Comparative study of letter writers and general popzrlation shows that station tnail represents views of the literate, white. older and active majority and is not a aalid sample of the entire community.Studies of letters to the media sporadically appear in the communication literature. A recent FCC ruling makes such studies of more than just academic interest for broadcasters are now required to solicit and maintain public files of correspondence from their audience about programming and related matters of community interest. The FCC reasons that the files would , . . permit a inemher of the public to better determine the nature of coninmnity feedback received by licensees and the extent to which his or her opinions regarding coniniuiiity problems and needs andlor the licensees' stutioii operation nzight be shared by others (29 Radio Regulation, second edition, p . 12).The assumptions made by the FCC are staggering. First, it appears questionable that the viewing public might visit a station to read its public files, much less know about the files' existence. Second, it seems problematic to assume that the people who write the letters to broadcast stations are actually valid reflectors of community needs and interests, especially since several studies ( 3 , 4 , 5 , 8) document that these letters tend to be critical in nature. The FCC provides no guidelines for interpreting the public file material and understandably the broadcaster must feel some hesitancy in making the information readily acwssible to potential challengers.Brrnadette McCuirc is a

H o m e r it has been measured, the projik of the audience for public TV has t u d out to be a well-educated, afluent minority.One of the difficulties in writing about the audience for public television is that it is so small.' Another difficulty is due to the fact that public television is a decentralized cluster of local stations which do not necessarily share programming philosophies. Some stations, especially those in the large urban markets, are interested in attracting large and loyal audiences, because they need the membership dollars, while other stations, often associated with "state systems," have a legislated mission to telecast instruction and "quality programs" which usually attract small audiences. This diffusion of goals, as well as a patchwork of funding and support mechanisms for the stations, makes it difficult to generalize about all public television stations or their audiences (see 8).These difficulties have also plagued past attempts to define and measure the audience for public television. Before the seventies, the little empirical work that was performed concerning public television audiences can be traced to the efforts of Wilbur Schramm, his students, and his colleagues. However, as Schramm recognized in 1963, "in studying ETV [educational television] audiences, one is faced with the problem that bedevils the students of most minority behavior not of a public n a t u r e t o find the minority" (see 16,17,18). Then, as now, the public TV audiences were so small and irregular in their behavior that locating them for any study was a very difficult and expensive task.These early studies introduced concepts and methods that continue to dominate research on public television audiences. In the seventies this research was The audience is so minute, in fact, that Comstock d al. could write in their seminal work, Teleuision and Human Behauior (3), "a description of the [TV] viewing behavior of the American people would not be seriously distorted were no mention of [public television] made" (p. 116).

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General sample survey found more valid and only slightly more expensive than mail survey, phone survey and mailing list survey.