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Losing money is not the trigger to bankruptcy. It is the inability to get debt financing to get out of the red ink.
MassMusicMan
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Depends. What are they not playing?
If we are talking about program research, nearly all is subcontracted to companies like Harker and Edison and Coleman. Only a couple of large groups have ever done programming research in-house.
For audience size research, at Nielsen, there is a combination of trained statisticians, competer programmers and people knowledgeable about the specific fields they research. Nielsen has thousands of employees.
And among radio research companies, very few are research and statistics grads. That is because the research procedures are very simple, but the knowledge of radio programming has to be very deep. Most radio research companies have just a hand-full of actual employees.
I ran an in-house research division for a group broadcaster for a decade. We had about 50 employees, including a 40-person call center for music research.
In some cases, we hire a more expert person for a specific project. For example, to develop a computer program to do cluster/factor analysis for the research organization I managed for about a decade, we hired an outside expert who developed the algorithm and showed us how to process the raw data in math software before importing to Cornerstone's "Analyst" software.
Each station works with the research provider over many conferences to determine the scope of a project, the recruit "specs" of who will attend and who won't and how they will be qualified. In addition, cuestionares and test music or music pod lists will be developed.
In other cases, such as local market in-depth perceptual research, a local service bureau will be used to do the interviews using our questionnaires and then given to a processing provider for tabulation. On the other hand, very radio-centered projects like one-on-ones and focus groups will rent a local facility set up for that kind of project but the interviews / sessions will be conducted by a radio-centered person.
Basically, anyone with a good math background can spend a week or two reading some select books and have the same basic training in local market research as most college grads do.
As an example, the most common radio research project is a music test. There, the station provides the list of songs to be tested. A local recruiter gets the participants and they are either a) brought to a meeting room for group testing or, b) given instructions on how to log on and take the test online. In a "live" test generally someone who knows radio will present and explain and guide the participants. In an on-line test, the same narrative is both written and recorded for participants.
So, to answer your question, a radio research company will "farm out" a lot of the work to local recruiters and project management providers. They will buy the software for specific purposes. They will apply knowledge of radio and music to employ those tools to get good listener feedback.
Example: using one well known research company, the station I was consulting in a market slightly larger than New York City looked for a new format, using over 20 "format pods" of potential music formats. From the top performers, the one that had the best sales prospects was picked and then over 1000 songs that fit the overall definition were tested. The results were assembled into a format, jocks were hired, staff was trained, imaging was developed based on a new name, promotion budgets were built and the station debuted just 10 days ahead of the monthly ratings sample period. In a market with over 100 full signal, suburban and neighborhood stations, we debuted at #1 with nearly double the share of #2. We continued at that level for the 6 years I was involved, using callout music research and regular music tests and occasional one-on-one projects for perceptual guidance.
The key to radio research is not exploring new techniques... it is interpreting and implementing the results. A good research project requires very skilled programmers to interpret and implement.
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This is a second response to your question, as I sense the very American obsession with college degrees, the majority of which are neither practical nor needed.
I'll tell you my story: I quit high school in my junior year to intern at a radio station. A year later, I was building my own station which became #1 in a 30+ station market.
I discovered that I needed to know electronics as I was building the market's most advanced technical facility, so I worked my way up, via correspondence courses, to calculus and was able, over the next few years, to build a dozen radio stations, one with the country's first directional system, the first diplexed AM stations on one tower, northern South America's first FM station (where I built the transmitter, the antenna and even the stereo generator). I built transmitters, STLs, consoles, antennas for FM, tuned AM towers and even fixed competitors nasty transmitters on occasion.
I discovered I needed a knowledge of accounting, so I took correspondence courses in the subject. I did the same for "management" and "marketing" although by then I could have written some of the course materials myself.
Ten years later, when I did several years of consulting, I went to a half-decent university and majored in social sciences (alias radio programming) with a minor in business. I quit 12 credits short of a degree to run a station group. The college experience was fun, but I could have done the same with some intense reading and study on my own.
So don't discard or look down on the "credentials" of the self-trained skilled learner. Often they are the best (unless it's a doctor or the like you are looking for). Remember, even Abe Lincoln did not go to law school; he "read the law" under the supervision of a practicing lawyer and became, I'd say, rather good at it.
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However, they do have ratings and advertising research departments, and the people I've known there have the requisite graduate degrees. A lot of what they do is interpret the data from Nielsen and then interact with the research people at the agencies or major advertisers. Their data and recommendations are often available to the programmers if requested.
The three research companies you mention have quite a few scholars among their senior staff. Larry Rosen, who runs Edison, went to Princeton and Wharton. Those are good places to start.
My view on that is a degree is usually important to GET a job. But knowledge & experience are what will help you keep a job and advance in your career.
Yes, some of the national sales rep and in-house national sales people do have college degrees. But they tend to be work-related parchments, usually in some field of business or social sciences. Or technical fields for engineering and computer areas.
The most useless thing is a broadcast degree. When I set up our research division, one of my key people had an MBA from an Ivy league school, another had degrees in both engineering and business from Bogotá and LA. Another had a degree in political science from the university in Hermosillo, Sonora.
Larry was the person who supervised the project I mentioned in detail. I have bought a number of projects from Edison, particularly when a non-radio or non-conventional focus was required.
For example, in Buenos Aires, we did a 200 person music test with Edison with in home and individually with a moderator who played the tapes and recorded the scores. It worked in that market.
Fortunately, I was the COO of a group where the owner was known to say, "I don't interview college broadcast graduates. They all tell me they know more than I do."
My point is that a majority of degrees are, perhaps, entertaining, but in the real world totally useless. There are many employers who require a degree, but they seem to do so with the belief that four years of college discipline makes for better employees.
I prefer the system of many nations in Europe, where at some point in secondary education students are given recommendations for trade and career schools or university educations. That system works much better
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No I'm talking about VPs of Research at Audacy, Cumulus, iHeart, and a few others. Not sales people.
But those people are focused almost 100% on Nielsen, often with the purpose of making sure that Nielsen kept up to its standards. At most radio groups, audience research is totally separate from sales research.
A number of those that you mention have significantly reduced their in-house research staffs and what remains is mostly to track ratings for sales purposes. Some companies, like Nuvoodoo, are staffed by former employees of a certain company's in-house audience research department. In other companies, the audience research person basically sets the parameters for subcontracted projects with outside research companies.
Thanks, David, for the informative response to my earlier question. I truly appreciate it.
I thought it would be an interesting topic to discuss on the Philly board in particular given the history of WBEB being particularly astute at using the results of research to gear programming & sales elements.
I thought it would be an interesting topic to discuss on the Philly board in particular given the history of WBEB being particularly astute at using the results of research to gear programming & sales elements.
The question was if they had education in market research or applied statistics, and the answer is they do. In addition, they attend seminars on the subject.
The people I know who have been involved with sales research are all "on the job" trained and not educated in statistics at the university level... that includes people who worked for five or six of the top 10 groups. Some have acquired significant knowledge of ratings systems, but that is about it. Station sales "research" is basically picking the right tables our of Nielsen data; I don't know of any group doing independent sales research since Jerry Lee sold his station in Philly... and even then, what he did was unique.
In a few occasions, some of the former Arbitron employees who were either downsized or did not want to join Nielsen and move to Tampa went to group broadcasters... but all of the ones I know of are no longer with those companies or have moved within a company to the TV division.
Except for Clear Channel and Univision, groups always have subcontracted for music and program research. And in every case I know, those dealing with program research don't deal with sales "research". Sales research is generally attachments to a presentation that show the CPP of a buy or give other data based on ratings data and programming puffery to try to enhance a pitch.
How about Pierre?
Are there 35 year old women listening to WOGL? I mean sure it’s plausible and I guess there have to be but I can’t fathom it. When these women were listening to Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys WOGL wasn’t even on their radar. It would make sense to me that as they age they would end up at WBEB or even still sample Q102. And I know it hasn’t been Oldies 98 for 20 years but 98.1 in this vicinity will always be associated with a Pink Cadillac to some people, especially 35-40 year olds who have fond memories of riding around in Pop-Pop and Grandmom’s Oldsmobile.
Statistically yes. Just as there are 35 year old men listening to WMGK.
He has a communications degree, not one in research and statistics. He also has some short-term non-degree certificates in finance and management. He began in Arbitron sales, and was always involved in client services. He did not deal with the research itself; the closest he got was being in charge of rolling out the PPM service in Houston which was mostly industry relations and coordinating the group of select industry people who actually got the early Philly and Houston data (we got monthly CDs for Philly starting around 2002 and then data files online when Houston went into the second full PPM test).
That was the point that i was trying to make
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Absolutely 35 year old women are listening to WOGL. It doesn't matter that WOGL wasn't on their radar when they were listening to Britney Spears and Backstreet boys. What matters now is that WOGL is starting to (and has been) playing songs they are familiar with because they listened to them growing up.
His degree is a BS from Northwestern. The BS requires a course in statistics.
That's not unusual. Quite a few schools offer that line of study, including the University of Pennsylvania and Temple.
I know for me, I was expected to take at least one course in statistics.
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