i know said:
OK, maybe "most people I know" is a poor way to put it. Let's just say "most people".
Think about the proliferation of cell phone technology in the audience that WRFF is targeting. Everyone and their grandmother has one. Now let's think about what percentage of that audience is also carrying around an iPod, another flash-based music player, or a cell phone that doubles as a music player. At any one point, how many people are carrying around the equivalent of a station's rotation worth of songs? (i.e. between 500 - 1500 songs, maybe more).
Granted, I did say "most of the people I know" but you have to recognize the point I was trying to make still stands strong. Folks are not dummies - they want to listen to a wide variety of music and they want to seek out new music. The iPod phenomenon is rock solid proof of this. I agree with the theory that you have to throw most of the old assumptions about your "average listener" out the window and start from scratch in order to really understand what they want.
Throwing 500 songs on a computer and putting it on random according to what a focus group of 30 said they'd like to hear is out-and-out insulting to listeners nowadays. You have to have your finger on the pulse of what your audience wants to hear and be two steps ahead of them at all times, or else they will get tired of the same-old same-old so quick that we'll be listening to Alice or Sunny on this station again in 6 months flat.
