A History of the Ministry of Information, 1939-46
KITCHEN FRONT BROADCAST .
SECTION 1 .
The Potential Audience of the Kitchen Front Programme.
In order to ascertain the proportion of housewives who in any case listen at about the time of the Kitchen Front Programme Question I; “Did you Listen in between 8 and 8.30 a.m. this morning”, was asked.
To this question 452 “Yes” answers and 2,542 “No” answers were received these being 15.3% and 84.7% of the total of 3,004 respectively.
These totals have been further broken down by, Social Class, Age, With and Without Children, Family Size, Fuel used in Cooking and Region, Urban and Rural, (Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.)
Breakdown by Class .
This analysis shows a small but significant difference between the Social Classes, the proportion listening increases in each case as we descend the income scale. Not only is the difference between classes significant but there is a consistent trend. (Table 1)
TABLE 1.
“Did you listen in between 8 and 8.30 this morning?”
Breakdown by Social Class .
Breakdown by Age.
The analysis of housewives into three age groups, Under 35, 35 to 50 and Over 50 shows no significant difference in the extent to which these groups listen. (Table 2)
TABLE 2.
“Did you listen in between 8 and 8.30 this morning?”
| Age | Yes Number | % | No Number | % | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | 109 | 14.8 | 629 | 85.2 | 738 |
| 35 - 50 | 195 | 14.9 | 1,117 | 85.1 | 1,312 |
| Over 50 | 130 | 15.1 | 735 | 84.9 | 865 |
| Total | 434 | 14.5 | 2,481 | 85.5 | 2,915 |
Breakdown without and with children .
There is no significant difference in the extent to which these groups listen. (Table 3)
TABLE 3.
“Did you listen in between 8 and 8.30 this morning?”
Breakdown without and with children.
| Yes | No | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | % | Number | % | Total | |
| Without | 270 | 15.2 | 1,524 | 84.8 | 1,794 |
| With | 182 | 14.7 | 1,028 | 85.3 | 1,210 |
| Total | 452 | 15.3 | 2,542 | 84.7 | 3,004 |
Breakdown by Family Size (Number of Mouths)
This breakdown shows an interesting result, the small families with 2, 3, and 4 mouths listen to approximately the same extent; 15.6%, 15.4% and 15.6%, the families with 5 mouths listen more, 17.7%, but the larger families those with 6 mouths and 7 or mere rather less; 11.7% and 11.2% respectively. (Table 4)
TABLE 4.
“Did you listen in between 8 and 8.30 this morning?”
Breakdown by number of mouths.
Breakdown by Fuel.
The numbers in our sample using Oil and Slow Combustion fuel are not large enough to give useful results; of the other categories those using “Coal or Coke” have the greatest proportion of Listeners, 16.2%, “Gas” and “Electricity” the next greatest 15.3% and 15.0% and “More than one sort" least with 14.4%. (Table 5)
TABLE 5.
Breakdown by Fuel.
Breakdown by Region, Urban and Rural.
It will be seen from the accompanying tables that the totals in the separate regions for rural areas are not large enough to give significant results, the total figures however, show differences there being the greatest proportion of listeners at this hour in Scotland, 22.8%; the East, 20.1%; London and the S.E., 17.9% which compare with the lowest proportions in the South, 5.5%; the North West, 7.7%; and the South West, 8.7%.
The Breakdown by Urban and Rural shows no significant differences. (Table 6).
TABLE 6.
“Did you Listen in between 8 and 8.30 this morning?”
Breakdown by Region.