types of gratification experienced by listeners to daytime serials. Some listeners seem to enjoy the serials merely as a means of emotional release. They like "the chance to cry" which the serials provide; they enjoy "the surprises, happy or sad." The opportunity for expressing aggressiveness is also a source of satisfaction. Burdened with their own problems, listeners claim that it "made them feel better to know that other people have troubles, too."

On the one hand, the sorrows of the serial characters are enjoyed as compensation for the listener's own troubles.

Thus a woman who had a hard time bringing up her two children after her husband's death, mentions the heroine of Hilltop House as one of her favorites, feeling that she "ought not to get married ever in order to continue the wonderful work she is doing at the orphanage." This respondent compensates for her own resented fate by wishing a slightly worse one upon her favorite story character: preoccupied by her own husband's death she wants the heroine to have no husband at all and to sacrifice herself for orphan children, if she, the listener, must do so for her own.

On the other hand, in identifying themselves and their admittedly minor problems with the suffering heroes and heroines of the stories, the listeners find an opportunity to magnify their own woes. This is enjoyed if only because it expresses their "superiority" over others who have not had these profound emotional experiences.

A second and commonly recognized form of enjoyment concerns the opportunities for wishful thinking provided in listening. While certain people seem to go all out and "drown" their troubles in listening to the events portrayed in the serials, others use them mainly to fill in gaps of their own life, or to compensate for their own failures through the success pattern of the serials.

Thus a rather happily married woman whose husband happens to be chronically ill, listens to Vic and Sade mainly for the "funny episodes," pretending that they happen to herself and her husband.  A woman whose daughter has run away from home to marry and whose husband "stays away five nights a week," lists The Goldbergs and The O'Neills as her favorites, each portraying a happy family life and a successful wife and mother.

A third and commonly unsuspected form of gratification concerns the advice obtained from listening to daytime serials. The stories are liked because they "explain things" to the inarticulate listener. Furthermore, they teach the listener appropriate patterns of behavior. "If you listen to these programs and something turns up in your own life, you would know what to do about it" is a typical comment, expressing the readiness of women to use these programs as sources of advice.

A third and commonly unsuspected form of gratification concerns the advice obtained from listening to daytime serials. The stories are liked because they "explain things" to the inarticulate listener. Furthermore, they teach the listener appropriate patterns of behavior. "If you listen to these programs and something turns up in your own life, you would know what to do about it" is a typical comment, expressing the readiness of women to use these programs as sources of advice.

Daytime Serials as Sources of Advice

The observations in this preliminary case survey were so striking that it was decided to test the matter on a larger scale. Therefore, in the summer of I942, the respondents in the Iowa survey who listen to daytime serials were asked the following question:

Do these programs help you to deal better with the problems in your own everyday life? Yes - N Never thought about it that way - Don't know -

Of some 2,500 listeners, 41 per cent claimed to have been helped and only 28 per cent not to have been helped. The remainder held that they had never thought about it that way or that they did not know, or refused to answer the question. 

On the basis of numerous tabulations designed to identify the types of women who consider themselves "helped" by listening to radio serials, two conclusions can be drawn. The less formal education a woman has, the more is she likely to consider these programs helpful. This corroborates a previous observation that less-educated women probably have fewer sources from which to learn "how to win friends and influence people" and are therefore more dependent upon daytime serials for this end.

We find also that on all educational levels those women who think they worry more than other people, more frequently find relief in listening to serials than women who say they worry less. Both results are summarized in Table 8. Each figure indicates, for the given class of listeners, the proportion of women claiming that the serials help them. It will be seen that the figures in the first line (worries more) are always higher than the corresponding figures in the second line (worries less), and that there is an increase from left to right, that is, with decreasing education of the respondents.

Table 8: Proportion of Listeners to Daytime Serials Who Are Being Helped by Listening to Them (Classified by Education and Relative Extent of Worrying)

The proportion of those who feel helped also increases with the number of stories heard.  Whereas among those who listen to one serial only, 32 per cent said they had been helped, 50 per cent of those who listen to six or more serials claim to have been helped. This is not surprising because we would expect those women who are more ardent listeners to impute beneficial effects to serial dramas.

But these overall figures do not yet give us a clear idea of what women mean when they talk about such "help." For the respondents in the Iowa survey, we have no additional information. We can, however, draw upon the results of some 150 case studies of serial listeners in New York and Pittsburgh. Interviewers ² were instructed to obtain complete examples of advice gleaned from daytime serials. They were cautioned to secure accounts of concrete experiences and not rest content with general assertions of aid derived from serials.

Judging from this information, the spheres of influence exerted by the serials are quite diversified. The listeners feel they have been helped by being told how to get along with other people, how to "handle" their husbands or their boyfriends, how to "bring up" their children.

I think Papa David helped me to be more cheerful when Fred, my husband, comes home. I feel tired and instead of being grumpy, I keep on the cheerful side. The Goldbergs are another story like that. Mr. Goldberg comes home scolding and he never meant it. I sort of understand Fred better because of it. When he starts to shout, I call him Mr. Goldberg. He comes back and calls me Molly. Husbands do not really understand what a wife goes through. These stories have helped me to understand that husbands are like that. If women are tender, they are better off. I often feel that if my sister had had more tenderness she would not be divorced today. I saw a lot of good in that man.

Bess Johnson shows you how to handle children. She handles all ages. Most mothers slap their children. She deprives them of something. That is better. I use what she does with my children.

The listeners feel they have learned how to express themselves in a particular situation.

When Clifford's wife died in childbirth the advice Paul gave him I used for my nephew when his wife died.

They have learned how to accept old age or a son going off to the war.

I like Helen Trent. She is a woman over 35. You never hear of her dyeing her hair!  She uses charm and manners to entice men and she does. If she can do it, why can't I? I am fighting old age, and having a terrible time. Sometimes I am tempted to go out and fix my hair. These stories give me courage and help me realize I have to accept it.

In Woman in White the brother was going off to war. She reconciled herself, that he was doing something for his country. When I listened it made me feel reconciled about my son—that mine is not the only one. In the story the brother is very attached to the family—he tells them not to worry, that he would be all right and would come back.

They get advice on how to comfort themselves when they are worried.

It helps you to listen to these stories. When Helen Trent has serious trouble she takes it calmly. So you think you'd better be like her and not get upset.

They are in a position to advise others by referring them to the stories.

I always tell the woman upstairs who wants my advice, to listen to the people on the radio because they are smarter than I am. She is worried because she did not have any education and she figures that if her daughter grows up, she would be so much smarter than she was. I told her to listen to Aunt Jenny to learn good English. Also, you can learn refinement from Our Gal Sunday. I think if I told her to do something and something would happen, I would feel guilty.  If it happens from the story, then it is nobody's fault.

The desire to learn from the programs is further confirmed by the fact that one-third of 100 listeners specified problems which they would like to have presented in a serial. A few quotations will serve to illustrate these choices:

When a man's disposition changes suddenly after being married for a long time. He starts gambling and to be unfaithful. What's the explanation?

I should like to know how much a daughter should give her mother from the money she makes. I give everything I earn to my mother. Do I have to?

Whether I should marry if I have to live with my mother-in-law. A story which would teach people not to put things over.

About religious and racial differences.

Unquestionably then, many listeners turn to the stories for advice and feel they get it. Nonetheless, the matter is not quite so simple as it seems.

A question suggested by the quoted comments concerns the adequacy of the aid and comfort. The woman who has learned to deprive her children of something rather than "to slap them" seems to be substituting one procedure for the other without an understanding of the underlying pedagogical doctrine. It is doubtful whether the relationship between a wife and her husband is put on a sounder and more stable basis when she has learned to realize that "men do not understand what their wives have to go through." One might wonder how much the bereaved nephew appreciated, at his wife's death, the speech his aunt had borrowed from her favorite story.

A second question concerns the extent of the influence. Frequently the advice seems confined to good intentions without any substantial influence on basic attitudes. An example of this may be found in the following remarks of a woman who listens to serials because the people in them are so "wonderful":

They teach you how to be good. I have gone through a lot of suffering but I still can learn from them.

Yet, this same woman, when asked whether she disliked any program, answered:

I don't listen to The Goldbergs. Why waste electricity on the Jews? Obviously, the "goodness" she was "learning" had not reached the point of materially affecting her attitude towards a minority group.  In the same context, we may note that the advice derived from a serial is often doled out to other people, to sisters, or neighbors, thus providing the listener with the status of an adviser without its responsibilities.

Thirdly, the women who claim to have profited from the serials frequently think of quite unrealistic situations. Thus, one listener felt she had learned considerably from a story in which the heroine suddenly came into a great deal of money; the story character was concerned with keeping her children from profligate waste. Although the listener felt there was no prospect of ever having so much money herself, nonetheless she considered that this episode offered valuable advice:

It is a good idea to know and to be prepared for what I would do with so much money.

Very likely, the advice obtained from that story served as a substitute for the condition of its applicability. Similarly, the wishful thinking connected with such "potential" advice is brought out in the following account of a young housekeeper:

I learn a lot from these stories. I often figure if anything like that happened to me what I would do. Who knows if I met a crippled man, would I marry him? If he had money I would.  In this story (Life Can Be Beautiful), he was a lawyer, so it was really quite nice. These stories teach you how things come out all right.

The overall formula for the help obtained from listening seems to be in terms of "how to take it." This is accomplished in various ways. The first of these is outright wishful thinking. The stories "teach" the Panglossian doctrine that "things come out all right." In a less extreme form, a claim on a favorable turn of events is established by the listener's taking a small preliminary step which accords with a pattern established in a serial. This may be illustrated by the following comment of a middle-aged listener:

In Helen Trent the girl Jean is in love with this playwright. She used to be fat and he did not pay any attention to her . . . I am fat and I got to get thin. That story taught me that it is dangerous to reduce all by yourself. Helen Trent took that girl to a doctor. That's just what I did. I went to the doctor last night. I am going to start the diet next week.

This listener actually saw a doctor about her weight. She postponed starting her diet for "next week." By following the serial's "advice" to this extent, she seems to feel assured of having taken sufficient steps to guarantee herself a result as romantic as that in the serial. (By reducing, Jean, the story character, won the love of a man who had not cared for her before.)

A second way in which the listeners are helped to accept their fate is by learning to project blame upon others.  Thus one of the previously quoted listeners obtains "adjustment" to her marital problems by finding out that husbands never understand their wives. Thirdly, the listeners learn to take things by obtaining a ready-made formula of behavior which simply requires application. References such as "Don't slap your children, but deprive them of something" characterize this type of learning. Listeners, worried about problems confronting them, learn to take things "calmly," not to get "excited" about them. As one person said:

I learned that if anything is the matter, do not dwell on it or you go crazy.

Calmness in the face of crises is certainly a useful attitude. However, it is not always sufficient for a solution of the problems.

These data point to the great social responsibility of those engaged in the writing of daytime serials. There can be no doubt that a large proportion of the listeners take these programs seriously and seek to apply what they hear in them to their own personal lives. Much of this application seems somewhat dubious if measured by the yardstick of real mastery of personal problems. No mass communication can fully safeguard itself against abused application. On the other hand, the argument that the primary purpose of daytime serials is entertainment rather than education does not apply here.  The writers of daytime serials must live up to the obligations to which the influence of their creations, however unintended, commits them. Both the obligation and the opportunity for its successful execution seem particularly great in these times of war.

The audience to daytime serials comprises a cross-section of almost half of all American women. Thus the radio industry and the Office of War Information seem quite justified in their effort to use these programs as a vehicle for war messages. We shall have to tell how personal losses should be borne and overcome by work and understanding of higher purposes instead of being submitted to passively as undeserved suffering. We shall have to combat prejudice and wishful thinking by information and the analysis of complex social situations. The future in which colored nations will play a much greater role can be anticipated by realistic handling of race problems. A world in which some form of central planning is likely to remain can be reflected in plots where the role of the individual in the community is constructively treated. The increasing importance of labor can be shown by the introduction of characteristic types. These are the needs and the obligations.  Can they be carried through? We cannot know for certain. But there is evidence from other instances that times of emergency favor such change more than times of peace. We live in a world where the ultimate criterion is no longer what we like to do, but what our duty is. If radio gets into the habit of telling this to large numbers of listeners now, it will acquire a tradition which will make it an even more important social instrument after the war.