David Eduardo wrote:
"Steve Stone" wrote in message
...
I'm a database analyst by day and I know statistics can be made to say
anything you want them to say, especially if you ask the wrong questions
that reflect what the reviewer wants to hear and not what the public wants
to tell them.

In most radio station testing, you do not even use questions. You have
people score songs and program content, using a dial.

In his book, Get Back In The Box (http://www.rushkoff.com/box.html),
Douglas Rushkoff describes what happens when marketing gets too obsessed
with drawing people in to buy. It becomes dreary and painful.

Rushkoff also debunks the value of focus groups by showing that the
choices of who listens aren't really as random as those nice folks at
those research firms would have you believe.

What you are hearing from this crowd is that many are sick and tired of
the efforts to market stations so tightly. Owners have to loosen up or
people will pretty much ignore the marketing.

It's like stores which are calculated and studied to provide the maximum
number of cues to get people to want to buy Buy BUY! The stress of such
environments from keeping your guard up all the time against subliminal
marketing is not small.

People are tired of the mentality of those who would play the sound of
roaring chainsaws if there was a buck in it. You're in the business of
engaging and attracting listeners. If you think that is best done by
statistics, then you must have one of those pictures of Elvis on black
velvet in your office. It's been selected by a focus group...

In any case, why, for gosh sakes, would a radio station do testing or
perceptual research which yields wrong results? I have never heard of a
staiton or statrion staff that wanted ratings to go down. So weeks and weeks
are spent working with professional researchers and statisticians to make
sure that there is no question wording bias, no interviewer bias and that
the qustions are clear. Further time is spent in setting a recruit
specification that reflects the core audience or an audience segment that
you wish to bring into the project.

Why would a radio station do this? Because of a herd mentality which
says this works. And as such it does work --sort of. If you only have
a choice of bland, drab, same, and similar in highly formatted stations,
guess what happens? People lose their taste for the unusual.

As you say, it's been going on since the 1950s. How would you know
what's different from this?

There are several dozen very professional companies that do research for
radio stations. A couple of companies have hired very good people and do
projects in house with thier own research divsion. Some even operate
permanent call centers with 20 to 40 seats, rotating projects and markets
where the company operates.

All this is beyond Arbitron, which is a sales tool and excruciatingly well
audited by researchers and statisticions in a committee appointed by
advertisers, not radio, to make sure rating reflect the real size and
composition of audience that stations are charging for.

Let's do art by statistics. I'd like to see what the average painting
would look like after you have sent it through a few focus groups.
Would you hang it up on your wall? How about a picture of Elvis on
black velvet?

This proves you have broad and very eclectic tastes. That is nice. Most
people don't.

Yes, but is that because they choose to be that way, or because they've
been living in a bland environment since 1950?

How did most new formats get started? By listening to stuff THAT WASN'T
ON THE RADIO. Did Rap music get its start on radio or in clubs? Did
early Rock and Roll get it's start in the formatted, conformist radio of
the day? Or did it get a big boost from people listening to Mexican
Radio stations?

I could go on like this. Most new "formats" got their start from
somewhere else. The latest contribution from formatted radio? The
"Jack" format. Nothing but a bunch of canned wisecracks in between a
mashup of all the Rock from 1970 to the present. Gee. That's supposed
to be original?

A few years ago, a station went on in San Antonio, playing 57 hip hop songs.
In 90 days, it was #1 in the market. It had only changed about 12 of the
songs in the 90 days. Today, it is in its 5th year at #1 and stronger now
than before. It plays about 100 songs in total. It changes a couple in and
out each week. It beats the #2 station by about 30%. Its listeners, when
interviewed, love the station and think it has the absolute best variety of
music on the planet. that is because the 100 songs are what the listeners
say they want to hear. that is how it works.

Yuck! Most people have more CDs than that.

David, people are saying that the choice of music is an art, not a
statistical science. Near my market, there is a radio station that
actually advertises +the fact that they do not use focus groups, program
directors, or their ilk. It's WRNR. They rely on their DJ's judgment.
What a concept!

Sometimes it's unlistenable. Others, you simply can't bring yourself to
turn off the radio. But there is never a dull moment, and it has a spot
on the station buttons in my truck even though I can only hear them
toward the end of my 45 minute commute.

One thing I want to point out to you about the artists I mentioned in my
previous post, ALL of them were highly controversial. Many things they
did weren't popular right away. Most focus groups would have trashed
these artists. You would never have seen these folks on the air before
they gathered a following outside the medium.

This is why we say that radio is a vast wasteland. You are talking
about marketing, not art. Now, in the scheme of things, I'm saying
there isn't anything wrong with non-stop marketing. But they have to
draw their ideas from SOMEWHERE. Radio today is saturated with bland,
simple, uber-happy talk, and a very limited selection of statistics
driven music tracks --what make you think that it hasn't affected
listening patterns?

If there is so little R&D done in this business, then where do the
marketeers get their ideas from? Oh that's right. Someone takes a
risk. No wonder everyone thinks the same as you do...


Jake Brodsky
AB3A