Tom Wells said:
Ha! "Ballad of the Green Berets" is on now. We are still in how many police-action type wars where we refuse to DECLARE war, and VietNam is no different from Afghanistan or Iraq or Korea .
There is a big difference between "Soldier Boy" and "Ballad." One is a love story, the other smacks of the glorification of war to many in an era when armed conflict is being questioned and examined.
We have people dying far away in hopes that ultimately things will be better.
Funny, but that is the same reason the soldiers on the other side have for fighting, too. Most issues in the world have more than "our side" and as awareness of this increases, the acceptance of such songs will lessen (which in no way detracts from belief in our nation or its ideals... before someone thinks I am not a proud supporter of our own soldiers).
But the narrow minded still just see this as an oldie, too "dated", and even embarrassing.
However listeners see this, they don't want to hear it... in overwhelming numbers.
I am aready assured statistical sampling was devised as a way to stifle creativity by those who have little. Or to marginalize those not within a pre-defined normalization.
Statistical sampling is part of consumer goods and services of all kinds. Samples are picked to test new products, samples are picked to test new variants and brand extensions, samples are picked to survey home buying habits (brand specific or ombibus studies). Statistical sampling is how the Census and many private demographers keep track of the population and its characteristics each year between the ten year Census and such data is often more accurate than the Census itself!
Sampling is a near-universal technique that is applied to radio in order to find out how big our audience is or what specific audiences want and need.
Of course, asking the right questions in the right way is critical, and when research is done based on faulty base logic, we get "New Coke."
If a segment of the population is "marginalized" it is because that segment is so small as to not represent a viable market. Let's take a somewhat absurd premise that we discover some people who want "Papaya Flavored Coke." So we do a study, and discover that there is a small group, maybe 1% of cola consumers, who like and are excited by this flavor. But if we do a bit deeper questioning, we find that it would be bought as a change of pace, not as a staple item. So, we eliminate nearly half of all consumers who don't buy colas... and then we have 1% of the other 50%, or 0.5% who would buy the papaya variant some of the time... so the segment is down to maybe 0.125% of the total bottled drink market. And that is not a big enough market to justify either the product or to get shelf space in stores where a certain sales level per inch or foot of facing is required.
Think of radio as a product category... like soft drinks. Pepsi and Coke and 7-UP are the CHR, Country and AC's of beverages. Ethnic (Hispanic, Black, etc), Oldies and classic hits are the Dr. Pepper, Root Beer and Fruit flavors... and then we get into variants like premium brands and it seems like those change all the time. At some point, there is not enough shelving to accommodate variants because the demand is too light to create payback.
The "I want to hear everything that is in Whitburn" listeners have to realize that oldies / classic hits seldom reaches even 1/4 of all listeners (and is "picked" by , and generally only reaches about 0.4% or so at any given time of the day (yeah, at any time of the day, oldies /CH listeners are less than one out of every 200 people... the rest are not listening to radio or are listening to something else.
In LA, KRTH listeners who spend an hour a week or more with KRTH represent 9% of the 12+ population, and about 8% of the 25-54. In New York, the figures for CBS-FM are similar.
In New York, the very well programmed and executed CBS-FM shares about a third of its one-hour plus listeners with WAXQ, and then descending to my cut off of 10% sharing, with WLTW, WHTZ, WRXP, WKTU, WINS, WCBS, WWFS, WPLJ and WABC. So the oldies consumer is not brand loyal... they use plenty of other varieties or "flavors" of radio, too. When they tune in, they expect to hear the big hits, feel the big memories.
I will not be "normalized". I accepted that radio was infested with this mindset 35 years ago,
but as I have listened to and enjoyed the exceptions I know it doesn't HAVE to be this way.
The very term
Broadcasting indicates that radio knew it had to have mass appeal back in the 1920's...
