National Public Radio news has been named the 2017 Harris Poll EquiTrend News Service Brand of the Year. Pensacola’s listener-supported NPR affiliate, 88.1 WUWF-FM, has been broadcasting since 1981.

  The Harris Poll EquiTrend study measures some 100,000 Americans’ perception of more than 4,000 brands, from automobiles to TVs and technology. The news service category includes newspapers, news websites, wire services and news aggregators. 

With journalists reporting from across the United States and 17 international bureaus, NPR news reaches millions of Americans every day through a nationwide network of member stations like WUWF.

“This ranking is no surprise to our listeners and the businesses that support WUWF,” says Pat Crawford, WUWF’s executive director. “With the confusing media landscape, listeners find comfort in a news source they can trust to get fact-based information delivered in a respectful manner. That has always been the hallmark of NPR and public radio.”

According to NPR, the Harris Poll EquiTrend ratings confirm its own research on the strength of NPR’s brand and how audiences distinguish it from commercial media. The study also found that compared with commercial radio, NPR listeners are 54 percent more likely to identify the programming they hear on their NPR station as “personally important to me” and 163 percent more likely to apply their high opinion of NPR to brands that support NPR through sponsorship. 

“Forty one million listeners trust their local public radio station each week to deliver the fact-based, unbiased journalism they need to stay informed about the news in their communities and the world,” says Meg Goldthwaite, NPR’s chief marketing officer. “But listeners love NPR because public radio provides insights on life and culture—authentic voices they may not hear anywhere else and stories that will spark their curiosity.”

WUWF-FM features news/talk, music, educational and entertainment programming.