Which is the bigger "tune out" factor?

[Robert Bass]

We haven't had 1 to 3 minute stopsets for the better part of 4 decades.

During their heyday, which would be at least the late 1970s through the mid 1980s, KVIL in Dallas ran no more than 2 minute stop sets. Ron Chapman would sometimes run one commercial then one station promo during at least some stop-sets.

R

 

[Robert Bass]

Duplicate post... Disregard.

R

 

[Thomps2525]

In 1965, when KHJ in Los Angeles became "Boss Radio," they ran only a :60 or two :30s in between songs. Two or three times an hour they'd play two or three songs in a row. In 1971 KHJ was losing listeners to FM stations such as KLOS and KMET, which had longer commercial breaks but also longer music sweeps. KHJ then started running two to three minutes of ads at a time so they could play longer sets of music. The "snowball effect" had begun! Now we get a half-hour of music...but we also get as much as 12 minutes of ads! Yikes!

 

[landtuna]

Since in the 50's and 60's Top 40's ran right at the 18-minute barrier, you are talking about 6 3 minute stops an hour.

If your definition of a stop set consists of commercials plus other non-commercial content you may be correct although I sure don't remember commercials themselves lasting more than 1 minute or so. Now days it is the commercial stream that takes up virtually the entire stop set and consists of so many ads that no one can possibly remember them.

Stopsets are a much less damaging thing than playing a disliked song.

I continue to disagree. The songs I listen to are about 3 minutes long. Even if I disliked the song I only waste half an average stop set time listening to it (or ignoring both is more like it). Your claim makes no common sense.

 

[landtuna]

Wow....an opinion supporting the advertising industry prepared by three insiders. No chance of favoritism there!

Actually, all the data represents is a the listening of PPM panelists matched to the stopset times of each station. Any Media Monitors subscriber can look at stopset attrition... this project simply looked across markets and a variety of formats.

Like those people selected for music evaluation, how do we know how the PPM panelists are selected? If they would rather waste more time listening to a barrage of commercials than a song they disliked I have to question the selection criteria.

 

[Thomps2525]

I understand that one young man wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants shirt and an old-fashioned propellor beanie caused a disturbance when he started yelling, "Hey, stop playing these stupid songs! I want to hear another Kars For Kids commercial!"

 

[oldies76]

I'm in Los Angeles where most stopsets on music stations run from eight to ten minutes. Maybe breaks are shorter on stations in smaller cities...but very few people listen to stopsets here. And Mister Eduardo?---We're real people and real listeners, not "PPM meter panelists."

And I don't know where he gets his data from, but reality is: If David were an average listener like us and others, he'd be complaining too about long stop sets or lack of quality music. It's a turn off and like I've said before, I'd rather listen to a disliked or a "low scoring" song many times over, than constant blabbering from spots that I have the least interest in. People want music, not ads. If they don't hear music, they change the station.

DE, please be a radio listener, put yourself in our shoes for a month and you'll see the differences that you always tend to disagree with.

 

[oldies76]

We're real people and real listeners

99% of us are!! Amazing isn't it? ;D

 

[Robert Bass]

Guys... DE is set in his ways. I've debated him in the past with some of the same stuff you all are saying. It's a lost cause.

R

 

[oldies76]

No, they are not. Stopsets are a much less damaging thing than playing a disliked song.

Yes they are...When a stopset lasts as long as 7 minutes on an open freeway, you've just drove 7 miles or more of your 15 mile commute from work listening to ads, than to music.

Boring BORING! It's a turnoff David and you know it.

Music is key to station retention.

 

[CTListener]

Guys... DE is set in his ways. I've debated him in the past with some of the same stuff you all are saying. It's a lost cause.

R

He has research on his side. All you have is opinion and emotion. We are NOT typical radio listeners. Face it. Terrestrial radio is a mass medium so it has to appeal to the masses. That means lowest common denominator, the sort of person Madison Avenue finds easiest to sell to. People with broad musical palates or intense interest in a specific genre are not in that cohort. That's why there are subscription music services, satellite radio, internet streams. You're never going to get FM to look past the cold, hard numbers research produces, which is why arguing with David is futile. You have no numbers (other than the collected opinions of a few regular contributors to this forum) to go against his, and his are the kinds of numbers that radio people base their programming decisions on.

 

[Thomps2525]

Let's conduct a poll:

Who listens to a radio station for the music?

Who listens to a radio station for the commercials?

On second thought, maybe we don't need to conduct such a poll.

 

[CTListener]

The point is that research shows that listeners are willing to sit through long sets of commercials if long sets of music they like are waiting on the other side, not that listeners like long sets of commercials. Nobody listens to radio for the ads, but ads are what make commercial radio viable. Unlike some of you, I don't miss the days of one or two songs, then 2 or three minutes of ads, then one or two songs. I'd much rather hear 10 songs in a row. And being in an unfashionable demographic agewise, there are increasingly fewer choices on FM for me, so when I'm listening to FM, I tend to bear with the long stopsets to get back to music I like. When I get tired of the repetition, that's when I turn to satellite, but sometimes I just like the comfortable feeling of a live, local FM.

 

[davideduardo]

Boring BORING! It's a turnoff David and you know it.

I know no such thing, because i see in the minute by minute PPM-derived MediaMonitors meter flow data for 6 of the top 6 markets and 11 of the top 48. And I see that, other than an initial exit for the first one or two spots, the retention level through a stopset is considerable. But for a song that is a stiff (and where we see a really bad negative M-Score) the attrition is immediate and consistent with every play over time.

As I said... and based on thousands and thousands of one on one interviews and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of call center interviews... listeners expect commercials and know that it is "the price they pay" for commercial radio.

Listeners hate commercials. But they don't tune out anywhere near as much as you think when they come on.

Music is key to station retention.

No, it's how the music is put together... how the station flows. The music is the raw material, the glue that puts it together and holds it is what comes from the program director and the mixers or airstaff and the production and promotion...

Two strikes. You still have another pitch coming...

 

[davideduardo]

Guys... DE is set in his ways. I've debated him in the past with some of the same stuff you all are saying. It's a lost cause.

On this subject, you are not debating with me... you are debating with the expressed preferences and the measured behaviours of listeners. I'm just the reporter... but with the advantage of having worked with Arbitron data for the last 43 years and having done thousands of music tests, perceptual and one on one studies and millions of call-out interviews (either myself or under my supervision) in markets big and small(er) and in an array of countries.

I discovered decades ago that giving listeners what they want generally means I will also do well. When I have tried to give them what I want, I do miserably.

 

[davideduardo]

And I don't know where he gets his data from, but reality is: If David were an average listener like us and others, he'd be complaining too about long stop sets or lack of quality music. It's a turn off and like I've said before, I'd rather listen to a disliked or a "low scoring" song many times over, than constant blabbering from spots that I have the least interest in. People want music, not ads. If they don't hear music, they change the station.

DE, please be a radio listener, put yourself in our shoes for a month and you'll see the differences that you always tend to disagree with.

But neither of us is a typical or average listener. You want to impose your personal musical crusade on the general population, and I am too much of an insider to be able to decide, on my own, what listeners want.

So I "talk to the listeners" either myself or via members of "my team" where ever I was over the last three or four decades. I'm regarded as a rather good one-on-one interviewer... having been commissioned to do work for everything from an oldies station in Washington, DC, to a 5 station cluster in Chile to conduct them. I've moderated hundreds of music tests and "sat behind the table" for well over a thousand more.

How many "average" listeners have you talked with?

 

[oldies76]

How many "average" listeners have you talked with?

I've had casual conversations with some friends about radio over time and their biggest issue is lack of music they they enjoy, not enough radio stations that play the music that they like.
A few mentioned, too much repetition of the same songs.

In fact, one of those asked a week ago, says that our local station playing Christmas music is already sick of hearing "Last Christmas" by Wham, since it's played excessively, among others.

Btw, do Christmas songs get the same treatment as regular music, in terms of testing and scoring? It comes to mind, since the selection is very limited on KKLI 106.3. They been playing Christmas music since mid November.

 

[davideduardo]

I've had casual conversations with some friends about radio over time and their biggest issue is lack of music they they enjoy, not enough radio stations that play the music that they like.

Friends are a poor sample, as, by the mere fact that they are friends, they share many traits with us... they may like the same kinds of movies, music, foods, etc.

A few mentioned, too much repetition of the same songs.

"Repetition" complaints, in 99% of the occasions, really refer to any play of songs we don't really like much.

Btw, do Christmas songs get the same treatment as regular music, in terms of testing and scoring? It comes to mind, since the selection is very limited on KKLI 106.3. They been playing Christmas music since mid November.

Some of the larger companies test Christmas music generically... because so little, if any, is new, they can test once and use the data for many years. In fact, they can test against a broad age span and then tailor the list for stations that appeal fundamentally to one narrower age range.

Since the songs only play for roughly 4 weeks, it's not critical to measure things like burn because there are all kinds of psychological and lifestyle issues involved in the programming of Christmas music.

 

[firepoint525]

I have posted on NON-radio message boards, in addition to RD, and it has always been my experience that when people don't like what radio is dishing out, they typically don't complain; they just don't listen. The biggest complaint (by far!) that I have heard about radio is these morning show yahoos who laugh at their own jokes, like Bob & Tom, Rick & Bubba, John Boy & Billy, etc., etc., etc., yet these shows persist!

So while it might seem that the "average" listener "likes" radio, that number is actually a rapidly dwindling group.

It also seems to me that if these "listeners" are so "passive" that they haven't noticed that you have played the same songs as many as three times a day, they probably also haven't heard YOUR ad, either!

 

[davideduardo]

The biggest complaint (by far!) that I have heard about radio is these morning show yahoos who laugh at their own jokes, like Bob & Tom, Rick & Bubba, John Boy & Billy, etc., etc., etc., yet these shows persist!

People in radio know that morning shows are polarizing. Some like a show, some don't. That's why, in the diary survey days, Howard Stern was only about 10th in cume in LA and New York... however, the ones that like him listened a lot. But fewer than 9 out of every 10 people listened to him, ever.

And that's why there are generally more music intensive stations, as well as personality driven ones.

If you rephrase your statement to be not about shows but about music genres, you can see that having something you may not like does not mean others won't like it. As an example, I don't like rock... alternative rock, album rock, AAA rock, modern rock, grunge rock, heavy metal rock, classic rock, and so on. But many people do like some of these genres or subsets, and listen. Just like morning shows: I won't listen to what I don't like, but there are often lots of people who will like what I reject.

It also seems to me that if these "listeners" are so "passive" that they haven't noticed that you have played the same songs as many as three times a day, they probably also haven't heard YOUR ad, either!

Even in the TSL-exaggerated diary days, the average person listened only about 2.5 to 3 hours a day to radio. The PPM, with greater precision and less rounding, showed it to be more like 2 hours a day.

So, take the CHR format: the average listener actually wants to hear all the big songs of the moment every time they tune in. So that means a good CHR should play the biggest hits every 90 minutes to 2 hours, or 15 to 16 times a day.

Advertisers don't buy the total weekly reach, or cume, of a station. They buy AQH... average quarter hour audience... which tells them how many people will hear each ad each time it is broadcast. It does not matter to the advertiser how long a person listens, but, rather, how many are listening at the time their spot airs; rates are based on this, too.

Very sophisticated time buyers will also run reach and frequency calculations on their buys so they know how many of a stations listeners heard the spot and how many average times a week. An r&f goal might be a reach of 70 and a frequency of 3, meaning they want to buy enough spots to reach 70% of the cume 3 times each...

Since rates are based on delivery, in the short term it really does not matter if 93% of people listen to radio every week or whether it is now 92% or maybe 94%. It matters how many people a station delivers when the spot airs.

Even with declining usage of radio, the business model is viable and will continue to be for some time. However, we see the small signals, the marginal AMs (meaning 80% of them) and the rimshots going to brokered formats, religious options and even some shutting down. This means more entertainment audience for the remaining mass market competitive stations, which further sustains the business model.