A question about the audience

[davideduardo]

.A station would be better off to go to a few malls in their signal area,pick out 25 folks in the demo they are looking for and buy them a burger in the food court and then simply ask questions of real local potential listeners about their likes and dislikes..

That is, jokingly, called a "randomless sample" and has the potential to do far more harm than good, even if competently done.

 

[davideduardo]

The Zephyr, Hippie Radio, Superhits 106, WLNG..etc..are all examples of what's right with radio. Take a listen.

Stations with no listeners, few listeners or which (in the case of WLNG) use music as a fill between local service elements.

 

[allenv]

There would be alot more than 100 in the number of people who visit that mall in a 50 mile radius..Sure it would take time and effort but you'd get some real face time with people and you could ask them specific questions..To me that face time is great research..Even if they could care less about your radio station at least you'd know that and you're dealing with people in your market.

 

[michael hagerty]

There would be alot more than 100 in the number of people who visit that mall in a 50 mile radius..Sure it would take time and effort but you'd get some real face time with people and you could ask them specific questions..To me that face time is great research..Even if they could care less about your radio station at least you'd know that and you're dealing with people in your market.

You're dealing with people in your market when you do statistically sound research, too. And moreover, you're dealing with people who are likely listeners (no "I only listen to NPR/Country/whatever") and who are in the demographic advertisers want most.

 

[oldies76]

The Zephyr, Hippie Radio, Superhits 106, WLNG..etc..are all examples of what's right with radio. Take a listen.

Stations with no listeners, few listeners or which (in the case of WLNG) use music as a fill between local service elements.

So, the Zephyr has no listeners?? Superhits has a "few" listeners?? You should research these stations and give us the true numbers. Oh btw, take a listen David....You'll hear your lost favorites once again.

http://rdray.com/WZPH/index.htm

http://superhits106.com/

 

[allenv]

Doesn't Arbitron drop 50 books in a county and call that an accurate representation of who listens to what..At least in the mall you are face to face with a person who can give you some in depth answers & reasons..

 

[SolidGold16]

Riverside / San Bernardino is still a big enough market for the top tier of stations to depend heavily on agency business... and agencies essentially buy no 55+.

And some genius decided that on the day you turn 55, you no longer spend money? Brilliant. If only life were so black and white.

If the local, regional and national ad agencies don't buy 55+ (and they don't) then there is no way to make money based on the listening of seniors.

Seniors? or Geezers? Whatever you want to call it, David, we still have quite a sum of money to spend. If they choose to ignore it, as I keep repeating, it's their loss. I'm sure we're not the only portion of the population being ignored right now. However, the Baby Boom generation is still going strong and will be around for a while. Ignore it if you wish, but it's the stations loss IMHO, taking research as the only method of measuring your audience. I've always been suspicious of Neilsen ratings for TV - using a small (tiny, really) sample of people to represent millions of viewers. I suppose that figures into my distrust of using small samples to determine what your listeners might want to hear. If I were in the audience during rating, I could be (as anyone else could be) arbitrary and give a song thumbs down just because I was in a bad mood that day and felt like it. And my down vote could represent many thousands of listeners. Not very scientific, I believe.

 

[SolidGold16]

Doesn't Arbitron drop 50 books in a county and call that an accurate representation of who listens to what..At least in the mall you are face to face with a person who can give you some in depth answers & reasons..

Allenv, this makes too much sense. Forget it, it'll never happen. Methinks certain *cough cough* people's paycheck depends on that not happening!

 

[michael hagerty]

Doesn't Arbitron drop 50 books in a county and call that an accurate representation of who listens to what..At least in the mall you are face to face with a person who can give you some in depth answers & reasons..

First, let's not confuse ratings with research.

Second, the in-tab varies by market. David can tell us how many PPM participants, give or take, there are in L.A. and how many diaries go to market #210.

Third, in the mall, you're face by face with someone who can't tell you much of anything. The average listener in the desirable demo uses radio in ways that they don't put a lot of thought into nor are they likely to visualize. Better to spend several hours testing their responses to the music, which is what happens in real life: They like the song, they stay put. They don't like the song, it's off to one of the other pushbuttons.

 

[michael hagerty]

Riverside / San Bernardino is still a big enough market for the top tier of stations to depend heavily on agency business... and agencies essentially buy no 55+.

And some genius decided that on the day you turn 55, you no longer spend money? Brilliant. If only life were so black and white.

That's not what they decided. They learned, through decades of watching demographics and their behavior, that it takes many more ad impressions to reach and influence listeners above 55, to a point where it becomes unprofitable to chase them. So the time, energy and money is spent pursuing the demographic that responds more readily.

 

[TheBigA]

So the time, energy and money is spent pursuing the demographic that responds more readily.

However, they also find that 55+ responds better to TV ads. So they divert their money from radio to TV and certain sponsorships, like golf tournaments.

 

[SolidGold16]

That's not what they decided. They learned, through decades of watching demographics and their behavior, that it takes many more ad impressions to reach and influence listeners above 55, to a point where it becomes unprofitable to chase them. So the time, energy and money is spent pursuing the demographic that responds more readily.

Ah, now you're making some sense! What you're really saying is, that it's harder to find suckers in the 55+ age group, and easier to "influence" younger ones. Makes sense, since sugary breakfast cereal is pushed on Saturday morning cartoons. Wonderful. They realize we can't be "influenced" so easily, so forget about us... OK. Got it. Oh, and that happens the day you turn 55. Nice to know.

 

[michael hagerty]

That's not what they decided. They learned, through decades of watching demographics and their behavior, that it takes many more ad impressions to reach and influence listeners above 55, to a point where it becomes unprofitable to chase them. So the time, energy and money is spent pursuing the demographic that responds more readily.

Ah, now you're making some sense! What you're really saying is, that it's harder to find suckers in the 55+ age group, and easier to "influence" younger ones. Makes sense, since sugary breakfast cereal is pushed on Saturday morning cartoons. Wonderful. They realize we can't be "influenced" so easily, so forget about us... OK. Got it. Oh, and that happens the day you turn 55. Nice to know.

It's a process. The sweet spot in the 25-54 demo is 40-somethings. Above 50, they know it's diminishing returns.

Some of it is about our becoming more discriminating as we grow older. Some is that we're more likely to have established brand loyalties by a certain age.

 

[oldies76]

Oh, and that happens the day you turn 55. Nice to know.

A station like KOLA will being playing "Bennie and the Jets" from 1974 and as soon as someone turns 55, it'll just cut off halfway through the song. Being sarcastic here. ;D

I agree with you 110%, radio is seriously missing out on potential here with 55+ (pre 1975 songs now this year). Many 55+ do in fact listen to the radio, probably more of them listening than under 55, since the younger demos have mostly adapted to newer technologies (ipads, MP3's iTunes), mostly avoiding radio and it's tuneouts!

 

[TheBigA]

So since it costs money to run radio stations, and advertisers don't want audiences over 55, the programming aimed at 55+ tends to go to either subscription or public radio, where the station can bill the listeners directly.

I agree with you 110%, radio is seriously missing out on potential here with 55+ (pre 1975 songs now this year). Many 55+ do in fact listen to the radio, probably more of them listening than under 55, since the younger demos have mostly adapted to newer technologies (ipads, MP3's iTunes), mostly avoiding radio and it's tuneouts!

As I've said to you in other threads, the radio owners agree with you here, but they have no choice. Someone has to pay the bills. If the advertisers don't want to do it, and the station can't get listeners to pay, then they have to change the format.

 

[SolidGold16]

It's a process. The sweet spot in the 25-54 demo is 40-somethings. Above 50, they know it's diminishing returns.

Some of it is about our becoming more discriminating as we grow older. Some is that we're more likely to have established brand loyalties by a certain age.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I can't be couldn't be easily influenced by some slick advertising at 20, 30, 40, 50 or at 55, where I am now. I understand everyone is different.

As far as brand loyalty goes, word of mouth says much more to me about how trustworthy a product is than some fast-talking actor.

So I'm not disagreeing with you about your assertion. The only thing I disagree with is using it as a basis on how to program good music. In my mind, the two things aren't connected in any way. I also believe that everyone likes variety and dislikes repetition. Obviously, radio stations feel differently.

 

[SolidGold16]

A station like KOLA will being playing "Bennie and the Jets" from 1974 and as soon as someone turns 55, it'll just cut off halfway through the song. Being sarcastic here. ;D

Bbbbbenny and the....uh hello? Good one, Oldies

I agree with you 110%, radio is seriously missing out on potential here with 55+ (pre 1975 songs now this year). Many 55+ do in fact listen to the radio, probably more of them listening than under 55, since the younger demos have mostly adapted to newer technologies (ipads, MP3's iTunes), mostly avoiding radio and it's tuneouts!

Exactly. They're putting their money on the wrong horse. Appealing to the wrong group.

 

[TheBigA]

I also believe that everyone likes variety and dislikes repetition. Obviously, radio stations feel differently.

The people in radio don't play songs repeatedly for themselves. They play them repeatedly because the ratings show that repetition works. The smaller the playlist, the bigger the audience. We have more than 60 years of history on that.

 

[SolidGold16]

The smaller the playlist, the bigger the audience.

If this is true, then why don't they just go for it, narrow the playlist to 100 songs? Or 50? Or 10? or just 1? Through "research", find the most popular song in history, and just play that 24/7.

I find the whole concept of tiny playlists very illogical. Nothing will convince me that people want to hear the same few songs ad nauseam.

 

[michael hagerty]

So I'm not disagreeing with you about your assertion. The only thing I disagree with is using it as a basis on how to program good music. In my mind, the two things aren't connected in any way. I also believe that everyone likes variety and dislikes repetition. Obviously, radio stations feel differently.

Here's how they connect:

Advertising agencies (which place the majority of buys in markets of any considerable size) want 25-54. They don't consider additional listeners outside the demo as a bonus, but rather as waste. Additionally, even if you're strong in 25-54, additional listeners 55 and up can, in sufficient numbers, cause your average listener age to go up...and that causes concern on the part of the ad agencies.

As for the variety/repetition factor, the average person in the desirable demo listens at most 40 minutes per day to any one radio station. And they do it in (on the average) 12-minute chunks at about the same time each day. They spread their listening out among between 6 and 9 stations total.

In the thread on the L.A. board about Jhani Kaye's upcoming retirement as PD of KRTH, I posted a rotation this week that showed that KRTH's most-repeated songs (every 19 hours) are only heard by the listener who behaves that way (and again, that's the majority of the desired demo) every 19 days at most. If you're not keeping track...if your thoughts are on your family, your job, life in general, and you haven't heard a song in almost three weeks, you probably don't remember that you heard it three weeks ago...you just know that it's been a long time.

And the less-repeated songs are heard even less often by the target listener. To them, there is no repetition. The complaint of repetition tends to come up in two categories: Someone who hears a song, regardless of how infrequently, that they don't like ("they're playing that AGAIN?") and someone who listens far more often and for longer periods than the typical listener and thus hears the repetition the typical listener doesn't.

Adding more songs, making the cycles longer, has the unintended consequence of the typical listener not hearing their favorite songs often enough.