Mike Sheridan said:
Why do listeners say in focus groups there is too much talk on the radio when most of the stations have cut talk to the bone? Then complain that the station or the jock is boring! Is the radio station asking the wrong question? Do they need to clarify the question and ask if the listener is referring to jock talk or commercials?
Why do listeners say they don't want to hear the same songs over and over then tune out when the playlist is made larger?
I have been told the reaearch says listeners are willing to put up with 2 long spot sets of they can have long music sweeps. I'm not sure I believe this one and I sure wouldn't want to be the guy with the spot last in the stopset!
Of course they are complaining about commercials when they refer to talk on music-oriented stations. And when a station is using some voice-tracked "works for every market" announcer with absolutely zero personality because they are in a city far, far away, no surprises there either. They aren't fooling listeners.
And listeners are happy to say yes to long sweeps of music followed by long stopsets, because as soon as the ad cluster begins, they do the same thing people do at home with TV - change the station. And a lot of them are very good at learning just how long an ad cluster runs, so they dump out of a station when it begins and know approximately when it is safe for them to return.
Do you think the listener wants to hear the jock say your station plays the most music, best music, etc. (zzzz)
And if the jock isn't doing it, the cookie cutter sound-effect-plex with the echo/reverb-enhanced guy, name dropping the slogan every few songs doesn't add anything either.
I think what is different about satellite radio is they have no reason to lie to their listeners about what they are. Everyone knows they are programmed somewhere else and the programming is the same nationwide. And they use that concept to build their radio community. The XM "family" for example. Many music channels have very good personalities who shout out to listeners who call or e-mail in. They know the music. They understand listeners coming and going from their channels and don't mind it. And of course, on most channels, no ads.
I think what XM and Sirius demonstrate is that people so loathe what corporate radio -is- these days that they'll pay some serious money every month to get as far away from it as possible. And the NAB and the cluster owners can whine about it all they like, but they have little foundation to stand on when they argue they represent "local radio" because in more and more instances, they lie. The only thing "local" is some of the advertising and the call letters. But they lie to everyone - starting with the FCC when they apply for a license to put a new station on the air. They claim this distant suburb is underserved by the primary stations in the market and needs to have a station to provide a "local voice," so the FCC hands them a license to open their rimshot station - the cluster that owns it considers it the B team, and dumps a 24/7 automated format on it to counter-program against another cluster in the market. Local service indeed.
On the TV side, every uncommitted block of time on a local station is handed over to an infomercial - forget about investing in syndicated stuff - they have basically handed that to basic cable these days. And now that they've squeezed more and more time out of shows to increase ad inventory, they're surprised we've adapted with time-shifting to FF through ads or used the remote to channel surf when the ad chunk turns up. The equivalent has now happened with radio as people discover alternatives to the "let's run this thing as cheap as we can to reap maximum profits" mentality - be that satellite radio, the iPod, or just channel surfing the radio dial.
