Shiny Knob said:
The modern consultant creates a station molded for the people who are the least likely to stay there. Those button pushing Johnnies must be kept listening to P1 at all costs. By creating a bland environment where the listener is lulled into not punching the channel changer, they have created a boring mush.
As I have said, there are very, very few program consultants now. Between consolidation and the economy, the model is to have experts within each company who assist the local and regional programmers.
The PPM has shown that P1 status is a variable; we did not know it in the diary days where we had one week samples of behaviour. The average person has several stations they listen to "a lot" and the one that gets the most (the definition of P1 status to any particular station) changes week to week or month to month.
So programmers go for heavy users, not just today's P1's.
The other thing that the PPM has shown is that there is no such thing as "set it and forget it" listening. Listening spans are very brief, and are defined by each person's activities. People stop listening when they take out the trash, take the kids to the school bus stop, go to the bathroom, get in the shower, take a coffee break, go to lunch, go to a meeting or get a phone call... and many other interruptions that each person's day is filled with. The revelation from this is that people have to want to come back to a station... it must be compelling or appropriate for the mood and situation each listener is in.
There is major evil that must be avoided. "TUNE OUT." We must never program anything that might annoy the people who apparently don't like stations enough to stick around very long. By creating such programming, all of the spark has been culled as well.
Arbitron measures two things only: cume (do you listen at least once a week) and time spent listening (how long do you listen each day and week). So the simple formula is to be attractive ("compelling" or whatever other similar term works applies, too) so people come and come back
and with no negatives that will shorten the listening occasion.
If a person tunes out because the station does something bad, they don't generally come back for a while, if ever. It's like a restaurant... eat a bad meal, and you don't go back.
The exact things that create TUNE OUT are also the things that many listeners remember fondly about their favorite stations. Those things have been carefully removed through research.
Those two sentences are totally contradictory. Research finds out what listeners like and what they dislike. If the listener likes something ("fond memories") they will not diss it in research.
They have slowly turned away from radio by consultants FOR consultants.
One of the first things a consultant did in the past (when we still had independent consultants) was help interpret research so that a station did what the listeners said they wanted. That is radio by the listeners and for the listeners.
Any consultant with a personal agenda was not a consultant for very long.
Apparently people don't tune out the station when the long 'stop sets' occur. They just don't give a damn, so they keep listening.
People know stations have commercials. In fact, there are fewer of them than in the "glory days" of Top 40 in the 50's and 60's. People expect commercials. They don't expect bad music, jocks that talk too much, etc. When they hear those things, they change stations.
