"Garrett Wollman" wrote in message
...
In article ,
David Eduardo wrote:

95% of Americas listen to radio.

I don't believe that number for a moment (even stipulating the typo).
If you had said "are exposed to radio every week", I might be willing
to go along. But exposure and the sort of attention that is implied
by "listen" are very different things -- something advertisers are
beginning to understand.

Advertisers are not making distinctions because what they care about is
getting the message across, not who turned the radio on. In any case, many
different methodologies, including Arbitron, show that 95% of average
Americans... or Canadians... or Mexicans... listen to the radio at least
once a week with enough awareness to identify such listening. Such surveys
can even be replicated with simple phone samples. It is a fairly uncontested
fact in media and ad circles.

(That's also one of the flaws in Arbitron's
"portable people meter" methodology: it's as good a measure as the
sample size allows for *exposure*, but can't measure *listening*.)

First, no one cares. Second, the People Meter is not in use yet in the US
and it will probably not be until,perhaps, 2007 at the earliest.

As
an advertiser, a potential customer who is merely exposed to my
message is not worth nearly as much as a potential customer who is
actually paying attention.[1]

There is no way of telling this with any kind of sample. Advertisers know
this, and know that a percentage of messages are not noticed for a variety
of reasons. You won't see this discussed in AdAge... just here, where no
national advertisers are paying any attention.

Although the current talk about shorter stop sets is evidence that
both broadcasters and advertisers are getting this message, it's not
clear that they will really benefit, now that they have trained the
audience to tune out (either mentally or physically) as soon as the
first spot begins. (How do you promote shorter stop sets? "Only five
commercials up next before another long music set on Q-92?")

Shorter stop sets are intended to improve the effectiveness of messages and
to keep listeners longer. Many boroadcasters were not running excessive spot
loads anyway... and none were running the loads common in the 50's and 60's.

Meanwhile, we have a whole generation growing up in today's toxic
media environment who neither look to radio for entertainment nor are
particularly influenced by current modes of advertising. (Brings a
new meaning to "you're soaking in it!") Compare the size of a
suburban teenager's music collection to the playlist of one of your
radio stations; I'll bet you nine times out of ten, your hypothetical
teenager enjoys a greater variety of music than you play.

Radio does not target teens in most markets since there is little ad money
against them.

For most of the past forty years, music radio has been the leader in
introducing people to new music, which they could then go out and buy.
(That's why over-the-air radio only has to pay license fees to the
songwriters and composers, and not to the performers or record labels:
it's considered a promotional expense to sell more recordings and
concert tickets.)

Wrong. the reason the RIAA never got performance rights such as are common
in other developed nations is that they did not get to the table early
enough, and now it is too late.

As to being considered promotional expense, that is pure malarky.

Today, with a few bright exceptions, radio has made
itself largely irrelevant to this marketplace. Is it any wonder that
audiences no longer expect radio to provide new music?

They never did, except in small amounts. what has happened is that more now
music is being exposed today, as there are more formats available on more
stations in every market. A couple of weekly adds a week across 10 formats
is a lot of songs; in the 50's and 60's you got 2 to 3 adds on a mass appeal
top 40 station, and that was all.

[1] A good example: I was at my dentist's office last week. As an
observant person and radio junkie, I noticed that she had WCRB on,
rather than her usual WROR-FM. If I had been wearing a PPM, it would
have credited WCRB with 45 minutes of my time -- even though I paid no
attention to it (or to the advertising messages) after recognizing the
source.

No different than a person who puts on a radio and leaves it on during
work... may only hear part of the ads. Advertisers know that. Always been
that way.