Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?

[oldies76]

That's what music testing does...assembles a cross-section of the audience you want to attract to your station (age, sex, income level, ethnicity) and determines what songs the greatest number of them have in common as favorites, and what songs the majority will tolerate (not tune out).

That's all good, but at least keep the others "handy" if a request should come up or just to throw one in every once in a while. We're getting to the point in time (almost 2013) where music from the mid 70' and back is rarely, if ever played anymore, and I just do not want to see that happen to the late 70's and 80's tunes. There are seriously, plenty of great songs out there. Believe me, I'm not the only one out there, passionate about songs from our youth..... those were great times.

Have a good night......

 

[radioman148]

After all, you said earlier that the goal is to play everyone's favorites, not just someone's. If we are catering to just PPM'ers, then we are catering to just a select few, and not to the masses. WE need to become PPM'ers, so that we can blunt their effect on radio.

After that, it becomes about negative reactions...songs that people do tune out over...every song has some negatives...when they hit a certain level, though, it becomes difficult to justify playing it.

So then what explains "Brown Eyed Girl?"

 

[EZway2go]

After all, you said earlier that the goal is to play everyone's favorites, not just someone's. If we are catering to just PPM'ers, then we are catering to just a select few, and not to the masses. WE need to become PPM'ers, so that we can blunt their effect on radio.

After that, it becomes about negative reactions...songs that people do tune out over...every song has some negatives...when they hit a certain level, though, it becomes difficult to justify playing it.

So then what explains "Brown Eyed Girl?"

Personally, a song like "Brown Eyed Girl" wouldn't necessarily be a tune-out, but it would in no way get me to stop on that station during a seek 'n scan search either. Songs like that, or "Respect" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," have been so overplayed, or somehow ingrained in our cultural consciousness from being used in a commercial or featured in a movie, they've taken on a new life of their own long after disappearing from the charts (and, therefore, nothing to get excited about).

 

[EZway2go]

...You're also right about that Canadian content rule, which explains why that's the only station I ever heard "Love Me, Love Me, Love" by Frank Mills these many years after its original run in the early '70s...

WOW! One more I need to track down for my library. That was a favorite back in the day.

Lotsa luck finding that one. I saw the title on only one Frank Mills greatest hits CD, then when I got it, it turned out to be an instrumental, not the vocal single version.

 

[michael hagerty]

After all, you said earlier that the goal is to play everyone's favorites, not just someone's. If we are catering to just PPM'ers, then we are catering to just a select few, and not to the masses. WE need to become PPM'ers, so that we can blunt their effect on radio.

After that, it becomes about negative reactions...songs that people do tune out over...every song has some negatives...when they hit a certain level, though, it becomes difficult to justify playing it.

So then what explains "Brown Eyed Girl?"

Personally, a song like "Brown Eyed Girl" wouldn't necessarily be a tune-out, but it would in no way get me to stop on that station during a seek 'n scan search either. Songs like that, or "Respect" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," have been so overplayed, or somehow ingrained in our cultural consciousness from being used in a commercial or featured in a movie, they've taken on a new life of their own long after disappearing from the charts (and, therefore, nothing to get excited about).

Gotta remember, the average listener spends maybe 20 minutes a day listening to any given station, usually at the same time each day. So they hear six, maybe seven songs (fewer if a six-minute commercial break is part of their 20 minutes).

People on this board like to talk about hearing Brown Eyed Girl and other "overplayed" tracks several times a week, but the average listener is hearing them maybe two or three times a month, and they're not keeping track.

 

[michael hagerty]

That's what music testing does...assembles a cross-section of the audience you want to attract to your station (age, sex, income level, ethnicity) and determines what songs the greatest number of them have in common as favorites, and what songs the majority will tolerate (not tune out).

That's all good, but at least keep the others "handy" if a request should come up or just to throw one in every once in a while.

Program Director: "Let's see here...these records could cause a third of my listeners to tune out. The ones that have PPMs will be recorded instantaneously as having tuned to another station, and that will cause our ratings to drop. That affects ad sales, revenue, the jobs of the people who work here and whether the station can stay in this format or on the air, period.

But if I get a phone call, I'll play 'em."

 

[landtuna]

Gotta remember, the average listener spends maybe 20 minutes a day listening to any given station...

With that miniscule TSL it is a wonder any advertiser spends any money on radio at all. ???

 

[oldies76]

Program Director: "Let's see here...these records could cause a third of my listeners to tune out. The ones that have PPMs will be recorded instantaneously as having tuned to another station, and that will cause our ratings to drop. That affects ad sales, revenue, the jobs of the people who work here and whether the station can stay in this format or on the air, period.

But if I get a phone call, I'll play 'em."

Yeah, you should, it's called satisfying a listener! And the ones you SATISFY, will outweigh any listener that happens to tune out. I highly doubt 1/3 of your audience will suddenly change stations if you were to play, by request, "I Love You" by the Climax Blues Band. You might lose 1/300th.

 

[willdav713]

After all, you said earlier that the goal is to play everyone's favorites, not just someone's. If we are catering to just PPM'ers, then we are catering to just a select few, and not to the masses. WE need to become PPM'ers, so that we can blunt their effect on radio.

After that, it becomes about negative reactions...songs that people do tune out over...every song has some negatives...when they hit a certain level, though, it becomes difficult to justify playing it.

So then what explains "Brown Eyed Girl?"

Or any song by the "Eagles?" it must be federally mandated that they play them ;D

 

[michael hagerty]

Program Director: "Let's see here...these records could cause a third of my listeners to tune out. The ones that have PPMs will be recorded instantaneously as having tuned to another station, and that will cause our ratings to drop. That affects ad sales, revenue, the jobs of the people who work here and whether the station can stay in this format or on the air, period.

But if I get a phone call, I'll play 'em."

Yeah, you should, it's called satisfying a listener! And the ones you SATISFY, will outweigh any listener that happens to tune out. I highly doubt 1/3 of your audience will suddenly change stations if you were to play, by request, "I Love You" by the Climax Blues Band. You might lose 1/300th.

I don't know what the negatives are on "I Love You". Do you?

And although this is getting mighty redundant, let me restate the reality:

If your station plays a song with 33% negatives, there is a very strong possibility one-third of your listeners will hit the button. That's exactly what that part of music testing is designed to measure.

If any song would cause only 1/300th of your audience to tune out, it would be the highest-testing record in history. That's a 99.77% positive. If that were true of "I Love You", it would be played more often than "Brown Eyed Girl".

Basic math, Oldies76: If you satisfy one listener, but two tune out, that's a loss. One does not offset two. It certainly does not offset hundreds or thousands.

 

[michael hagerty]

Program Director: "Let's see here...these records could cause a third of my listeners to tune out. The ones that have PPMs will be recorded instantaneously as having tuned to another station, and that will cause our ratings to drop. That affects ad sales, revenue, the jobs of the people who work here and whether the station can stay in this format or on the air, period.

But if I get a phone call, I'll play 'em."

Yeah, you should, it's called satisfying a listener! And the ones you SATISFY, will outweigh any listener that happens to tune out. I highly doubt 1/3 of your audience will suddenly change stations if you were to play, by request, "I Love You" by the Climax Blues Band. You might lose 1/300th.

I don't know what the negatives are on "I Love You". Do you?

And although this is getting mighty redundant, let me restate the reality:

If your station plays a song with 33% negatives, there is a very strong possibility one-third of your listeners will hit the button. That's exactly what that part of music testing is designed to measure.

If any song would cause only 1/300th of your audience to tune out, it would be the highest-testing record in history. That's a 99.77% positive. If that were true of "I Love You", it would be played more often than "Brown Eyed Girl".

Basic math, Oldies76: If you satisfy one listener, but two tune out, that's a loss. One does not offset two. It certainly does not offset hundreds or thousands.

Typo above: It would be a 99.67% positive.

 

[oldies76]

If any song would cause only 1/300th of your audience to tune out, it would be the highest-testing record in history. That's a 99.77% positive. If that were true of "I Love You", it would be played more often than "Brown Eyed Girl".

It's just a bit of exaggeration, but I think you know the point I've been trying to make in the two threads, but that's fine.

 

[firepoint525]

As for PPM participation, all you have to do is say yes when Arbitron asks you. There's no way to get on a list. They just have to call you. Oh, and there's a pre-interview to make sure that your listening habits aren't so far out of the mainstream that your listening isn't representative of several thousand other listeners.
That's because, in a metro market of 5 million people, there are fewer than 500 PPM participants chosen.

About 10 years (or slightly more) ago, I received some sort of questionnaire in the mail asking me to listen to the local oldies station for an hour, then fill out that questionnaire and mail it back in. So I did. Since I was a regular listener to that station anyway, and would have been listening anyway that evening, it was no big deal to me. I happened to listen in the evening, to their all-request program. It was a generally good hour for me to be listening to them. I rated the station favorably. About the only thing that I "dinged" them for was that I would have liked a little more variety. (It's been so long now that I don't even remember what they played. Nothing stood out.) They continued as an oldies station for another five years or so after that.

I would not have filled out a similar survey for a country station because I don't listen to enough country to be considered "mainstream" as you put it.

I last filled out an Arbitron diary sometime in the '80s. I filled out one for TV, and I believe on another occasion, I filled out one for radio. As for the radio diary, it has been so long that I don't remember much about it. But I have moved since then, so I now listen to different stations than I did back then.

 

[firepoint525]

After all, you said earlier that the goal is to play everyone's favorites, not just someone's. If we are catering to just PPM'ers, then we are catering to just a select few, and not to the masses. WE need to become PPM'ers, so that we can blunt their effect on radio.

After that, it becomes about negative reactions...songs that people do tune out over...every song has some negatives...when they hit a certain level, though, it becomes difficult to justify playing it.

So then what explains "Brown Eyed Girl?"

Or any song by the "Eagles?" it must be federally mandated that they play them ;D

There was a guy who used to post here who owns/manages a station that had (at that time) a satellite-fed oldies format. He claimed to hear so much Supremes music on his own station that he said that Diana Ross must have been a shareholder in the satellite service that fed his station! That may have been a factor in him changing format on that station.

 

[michael hagerty]

If any song would cause only 1/300th of your audience to tune out, it would be the highest-testing record in history. That's a 99.77% positive. If that were true of "I Love You", it would be played more often than "Brown Eyed Girl".

It's just a bit of exaggeration, but I think you know the point I've been trying to make in the two threads, but that's fine.

Oldies76, other posters in the other thread blew you off as not listening to any fact that doesn't square with what you wish radio did as opposed to how it really works. I'm taking you seriously. If you throw out a figure, I assume you mean it, whether that's 1/300th of a percent or one listener offsetting however many tune out.

I played my first record on the radio 41 years ago as a 15 year old baby DJ. The criteria was what we thought sounded good and flowed nicely with the other songs. It was a small town, 3000 people. There were no ratings services. There also was no competition for ad dollars.

A few years later, when I got to an Arbitron-rated market as a programmer, I was a lot more careful but still took chances on records I believed in. But ratings were every six months. There was no reliable way to determine what indivdual songs might be causing tune-out, so we still focused on overall sound. There were also only 13 other stations and maybe 1 or 2 that our audience would consider an acceptable alternative.

Today that same market has 40 signals, not 14. There are probably 5 or 6 acceptable alternatives for a 25-54 year old adult, maybe more. And they're competing for the same advertising dollar.

And here's how PPM makes playing the wrong song risky:

Let's say 20 of your listeners are PPM participants and you play a record that has a 33% negative. You know you're risking a tune-out by one-third of your audience.

But...PPMs aren't assigned to listeners based on specific music research. So it's possible that 15 of your 20 PPM listeners are among the third of your audience that will tune out when that record comes on.

In raw numbers, one-third of your audience tunes out. But among the listeners who are the basis for your ratings, three-quarters...75%...of your audience pushes the button. That's what Arbitron sees and counts.

They go somewhere. Maybe they come back. Maybe they don't. Maybe your competition doesn't play a tune-out record for hours. Maybe they decide to whip out the iPod. Either way, you lose.

Again, Oldies76, every record has negatives. The only way to protect the ratings, revenue and jobs at stake is to play the songs with the lowest negatives possible. That's what music testing does, that's what stations do, and that's what you have repeatedly said they should abandon.

 

[landtuna]

And still, I have yet to see anyone comment on what actually happens when a commercial plays. Forget about listeners. The real important data is whether the advertiser's potential customer hears your sales pitch and whether or not he/she buys.

For music stations I believe most listeners hit the pre-set as soon as a commercial block comes on so unless the identical commercial block is also playing at that same instant on the new destination music selection is a moot point. If they don't hear your spot they are not likely to be influenced to buy your product. And with the expansion of commercial blocks to multiple minutes the first seconds of any commercial usually means the remainder of the block is skipped.

If I were a significant radio advertiser I would want to know the following:

1. How many of my demo listeners actually hear my message?
2. How did my message affect my sales?
3. Did I spend more or less money to make those sales, if any, profitable?

The discussion about music is almost irrelevant. The listener may or may not hit the pre-set when they hear a personal stiff but they most likely will hit the pre-set when a commercial block comes on. This is most likely to happen in a car and less likely to happen at a work desk where the radio is playing all day long - however, there is no way to tell if the person working is paying any attention to your radio show, talking on their phone, playing bull-puppy with a colleague or in a meeting with the boss.

The only way to properly measure the effectiveness of your ad campaign is to measure the results in business, not number of ears.

 

[firepoint525]

If your listeners are SO fickle that they would tune you out for playing JUST ONE SONG that they don't like, then maybe you don't want them as listeners after all. Does this somehow cancel out playing the nine other songs that they liked? If they will tune you out for playing a song that they don't like, they will also tune you out for playing:

commercials
newscasts
EAS tests (that piercing shrill tone CAN be annoying!)
overly talkative djs (unless they are discussing something interesting)
"bubba1 and bubba2" morning talk shows (your listeners will be gone for the next four or five hours!)
any sports programming (if I hear a ballgame on your station, I am gone for the next SIX hours!)

Heaven forbid that you get knocked off the air by a storm or power outage. Your fickle listeners may be gone FOREVER!

Of course, some of the above you are required by the FCC to carry.

I find it amusing that at least one commercial advertiser that I am hearing lately is featuring a re-write of "Don't Worry, Be Happy" in their ads. I think it is a mattress company, since the re-write is "don't worry, sleep happy." So what do you do when an advertiser (a national advertiser, if I am not mistaken) uses one of the most obvious "tune-out" songs in their own ads?

 

[michael hagerty]

If your listeners are SO fickle that they would tune you out for playing JUST ONE SONG that they don't like, then maybe you don't want them as listeners after all.

Every listener has a tune-out record (probably more than one). So, in essence, you're saying maybe you don't want any of your listeners.

And if the issue for you is that they tune out over one record, then what would you consider to be reasonable? Two? Three? How many songs that a listener either doesn't like or is so ambivalent about that they become curious about what's playing on one of the dozens of other signals in the market do you expect them to tolerate before it's okay for them to exercise their freedom of choice?

The audience is not loyal to call letters or dial position. They'll listen to whatever they're in the mood to at the time. Your hedge against that is to minimize their urge to push the button. You do that by playing songs with the lowest negatives, minimizing the inevitable tune-out factor every song has.
The closest you can expect to get to loyalty is to become the station they listen to most and longest because you play the fewest songs they either dislike or don't care about.

 

[oldies76]

Oldies76, other posters in the other thread blew you off as not listening to any fact that doesn't square with what you wish radio did as opposed to how it really works. I'm taking you seriously.

I understand all the points you and the other two posters (Big A and David) have been saying. But considering all the records that were big hits in the past, I just find it mind-boggling, unbelievable, crazy and simply wrong that only 10-15% (and that's pushing it) of all the top 20 position songs from the 60's through the 80's are accepted today. There are thousands of hit singles available, but only a few hundred played.

I listened to Top 40 radio, as most teens did, in the early 80's. I also like the late 60's to the late 70's music in particular. There were lots and lots of great songs in those 17 years (1967-1984). Some incredible music Michael, just amazing stuff, and for only 10% of it to be played today (considering all the hits we heard as teens) is just a downright mistake. There are so many big songs missing from today's rotations.

And that's my chief complaint. I realize your point of view, David's point of view and Big A's. It may be correct in the business scheme of things, but to the listeners (such as myself and others on these threads and the listening public), it's another story. At least for the listeners who miss their oldies. We have a life to live, let's enjoy it....

Oh by the way, Landtuna and Firepoint both have a valid points.....tuneout during lengthy spot breaks has to be high, no matter the station, no matter what tested music is being played. No one likes commercials interrupting their music for minutes on end.

 

[oldies76]

Oldies76, other posters in the other thread blew you off as not listening to any fact that doesn't square with what you wish radio did as opposed to how it really works. I'm taking you seriously.

I appreciate that, thanks Michael Hagerty.

Most of my 1600+ posts are trying to emphasize my points for the last several years, especially to another one that dominates the entire radio discussion board it seems.