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Avid Listener
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It is true that radio's "customers", in the strictest sense, are the people who pay the bills -- the advertisers. However, radio gets money from advertisers by attracting listeners to their stations. Then, they rent those listeners. So, even though technically speaking, listeners aren't "customers", when it comes to attracting listeners, the principles involved are extremely similar to the principles involved in attracting paying customers to buy your product. So, to be pedantically nitpicking about it, it is erroneous to refer to listeners as "customers". However, if any radio station hopes to get advertisers to rent their audience, the radio station has to attract that audience. And listening to what the audience wants (which is a perpetually shifting, changing thing) is as critical to a radio station's quest for listeners as listening to customers is to a company attempting to sell a product.
Have you just discovered this?
And that's why radio has been commissioning ratings and other research projects for about the last 85 years.
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Omnibus
Guest
Let's not forget that Rush Limbaugh is an Oxycondin drug addict. That's how he lost his hearing.
Exactly. Sales does their research for advertisers and programming does their research of the audience.
So you're saying that Rush, while being the product, is also a consumer. Or is it customer?
btw, it's Oxycontin.
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FredLeonard
Guest
Advertisers are the customers of the sales department. Listeners are the customers of the programming department.
Radio has been commissioning bad research for 85 years. They don't hire real researchers. They hire consultants, whose main business is selling their advice. And their research always seems to support their advice. Add to that broadcasters are no better than the consultants and have decided what they want to do. So the consultant/supplier makes sure to tell them what they want to hear. This same disease also affects politicians but they are not going out of business, no matter how low their public regard. Radio is.
Go ahead. Keep parroting the industry line.
Radio has been commissioning bad research for 85 years. They don't hire real researchers. They hire consultants, whose main business is selling their advice. And their research always seems to support their advice. Add to that broadcasters are no better than the consultants and have decided what they want to do. So the consultant/supplier makes sure to tell them what they want to hear. This same disease also affects politicians but they are not going out of business, no matter how low their public regard. Radio is.
Go ahead. Keep parroting the industry line.
You should read a bit more about bi-modal marketing, which occurs when the party which pays for a service or product is not the one who consumes it. Life insurance is the textbook example, but electronic media is also part of the scope of this model.
You are saying that Crossley or C.E. Hooper or Dr. Roslow or Jim Seiler were not good researchers? OMG.
And the companies that do research for radio are professional research companies, some of which do only radio and other which do a variety of consumer research.
Consultants don't run research companies. While some consultants prefer dealing with specific research companies, it is ultimately the station that decides which company to choose. And those companies are staffed with skilled statisticians who are at the top of their field in techniques and the underlying math and analytics.
You have said this before. It is not true in general, although there may have been some case of a bad consultant using, badly, bad research that you experienced. Just as in automobiles or home builders, there are some better consultants and some that are not quite as good. Goes for plumbers, accountants, and interior decorators, too. Caveat emptor applies here as well.
Keep in mind that most radio research is intended to maintain or improve the position of an existing format. Music testing, talent evaluation and similar projects are done with some frequency. They tell stations what songs to play and what not to play within the existing format... or what on-air personnel is well received and who is not.
There is no "what the station wants to hear" as all the station wants... using the music test as an example... is to know which songs to play and how often.
Format searches are generally only done in dire situations where solutions are not obvious. And the normal procedure there is to use some variation of the Awareness - Trial - Usage model to test various music options or blends or talk content. The math involved makes biasing the results virtually impossible.
Much more frequent are the stories of research being commissioned and the client deciding not to fully implement it, thus causing a station to fail or implode... although this sort of thing is not all that common either.
As I mentioned, there are very few active consultants working in radio today as most companies with 10 or 12 stations or more have in-house expertise and thus don't spend on outside advice.
No it is not. Radio billings are up over 30% since 2008, and the industry is rapidly moving to new channels of distribution. While the "radio" of tomorrow may not look much like today's radio, the smart folks in the business are moving with the audience to deliver content the way the listeners want it.
I'd just love to know where you come up with the totally mistaken ideas of how research is done, the role of consultants and the other related lies and distortions you have posted of late.
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FredLeonard
Guest
Through 25 years as a marketing researcher, and dealing with people like you as clients. The one thing I never figured out: Do people like you really believe the industry BS or do you just spout the industry line because you tell people what they want to hear? Maybe you shouldn't be paying attention to all those old trade magazines you post. Sol Taishoff and the rest, down to Michael Harrison today, are hos and tell people what they want to hear.
Oh, come on.
I've been both a buyer of research... in multiple countries... and the head of a 30+ person in-house research division. The only objective in either instance has been to provide accurate insights on listener preferences and behaviour and then to fine-tune programming to reflect those preferences.
In no case... and I have been involved in upwards of 1000 music tests and hundreds of perceptual projects... has anyone been concerned with "industry attitudes". On the other hand, from the highest levels of management there has always been a clear mandate to find out what the listener wanted and deliver it. The only context is that the listener group that was hopefully delivered had to be salable and profitable for ownership.
While you may have seen examples of bad research efforts, just as I have heard hearsay and rumors of the same, that does not excuse many of your inaccurate statements... things like claiming that consultants do research. And when I look at some of the other statements you have made, such as saying that Top 40 no longer exists and that Top 40 today plays less songs than in its first decade or so, I see someone who does not have a grasp at the basics of the radio business.
So my question is, "what is your agenda and why do you use untruths and hyperbole to demean the radio industry and the many fine people who work in it?"
We actually hire both. And neither of them tells us what we want to hear. Maybe you haven't read the same research I read, but a lot of it isn't complimentary.
And yes, I think a lot of it is just plain wrong. The Edison research that came out a couple months ago was wrong. They drew the wrong conclusions from their information. And I didn't agree with Fred Jacobs either. Just because people do research doesn't mean we nod our heads in agreement. They don't tell us what WE want to hear. Sometimes they tell us what THEY want to hear. But that's true of a lot of things. That doesn't mean we shouldn't read it. Typically, these things are presented at conferences. We debate and assess their methodologies. At the end of the day, we compile lots of studies, some from within broadcasting, and some from outside the industry, to reach our conclusions. But a lot of my comments here come from practical applications: Watching what stations do and how listeners react.
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Omnibus
Guest
Well, I am not a user. Are you ?
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FredLeonard
Guest
Eduardo: I see. What you don't want to hear is "untruth" and "hyperbole." Radio has few "fine people" left and it has demeaned itself beyond anyone's ability to demean it. That's why the advertising industry has left (excluding bottom feeders). That's why much of the audience has left. As long as people like you keep saying, "What, me worry?" radio is doomed.
From some of the conversation here, I was beginning to think that EVERYONE participating was on drugs of some kind.
I am NOT a user, but I am the "caregiver" for someone who has been through an alphabet soup of prescriptions trying manage pain.
Oxycontin/Oxycodone: same thing. One is the drug, one is the marketing version.
See also: Percoset. See also: Endocet, Rociset, Roxicodone.
Could we possibly hang a little bit closer to broadcasting. I know the task is tough. Many of the broadcasters we need to discuss in these topics do exhibit behavior patterns consistent with the use of all of the above and even more, but we who come here to talk about radio don't have to parade our own drug-induced personalities before one another.
National, on the network, syndicated Talk Radio today has some of the same psychologoical things going for it that the drugs do. After you swallow the prescription (your favorite national talk host) it feels so good for a little while, maybe even a few months. But then like drugs, you need a newer, more potent high. So your favorite talk host either has to ramp up his/her product, or you go out onto the streets looking for a new vendor with a better "feel-good product". It seems this phenomena can work for either Right Wing OR Left Wing highs... but the Right Wing product has so far cornered the market by comparison.
Now, if you will excuse me.... I need to sit still long enough to write my Congressman. Seems as though he made a really potent buy recently. He needs an intervention! But he IS good at it. To get elected he had to beat out a Talk Radio host. When you can out-do the "professional dealers".... you must be working with The Good Stuff.
Radio is doomed regardless of what we do. At least that's what I keep reading. That's why some of us are broadening what we do beyond the air signal.
What I haven't seen from anyone is actual factual statistical research that says if we broaden our playlists, broaden the scope of our talk shows, or offer "quality programming," rather than appealing to the lowest common denominator, that our audience levels will return to 1990 levels. If you've seen such a study, please link it here. The problems we face aren't programming problems, and they're not going to be solved with programming solutions.
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Gee, every statement you make is not true.
Radio billing: up over 30% since 2008.
Radio reach: within 3% of the peak mid-80's level.
So how is radio "demeaned"? If you mean the more truthful "slow growth" reality, then say it.
Radio's time spent listening to over the air stations: down, particularly in younger demos but most broadcasters are hyperactively pursuing a transition from over the air delivery to new media distribution which is the audience migration destination.
Radio, by the standards of anyone save a confirmed cynic or baptized misanthrope, has plenty of fine, dedicated people in all areas. Yes, there are some operators that have done "things we don't like" due to per-recession debt acquisition that is now unsustainable in an ongoing recession world, but that does not mean that the folks at the station level are not good, knowledgeable, skilled and intelligent people.
You raise an excellent point here.
The bulk of radio product research (and Nielsen ratings are not product research) is proprietary and specific to one station or company brand. Nobody outside the building sees it.
What does get seen is the stuff you mention... the presentations at conventions and conferences. Much is to generalized to be actionable. Some is so format specific as to be irrelevant to, let's say, anyone not doing Classic Rock in a Rust Belt market. Many of these projects are "free samples" from research companies trying to do image enhancement to get our business. They are like the 12+ numbers given away for free by Nielsen; interesting but not particularly useful.
My favorite is a study done over a decade ago by the CMA for the CRS conference. The idea was to research how to get more Hispanics to listen to country, given the boom in Hispanic population in the US. After endless slides and narratives, it became obvious that Hispanics do gravitate to country... when they are in their 5th or 6th generation in the US and when they live in Texas and surrounding states. Interesting? I guess. Actionable? No. Free? Yes. And worth every cent of it.
Fred claims to be a market researcher, but does not differentiate between proprietary research and the puff pieces you described. Then again, he calls Sol Taishoff a "ho" despite the fact that Sol died in about the same year, 34 years ago, that Fred's "35 years of experience" indicate as his entry point into the media.
There are also research presentations that are outside the industry. But the real word I always look for is consensus. Because unless I have multiple sources saying the same thing, I don't have anything more than opinion.
Another lie. But I guess that's to be expected here isn't it?
http://www.audiologyonline.com/releases/otolaryngologists-for-rush-limbaugh-describe-6254
I guess next will be the accusation that the DOCTORS are covering up.
So how about Time magazine?
http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,179428,00.html
or the LA Times
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/22/health/he-60135
If OxyconTin abuse caused hearing loss, half of West Virginia would be deaf.
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