Survey Results

For the sake of brevity here I'll stop referring in each case to respondents but treat the survey as if it represents the population. And for those interested, there were 40 respondents at the time I closed the survey. Given that on average in November between 774 and 881 people visited EP each day (depends how one counts; the first figure is from Awstats, the second from Webalizer) I guess that's not bad—a response rate of about 5%. It's more difficult, btw, to figure podcast downloads because of partial and multiple downloads, but my guess is that the median per podcast is now running at about 250 300 (down slightly), with a range from about 200 250 to 2,000. [Just calculated, 12/06, for the three months of September, October, and November, the average is 550 downloads per show—some shows are much more popular than others.] This count is on the low side because I'm not going back to add up cumulative totals, where some podcasts continue to be downloaded for a considerable time.

OK. First, this is an older audience. 90% are between 26 and 59, 8% are over 60, and 2% are younger than 25. To the extent this dimension is off it undercounts college students under 25, where from the site logs I regularly track a drop-off in the audience of 10-15% during school breaks.

Second, it's a disproportionately male audience: 95%. This result, frankly, shocked me. I asked Sharon about it and she said, "Oh, yeah, your site is a guy site—gals wouldn't find it so interesting" (this despite she listens to most podcasts herself and always thinks they're excellent). I know there are more ladies out there than responded to the survey, but proportionate to the population I'm guessing the survey is roughly accurate.

It's an educated audience: 65% have a college degree of some kind. Confirming the age question result, only 2% are currently college students. 30% have an advanced degree of some kind—an unusually high number but I think probably roughly accurate.

56% work in the private sector. 10% in not-for-profits. 8% in government. A whopping 26% of you are unemployed. This should be adjusted down, though I can't guess by how much (to 20% perhaps?), for those who are retired.

65% listen to the EP podcast every week! This number obviously doesn't track with the overall population so a more rigorous statistician would begin to get jumpy about the other results. 15% listen two or three times a month. 20% once a month or less.

About 90% have a high speed connection of some sort. This is what I figured. Kudos to those who haven't got one but listen all the same.

28% visit EP daily. (Thanks!!) 55% weekly. 17% once a month or less.

In the like/don't like free form section there's a three-way tie with the same number of 'votes' each for most popular: Kate Brown, Paul Craig Roberts, and Ray McGovern. I'll skip over the other—extensive—answers.

For the podcast length question there's no ambiguity: 92% think it's done right the way it is, varying with guests. (The "other" category here got 5%.)

Over 90% are satisfied with the way that the comments section works. And the same for site navigation and usability.

The median score for EP's website compared to others is 8/10.

The median score for EP's podcast compared to others is 9/10. (Again, thanks for that.)

And here's a selection of responses from the "about yourself" question:

"I'm a Canadian that really appreciates the diversity of guests you get on your show. You have a pleasant demeanor, and ask good questions, and most of your interviews are quite interesting and informative."

"Degenerate Eurotrash fascinated by the extremism of American society."

"Was republican for 30 years but switched to democrat...really more of a populist. I'm very worried about the country and the state of to world ecology my two college age daughters will inherit."

"Christian, social(ist) liberal, French literature/anthropology grad, now living and working 12,000 miles from homebase!"

"58, unemployable vietnam vet. Agog at the current policies of our government."

"I am a retired electronics technician with a BS degree in computer science. I believe that militarism is counter productive, not to mention immoral. I believe society would be better if instead of capitalism we followed Marx's statement, 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.'"

"Second time in my life I'm freeing myself from the spell of massive propaganda (Soviet block communism being the first case). Thank you for being a important help in that process."

I'd have included a few samples from the final question but they're too laudatory and I'm too modest (no, really).

Thanks very much to everybody again for participating in this survey. And please do try to encourage others to listen to the EP podcast—particularly wives or girlfriends!