F
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Maybe he means this institution of higher learning:
http://www.hse.ru/en/ (National Research University – Higher School of Economics)
Did you steal my briefcase, David? I can't seem to find it.
As far as I can determine from looking up various sources online, a marketing research consultant advises on research methods used in developing and marketing products. What this has to do with KYW's future, I have no idea.
He'd fit right in.
Did you steal my briefcase, David? I can't seem to find it.
Yes, and I am successfully using it.
On that subject, I am particularly fond of the esteemed Dr Akbar on the Phoenix forum who used to have this line in his posts: "We put the con in consulting".
KYW has been on an up trend for three books, so Fred's dismissal of their improvement is inappropriate. This looks like a trand, not a wobble, and any Marketing Research Consultant worth his salt could see that.
That's likely much of your problem in the area of radio.
A lot of what makes great stations good can't be looked up or studied. It is a bit of science and a bit of intuition and a lot of programming skills.
F
FredLeonard
Guest
We were talking about two pieces of factual information (meaning of specific terms) and those can be looked up. I am appalled by how often people come on here and ask basic questions of fact that they could have looked up themselves. Nothing has changed since grade school when the dumb kids would slow things down with their stupid questions - things they could have found out for themselves or figured out for themselves.
And programming is mostly luck and maybe timing. Science and skill might hit the jackpot one time and then completely fail the next. Hence all these programmers who got lucky once and then spend a career trying to do the same thing again.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
You have a point there, Fred, even if it does negate many of your previous arguments and makes the whole business of your "market research consultant" claim meaningless.
F
FredLeonard
Guest
You seem to assume that I worked exclusively for radio clients. Despite having been a broadcaster, I quickly learned to avoid broadcast clients (also political, government and non-profit clients). They insist on telling me how to do my job (despite knowing nothing about research methods) and then want me to tell them how to do their job. They also only accept findings conforming to what they want to hear. This is why broadcasting is infected with consistently bad research from scam artists posing as researchers. Broadcasters make ideal marks. That said, even people who operate under conditions of extreme volatility and uncertainty do better with more information - more good information.
And you should look past the first hit in Google. National Research Universities (a term used by US News, Carnegie and others) are major universities, offering a range of doctoral programs, with a strong research emphasis. They are nationally known and draw students and faculty from across the nation.
In this case, the term you employed is not of common usage, and a Google search did not show "national research university" in the first several pages. Your reference of "U.S. News & World Report" is fairly weak substantiation as that magazine has minimal circulation and has teetered on bankruptcy at various times.
While "research universities" appears at the bottom of the first page of searches, it is devoid of the term "national" and refers to an entity which evaluates the amount of academic research done by the faculty.
In other words, you used an obscure term as if it were familiar to many / most in order to obfuscate your response.
The problem on occasion is that the immediately accessible sources are often less reliable than a few good answers here. Searching online to answer questions about formats, market revenues, station history and such will not yield the kind of responses that asking here will. The "source of first resort" online is often Wikipedia, which is notoriously inaccurate in many things about radio and TV. They are good if you want background on the Howdy Doody show... not so good if you want accurate information on why the clear channels were broken down in the 70's or the impact on revenue of Docket 80-90.
In a number of my "social sciences" classes I discovered that there are many people who learn just as well as others, but at a different rate of speed. Some require additional repetition of information, others require the usage of different terminology. They are not "dumb" but, rather, "different".
Anecdotally, one of the best on-air people I ever worked with had trouble with our very precise and concise contest rule and execution memos. She would often come and say, "can you explain that to me, but with different words?" She would do the contest flawlessly, but she learned how to do it differently from the rest of the staff.
In the knowledge that many people understand and react to messages differently, going back over 40 years I have written my contest and station promos in at least two different versions, using different ways of explaining the same message because I think that there are comparable differences in the way listeners perceive what we tell them.
Your attitude is elitist. Because you wanted a class to move faster, the others should be left behind. I, too, often got bored in many classes and was frequently castigated for snoozing or being distracted. But I did not develop the attitude that you have.
I disagree. Skillful PDs tend to be consistently "lucky" which is why good programmers, particularly in the 70's and 80's, were in such demand that many opened consulting businesses: Sklar, Clifton, Abrams, Drake, Bennett, Taylor, Shulke, Burkhart, McVay, Walker, Maddox, etc. And they generally duplicated their successes unless they were hired by management that did not let them do what they needed to do.
Timing is mostly of significance when it involves the spotting of trends or the identification of significant holes in a market. Since audience flow is dynamic, opportunities have to be seized when the moment is right.
The science, which is mostly research and a little bit engineering, is simply one of the tools used by a skillful programmer to plan a strategy. In most cases where a good, skillful strategy did not work (other than when it was implemented on a poor signal with WWDJ-970 being a good example), it was because competitors reacted in an unanticipated or stronger manner and closed the door on an opportunity window before the new challenger could develop cume.
Certainly there are cases of stations being "accidentally" successful or ones where a lower-tier station has simply copied a larger market station and achieved success, but in most cases successful launches have very talented and skilled programmers behind them. For a good case study, I'd recommend Ron Jacobs' book on the launch and development of KHJ which includes loads of internal memos and strategy points; Jacobs and Drake were talented and had the skills to identify weaknesses in the markets existing Top 40 stations and to knock them off in a very short period of time.
Often programmers who enjoyed one success actually inherited the basis for the success from another or were guided by a consultant or group PD. Upon moving on, they lost their support structure and were unable to fly solo.
Of course, you brought up the point so why don't you give us a few examples of "lucky" PDs who never again found success?
My experience has been that general market research companies don't know how to do radio because they don't understand the way audiences fragment, how brand loyalty can be dictated by mood, etc., etc. They are used to the heritage research devices like pantry checks, taste tests and focus groups. They don't have the technology to do music testing, and don't know how to adapt focus groups to radio's requirements. They can't even develop a proper questionnaire for an A-T-U based project for a format search. And they certainly lack the experience in focusing the results on achieving good ratings results.
Seeing that local researchers did not have the facilities to work in radio and the national organizations did not have the understanding, Frank Magid, a premiere name in research, created a separate national division to do radio research in the 70's. The staff included folks like Jon Coleman, Fred Jacobs, Bob Harper and Doug Jones. Moyes left in 1977 to form The Research Group and many of the original Magid-trained researchers went on to have their own companies, some of which continue to this day doing stellar research.
But back to your point: when low budget or "on the cheap" stations, startled by the cost of good research from experts like Coleman, Harper, Harker, Jacobs, Harker, Rosen and others, look to smaller companies or local survey and polling bureaus, they feel a need to guide those companies because they know they have no clue on how to do radio research.
Not to say that there have not been cases, but I don't know of any successful music or program decision making testing done by companies not firmly entrenched in radio.
Sure, some research is better than none... but some broken glass is not a bottle.
Last edited:
Or, perhaps, made it better for the bulk of the population.
Funny, the top TV shows are about the same from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.
Maybe because it works.
Yes, finding the ingredients for success is almost always the objective of research... unless success is already achieved where research protects success (that's the Jerry Lee corollary).[/SIZE][/FONT]
Funny, the top TV shows are about the same from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.
Maybe because it works.
Yes, finding the ingredients for success is almost always the objective of research... unless success is already achieved where research protects success (that's the Jerry Lee corollary).[/SIZE][/FONT]
Last edited by a moderator:
F
FredLeonard
Guest
Apparently, the management here has gotten so "sensitive" - even politically correct - that he now removes phrases commonly used on terrestrial radio and television. If find that "offensive." I also find Midland, MI - home of The Dow Chemical Company - offensive.
I compared Frank Magid to practitioners of the oldest profession - people who do anything if the price is right. Apparently many here can justify anything in the name of "success" or "profitability." Yet they whine about being "offended" at the suggestion that anyone is willing to "sell himself."
If the shoe fits, walk the streets in it.
I also find it offensive that people can anonymously complain they find other posts "offensive." Most likely the offensive quality is that it's not what they want to hear. That if contradicts the sacred industry line of broadcasting. But they lack the "courage and fortitude" to say so publicly, so they go running to the moderator like some kindergarten kid who has been picked on.
TV news better for the bulk of the population? Really? Then why had the audience declined so dramatically - both in size (quantity) and demographic composition (quality)?
It works? Same questions.
Jerry Lee. This is the exemplar of radio genius? Mr. Elevator Music. FM radio circa 1960. Auditory Valium. (Let's see how long before somebody who considers Jerry Lee his hero says he's "offended.")
I compared Frank Magid to practitioners of the oldest profession - people who do anything if the price is right. Apparently many here can justify anything in the name of "success" or "profitability." Yet they whine about being "offended" at the suggestion that anyone is willing to "sell himself."
If the shoe fits, walk the streets in it.
I also find it offensive that people can anonymously complain they find other posts "offensive." Most likely the offensive quality is that it's not what they want to hear. That if contradicts the sacred industry line of broadcasting. But they lack the "courage and fortitude" to say so publicly, so they go running to the moderator like some kindergarten kid who has been picked on.
TV news better for the bulk of the population? Really? Then why had the audience declined so dramatically - both in size (quantity) and demographic composition (quality)?
It works? Same questions.
Jerry Lee. This is the exemplar of radio genius? Mr. Elevator Music. FM radio circa 1960. Auditory Valium. (Let's see how long before somebody who considers Jerry Lee his hero says he's "offended.")
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
Please, allow me to fill in yet another gap in your encyclopedic knowledge.
Presuming one is logged in when they click on the little triangle-exclamation point icon, the management knows who filed the complaint. I know this because Boz has responded directly to me when I questioned content in some threads using that report form, and I didn't put my name in there myself so the board software must have.
You say you worked in marketing research. Would any company produce a product or service and then wish it had a lower market share? A TV station that orders a research project, implements it and gets better ratings is doing exactly what companies are intended to do.
Those Magid studies of TV news you refer to were the staple of a different era. Today, TV stations are moving their local news to include new media, and surveys show that TV stations, not local newspapers, are getting the bulk of the local news traffic on the web.
Like all over the air media, they are transitioning to new platforms.
First, WBEB is hardly "elevator music" which shows that it has been nearly 3 decades since you last listened.
Jerry Lee invested in FM when FM had just ended a decade where we saw the FM station count go from 1000 to about 700. He invested in good programming and as FM grew, he guided WDVR into the top positions in the ratings where the station still remains.
When Beautiful Music died, Jerry made one of the most successful transitions to AC of any former Beautiful Music station. And as AC has become brighter in tempo, he changed the station right down to the name and call letters to remain fresh.
And Jerry is one of the few independent operators of high-rated stations in major markets.
So yes, he is a "hero" and someone I admire greatly.
What's offensive is that you use totally untrue facts to make a point here... "elevator music" "FM radio circa 1960". WBEB is neither and 1.5 million Philadelphia listeners agree with me.
F
FredLeonard
Guest
Typical: I must be right because 1.5 million people agree with me. The democratic fallacy. You don't determine truth of wisdom by counting noses - especially the noses of the boobocracy. B-101 is background radio - whatever name you prefer to use. It's least objectionable programming for 1.5 million people who can't find anything they really want to listen to on the radio. It's what offices and stores leave on all day because - well, just because. It what they've always left on all day. It's what everybody else leaves on all day. And you don't have to pay Muzak. AC = BM. Six of one; half a dozen of another.
And if Magid's people are so smart, how come the audience for TV news keeps shrinking, keeps aging, keeps dropping in socio-economic measures? TV news has turned to dreck. Interchangeable market to market and station to station. Ken and Barbie standing outside, holding mics and doing the same tabloid trash plus lifestyle puff pieces sent out as video press releases. But as long as somebody makes money and some people put up with it, you call it "success." To quote Santa: Ho, ho, ho!
And if Magid's people are so smart, how come the audience for TV news keeps shrinking, keeps aging, keeps dropping in socio-economic measures? TV news has turned to dreck. Interchangeable market to market and station to station. Ken and Barbie standing outside, holding mics and doing the same tabloid trash plus lifestyle puff pieces sent out as video press releases. But as long as somebody makes money and some people put up with it, you call it "success." To quote Santa: Ho, ho, ho!
You sound like Howard Cosell. So you post wisdom? Really?
So how then do you determine truth of wisdom? What is the proper method of evaluation?
Last edited:
THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ HAS SPOKEN!!! ...Pay no attention to that little man behind the curtain...
F
FredLeonard
Guest
One of my heroes. I take that as a great compliment. Thank you and happy New Year.
PS: I really don't sound like Howard but I do a pretty good imitation.
F
FredLeonard
Guest
One of my heroes. I take that as a great compliment. Thank you and happy New Year.
Thanks for letting me know Wired is still Wired. I didn't want to get in the car or go up in the attic to find my old CC Radio or GE Superadio. And if I listened for five minutes this week, I'd have to be counted as part of terrestrial radio's cume, which I'd like to avoid.
The General Motors worker is keeping pretty quiet.
Last edited:
That explains an awful lot. Howard Cosell was a pompous, ego-driven poser who used his considerable intellect as a blunt instrument against everyone who didn't measure up to his view of himself, which pretty much meant everyone.
My favorite memory of Cosell was seeing him on some comedy show, mounted on an appaloosa horse, wearing a Bob Mackie war bonnet (presumably over his toupee') while mouthing Cher's record of "Half-Breed." (An experience somewhat comparable to William Shatner singing...
)
Last edited:
- Status