in talking about the changes at wls-fm

[davideduardo]

Radio, on the other hand, when testing music, would seem to find a cross section of the population that
may neither be an active listener, or for that matter, "actively" appreciate music.

Wrong. Station music tests generally target users of a specific station or format. Stations will include in the test the "ultra core" in terms of age and gender... the group that gives 75% to 80% of the heavy listening. The listeners who are invited to a test must use the station (or the format if there are several similar ones in a market) a minimum amount of time each day to guarantee that they know the music and listen to it fairly often.

If you wanted to appeal to sports fans, you'd canvass sports fans, right?
So why does ( music) radio not seek for testing those who:
1. Identify themselves as active listeners

They do. Screening is blind as in " we're conducting an opinion study" not "WXXX is conducting a study" but each person is asked age, gender (by observation), station choices and hours-a-day usage, etc. before being invited to attend a test.

2. ditto ditto as music enthusiasts

They are asked how much time a day or week they listen to different stations. If they respond with sufficient hours and listen to the target station or station type, they are invited.
3. Those with open active minds and good memories rather than those with a more closed mind and little retention for content?

All this is why the recruiting firm is paid something around $75 to $100 (and more for very tight specs) for each person who shows to the test... it can take several hours to recruit each respondent!

 

[davideduardo]

WABC in New York in the 60's played the #1 song every 90 minutes; it was just the right rotation. There was no indication that it was played too often.

I had read it was a tad quicker. The number one song rotated every seventy minutes, number two every eighty minutes, number three every ninety minutes and number four every 100 minutes. WLS adopted the same rotation with the arrival of John Gehron and "Musicradio". A short TSL and large cume made the quick rotation possible. Though it had to be hell for an air personality when a song like "You Light Up My Life" became number one for two months.

That may well have been the case. I did monitors on WABC around '65 and '66 (my own station even had the WABC jingle package!) and copied to some extent the rotations... and in the early 70's I visited the station and at that time they even had a timer that alerted the need to play #1 again.

In your 70' rotation, you show even more that people want to hear the biggest songs a lot!

 

[briancraig]

Although, I agree that music testing is an essential tool for radio programming and that a well researched station will usually win, not all research is accurate or there wouldn't be so many major market failures.

How many times did you read in R & R during a format start about how the company did extensive research on the market before deciding to launch format whatever.

I remember reading about both Pirate Radio and the original KKBT in L.A. being so researched for the market and neither were successful.

 

[cyberdad]

Though it had to be hell for an air personality when a song like "You Light Up My Life" became number one for two months.

In my case it was 1971 and "Maggie May". Note when you played it....then an hour beyond that point, you had to play it again within a half hour. As a practical matter it made for a 70-80 minute rotation. It took nearly 40 years for me to enjoy hearing it again (sort of)!

Guys, let me say this about research. In my former "parallel universe". I always told clients that media is not rocket science. Qualify/define your audience and your target. Then find out what they want and give it to them. Nothing more complex than that.

We weren't at all shy about taking the time to test and research. Then test and research some more. In our case, all over the U.S., Canada, and Europe 40 times a year on a face-to face on average...recruiting participants who met our profiles at $75-$100 per individual. Focus groups, psychographic research, conventional surveys. All blind. On top of that, we encouraged our audience to be proactive with feedback on our content 24/7/365.

It paid off. Knowledge is power. And we used it to crush our competitors. And no, we weren't so arrogant to just crunch data and omit the human element and common sense. We always kept in mind that we were people communicating with people. It was a great ride until the bankers and bean counters got control of our company. and decided that intelligence was something they could cut. It wasn't long after that, that the competition was able to catch us.

 

[tce]

Apparently Top 40 or, more generically, formats based on popularity of music have their roots in research, formal or observational. The story has been often repeated about Todd Storz noticing that certain songs on a bar room juke box were repeatedly selected. Richard Fatherly says that Storz himself describes his observation as happening in restaurants during World War II. Fatherly also points to research from the University of Omaha that reinforced Storz's impression. http://www.reelradio.com/storz/

As David Eduardo contends, the research and observations did not invent Top 40 Radio. The availability of useful information allowed an intelligent, creative person to formulate a successful entertainment vehicle that utilized (perhaps helped perpetuate) radio as a profitable medium.

That result (that research leads to radio that irritates not a few of us) fails to negate the underlying facts.

 

[KFodor]

So, when you say disco created U/C, I will accept it in the loosest sense, but question somewhat the premise.

I am more of a skeptic than you are on this subject.

CHR is Top 40. Simply, R&R decided they wanted a chart that did not share terminology with other publications, and they renamed the format.

R&B is "Urban" but the causes for the change of name are more subtle. And they involve some history. R&B was a 60's term for a format, although the R&B name survives as being a component of the music on an urban station. But in the early 50's, when African American stations began to be created, the music was called "race music". Then the format was called "Negro" or "Negro programming".

When I became a staff member at WJMO in Cleveland in 1958, the station was calling itself, for sales and marketing purposes, "rhythm and blues" or just "r&b" but they included the "... for Cleveland's Negro audience" in the sales material.

As the broadening influences of things like the very crossover Motown sounds came and went, Black targeted stations became more than r&b. Eventually, the name for the format became Urban.

The names given the format have some strong parallels to the status of the Black population, the civil rights movement and some more-than-appropriate changes away from potential slurs or racist terms. But I don't see disco, mirror balls and polyester being an influential part of that metamorphosis.

At heart, David...I totally agree with you. But, I teach radio in a college course whose textbook makes that statement in polyester orange. (Proving those who can, do and those who can't...write textbooks!) It's even a question on a test in the teacher's manual. I refuse to use that question on my tests and explain to the students why I don't use it and the basis for my objections to it. But, as I know you've read my posts in the past, I tend to be too nice most of the time....

 

[davideduardo]

The story has been often repeated about Todd Storz noticing that certain songs on a bar room juke box were repeatedly selected.

Here is a page on KOWH....

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/KOWH_Birth_of_Top-40.htm

It includes all of Fatherly's audio materials, as well as a recommended read from Television Magazine which gives a somewhat different focus to the creative process behind the format.

 

[cyberdad]

Just a random thought....I wonder if KCRO....successor to KOWH...could today fetch the $850k that Todd Storz sold it for in the late 1950s. And another random thought....and back on topic (sort of). We're talking about Todd Storz...and indeed that there was more to his approach than just observing what and how often songs were being played on jukeboxes. The "secret sauce" was actually research. The fact that Storz was also doing consulting work for ABC Radio in the late '50s suggests that he was directly involved in planting the seed for the top 40 formats of WLS and WABC. Safe to assume that any conversations between Storz and ABC execs had more to do with research and practical experience with the resultant business model than Storz sitting around cafes and taverns.

 

[tce]

Since this thread started with WLS, it would be interesting to translate the $860K Storz deal to equivalent dollars to compare with the most recent WLS sale.

 

[cyberdad]

According to a source I used, today's dollar has the equivalent purchasing power of a little over what 14 cents would've bought in 1964. (Yet another good argument for replacing dollar bills with coinage). Anyway, if my source is accurate and my math is correct, the KOWH sale would be worth a little over 5.5 million in 2013 dollars.

Not bad for a 500-watt daytimer coffee pot! Now the question becomes, what was the station billing at the time it was sold.