Focus Group Conclusions

Focus Group participants represent a wide array of “service” providers from education, healthcare, social service, government and community advocacy sectors. We were impressed by the level of participation by this particular Focus Group and the enthusiasm they expressed for getting out their messages about their particular services. Narrative answers were well thought out and often had a level of detail we have not seen before in other Focus Group sessions.

With sixty-eight percent of the participants having less than $10,000 per year for communications, these groups and agencies face interesting challenges. While they have valuable and essential messages to communicate, over fifty percent of the participants were not sure or did not think their communications were effective. Only thirty-five percent of the participants reported that their agency, institution or special event had been covered by Broadcast television in the past year. Local Newspaper and Radio had covered their agency, institution or special event in the past year at ninety-four and eighty-six percent respectively. There was a heavy reliance by the participants on newsletters, email, phone calling and word of mouth. These methods of communication are labor intensive and newsletters, in particular, can be expensive. One quarter of the participants cited WCCA TV 13 as a method for communicating with their current and prospective constituencies.

Worcester has some demographic characteristics that render traditional methods of communication difficult. It has a high foreign-born population (eighteen percent vs. United States average of twelve percent). Foreign language speakers in Worcester account for twenty-nine percent of the population vs. the United States average of nineteen percent. And its disabled community is two percent higher than the national average.63

Worcester’s unemployment rate is just above the rate for the State of Massachusetts and the entire United States at five percent, but the median household income is roughly nine thousand dollars less than the U. S. median household income and individual income is roughly three thousand dollars less than the U.S. per capita income. Almost twenty percent fewer people own their homes in Worcester than in the nation as a whole.64

While Worcester’s overall poverty rate is five percent higher than the national average at almost nineteen percent, it has a higher Hispanic population than average and poverty among Hispanics is almost twenty-two percent on average nationwide, which could account for some of the difference, but certainly not all.65

Worcester also has a higher rate of seniors (over thirteen percent) than the nation as a whole (twelve percent), as does the state of Massachusetts (again over thirteen percent). While we could not find projections for growth in the senior population specifically for Worcester, we did find that Massachusetts growth for seniors is projected to reach over twenty-percent of the population in the next twenty-five years.66

While Worcester faces challenges, it also has steadily been growing over the past few years and its population is about 175,000.67 Additionally, the city has experienced economic growth through downtown revitalization, the addition of a new convention center, new hotel and condominium projects.68 Secondary school graduation rates are comparable to the rest of the United States with over eighty-four percent of the population possessing a high school diploma. The percent of residents with a Bachelor’s degree of higher is two percent greater than the national average.69 The City website notes that biotechnology and bioengineering are an important cornerstone of Worcester’s economy, as well as the several colleges and universities (including a medical teaching hospital) that are located in Worcester.

The Focus Group reported a high reliance on the Internet for receiving information about the community (eighty-seven percent).70 This is much higher than we have seen in other studies and could be accounted for because of the participants themselves being leading stakeholders, nonprofit managers, community activists and educational representatives. Local Newspaper ranked highest for receipt of information at ninety-five percent.

The popularity of these two methods of communication could pose a problem for many of the Focus Group participants if they are perceived as the best modes of communicating with desired constituencies. Certainly these two methods work if one is seeking to communicate information regarding opportunities in business or higher education (as some of the participants need to do), but they do not work if the constituency is poor, non-English speakers, or blind. Communicating with seniors via the Internet is not very effective as only twenty-two percent of seniors sixty-five and older have Internet, compared to seventy-seven percent of eighteen to twenty-nine year olds. 71

It is a positive that sixty-four percent of the participants cite PEG access as a source for local information. Based on reported subscriber numbers and numbers of total households in Worcester, cable penetration is roughly seventy-six percent, that is eight points higher than the cable penetration nationally. Roughly fifty percent of the poor have cable and rely on it for their main source of information.72 PEG access, particularly WCCA TV, can deliver messages to a public that might not receive them otherwise, that being the poor, the non-English speakers, the blind and the elderly. These are significant populations for Worcester.

The Focus Group participants were well informed about their community rating on a scale of one to five, a 4.23 mean. They had a wide range of information to deliver to the community regarding programs and services and cited a wide range of difficulties they faced in getting their message out, including: money, language barriers, inability to reach constituents, quality of contact, etc.

During the course of the Focus Group, we concentrated on WCCA TV to discover its value, how participants used it and what interests participants had in using WCCA TV as a communications vehicle.

All of the participants answered that WCCA was important with eighty-eight percent rating WCCA as “important” or “very important.” While twenty-eight percent answered that they did produce programming at WCCA, seventy-two percent did not, yet, WCCA enjoyed a high level of popularity among all participants. Over sixty percent of participants could cite the name of a particular program they had seen or describe its general content.

Sixty-five percent of participants said they had thought about producing an access show. This number can be seen as “fairly” reliable because only thirty-one of the forty participants answered this question. We do know there were ten producers that attended the focus group and we can assume that eight or nine abstained from answering this question.

Those who had thought about producing cited “time” as the number one factor for not producing, with training coming in second. Forty-four percent showed concern regarding money but only eleven percent thought it would be “too difficult.” Eighty-five percent of those who answered said they would know what to do a show on. This is further evidenced later in the session when we asked participants regarding their ideas for programming.

Eighty-one percent of the participants said they had a special event, issue or program that WCCA TV could produce a program on and there was a high rate of interest for certain types of programming such as: health programming; city/county sponsored events; community arts and festivals programming; community information programming; neighborhood shows; seniors programming; shows by and about children; shows by and about persons with disabilities; ethnic and cultural programming; political programming; and local history and cultural programming. Other types of programming also garnered interest but those listed above scored the highest. Fifty-six percent of participants replied that if they had programming they would want to web stream it.

When asked if WCCA TV 13 served their needs, forty-three percent said “Yes” while fifty-four percent said “sometimes.” Respondents cited the need for WCCA to be seen outside of Worcester, in neighboring communities as their number one recommendation for improving WCCA services. Other issues raised were a mobile van unit, listing on the cable tv guide, On-Demand availability, provision of production services for nonprofits, call-in capability, upgraded equipment, an additional channel, etc.

Additional funds for the building, equipment and operations were rated at eighty-eight percent by the Focus Group attendees for what should be included in the new franchise agreement. Interconnection throughout the county rated at eighty-three percent, drop points at various locations rated at seventy-four percent, WCCA public service announcements on other cable channels rated at sixty-nine percent and more channels rated at forty-six percent. Eleven percent of participants replied the provisions for WCCA should remain the same.

One third of participants indicated that their communications needs had not changed from when the Focus Group began. Those remain primarily content oriented needs, how to get the information out to the local community and how to target particular constituencies. There was also a real sense that in five or ten years there will be a need to keep up with new technologies, but still a need to create content in a way that effectively communicates services.

WCCA TV 13 plays an important role in the community as a communications vehicle for agencies, institutions and advocacy groups. The Focus Group results demonstrate that WCCA needs to play an expanded role in facilitating communications between the participants and their desired constituencies. This increased role will put more demands on WCCA and its resources.