TV vs Radio

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I was going to post this as a comment on the Aly and AJ thread but I thought I'd give it its own post. I have to admit this is founded not at all in any kind of fact! Anyway here is my theory:

If yr a radio playlister or researcher your main desire is to stop people switching over: a lot of people stick to a single radio station and don't channel hop much so if someone switches over or off you might not get them back for a while. Video channels are far more accepting of switching, because TV users channel hop more.

So imagine songs being scored on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning "awful, would switch off/over", 5 meaning "terrific, would stop channel-hopping if I found it", and 2-4 being various degrees of like/dislike which cause no immediate behavioural reaction. Obviously you want the songs on your playlist to have as high an average score among your listeners as possible. But on radio you want to minimise the 1-scorers, and on video channels you want to maximise the 5 scorers. If a song like Aly and AJ has 2/3 "5" and 1/3 "1" reactions, it will have a higher average score than a song with all "3"s but will be a much bigger risk for a radio station.

And I think Aly & AJ IS that kind of song - the way it starts so breathlessly, it's in-yr-face with its poppiness and if you dislike teenpop in general I'd guess you'll find that less palatable than "Gimme More" or "About You Now". So even beyond the demographics there's a reason why it might hit on video and not radio.

Speaking of demographics, I guess Radio 1 and other stations must have a very firm idea about what age people start listening to radio regularly, and I would imagine that average age is getting nearer and nearer to the age they start driving. I get the impression that Radio 1 has basically given up on yr actual kids, which makes them much less likely to take a chance on something with kid appeal.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My only concrete memory of Radio 1 really was during my A-levels when I listened to it a lot while 'revising' - I mainly remember lots of really good pop and r&b. 'Most Girls', 'Caught Out There', 'Shackles' by Mary Mary, Britney and Xtina, Destiny's Child...I have no idea whether rose-tinted glasses are a factor here or not.

I don't think 'Potential Breakup Song' is the kind of song to cause extreme reactions - it is fizzy and breathless, but it's not as saccharine as a lot of teenpop and it is VERY CATCHY. And you'd think that all the songs I listed would, at the time, be a lot more immediately off-putting - Kelis and DC sounded WEIRD at the time!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Yep - have definitely seen a complete genre-switch for Radio 1, when I was in 6th form it was mostly r'n'b (Destiny's Child, mainly), non-guitar pop (eg Fatboy Slim or Britney) and the odd bit of speed garage. I never listened unless it was forced on me, and generally plumped for Xfm instead whenever possible.

These days it seems to be the exact opposite! During the day, at least. Indie, rock, the odd bit of Timba-pop and LOTS OF PEOPLE TALKING. Or bumpers proclaiming 'FIRST FOR NUUUU MUSIC ONE ONE ONE' etc, jebus can't they shut up and play some records?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

According to musicweek "the [BBC's annual report] suggested that [Radio 1] was under-performing in its target audience of 15- to 29-year-olds" hence launching a new Sunday night show aimed at pulling in 12-16 yr olds.

I think Radio 1 bases its decisions on different premises from commercial radio, where Tom's argument is certainly the logical one. Having spoken to commercial radio playlisters (admittedly a number of years ago) my impression is that there principle is 'don't frighten the horses' and they definitely programme for the middle ground. Radio 1's baseline seems to be something like 'nothing too naff', which would make sense as their edge over commercial stations would come from being 'cool', or at least being what they think 'cool' will mean to their target audience (and which may be losing ground in relation to how their audience actually thinks). 'Naff' would mean 'too much like what my parents like' or 'too much like what my younger brother / sister likes'. HOWEVER my perception is that the generational divide is actually closing up i.e. it is now easier than ever for parents and kids to like the same music, or certainly this is the case with those who listen to Radio 1.

I'm not really surprised that A&AJ haven't broken big though, as the UK/US markets just seem to have totally diverged in relation to 'pop'. I don't see this as some sort of death of pop though, just that pop means something different here.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

duh 'their principle' obv.

[koganbot]

It's not breaking through onto U.S. Top 40 either, and I think the reasons are identical.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

launching a new Sunday night show aimed at pulling in 12-16 yr olds.

it is not annie nightingale request show = IT WILL FAIL.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

But I think something that's happened is that coolness has merged with the middle ground - so "nothing too naff" and "don't frighten the horses" are also closer together.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Well this would be why 'pop that sounds like pop' has been squeezed out from both sides in favour of 'pop that sounds like soft rock' i.e. Virgin radio has won! The generational thing is that trad rock values as merged with ossified punk (i.e. indie) is now on top but with no challenger, since it perfectly integrates rebellion with reaction (this is what Cheap Trick could already see happening with Surrender obv, so may not be a new thing, or it may only be a new thing for the UK? Limit of my competence to say I guess)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Though actually it's v easy to envisage in a different time/place (eg...2000!), Kate Nash et al being seen as precisely both too naff and too immediately off-putting! whereas Aly & AJ would slip neatly into the Britney slipstream wich gave us Mandy Moore, Samantha Mumba, Simpson Sr &c.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Aly and AJ thread?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

By the Lex, last night, on Poptimists!

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

See, I don't really agree with this. I don't think the first listen to PBS would rank a 5 for most people. It really only hit me on about the fourth listen when I got hooked by the two chorus thing and the lyrics, esp the second verse and the "dearly dearly" bit which might pass you by on 1st listen.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah I meant that PBS is the sort of song which might get lots of 1s, rather than lots of 5s: I think it would get a lot of 3 or 4s though.

[koganbot]

Request that the song be referred to as PBUS rather than PBS, so as not to associate it in my mind with the U.S. "Public Broadcasting System," the U.S. sober-sides "quality" TV network (which is by no means terrible, but it plays a specific role in koganbot Myth and Metaphor systems* that Aly & A.J. does not).

(However A&A may - potentially - not only be breaking through to PBS as I've used it in Myth and Metaphor (i.e., to ilX and P4k and poptimists and indie-alternative types), as the sort of pop that "we" like, just as Robyn and Annie have but Ashlee and Paris haven't, it also got favorable attention from the actual PBS itself [well, on PBS's related radio version, National Public Radio (NPR).])

*For more info on the koganbot Mythical/Metaphoric uses of "PBS," go here and scroll down to my convo with Julio (xyzzzz__).

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i keep on getting both PBS and PB(u)S confused with PSB (ie pet shop boys)!!!

(this was happening whilst reading RPDWB as well!)

[koganbot]

Hmmm. I never did provide the link for the Frank-Julio discusion, so here it is (on the off-chance someone wanders by these old threads).

[koganbot]

This is why airplay charts give you a reading that's somewhat different from sales. Airplay records negative votes, sales don't. I've noticed in country that the performers who have sales running ahead of airplay - e.g., Miranda Lambert and Big & Rich - are the ones who are in your face with how "different" they're being. Also, they - and Aly & A.J. - tend to do well on satellite radio, which I don't know much about but I'd expect that its selling point is that it gives you something different.

Billboard has added online video plays (where the viewer is choosing what to watch) to its singles-rating formula. (Doesn't count YouTube, of course, but is monitoring Launch Yahoo and AOL Music.) The "Potential Breakup Song" video has been consistently in the Top 10 on Yahoo and AOL. This and TRL are its main indication that it has an audience beyond Disney.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

In the specific case of A&AJ, something to remember is that the UK doesn't actually have a Disney Channel, or not one that much of the viewership can get - High School Musical was shown several times on terrestrial TV.

I also wonder if HSM has done the rest of teenpop some harm in the UK - it's a brand that's succeeded because it narrativises pop, but there's no incentive for its success to transfer to pop outside that brand and narrative - unless you have the umbrella brand of Disney to grease the wheels.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I played PBS when DJing with Keith in a bar in August and the hipster friend of the guy who booked us ran over and said 'wow this is great I only just downloaded it last night'. i.e. the audience for Aly & AJ in UK = people like us and not the people we think it is aimed at.

Incidentally both times we DJed I was able to play sets which ran together female-fronted new-wave guitar teenpop and indie seamlessly (e.g. Pink, The Sounds, Hilary and Haylee Duff doing 'Our Lips are Sealed', Sahara Hotnights, Kelly C, Love Is All, Paris). This confused various folk as they recognised e.g. Pink, but could not place it once recontextualised.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well the current audience for Aly & AJ is people like us, obviously! But unlike, say, Annie or Roisin, where the wider audience is a hoped-for potential*, Aly & AJ have (or had) a more proven audience in the US who are "people we think it is aimed at".

*though, you know, Robyn at #1, there IS still a big market for pop but pop that plays it cool rather than bounces about, maybe?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

My feeling would be that the more you care about 'cool' the more likely you are to be shaping your own playlist online, or hitting up some specialised radio service, than listening to Radio 1, these days.

[koganbot]

Although the video is very successful, at least online (in the U.S. is number 8 on Launch Yahoo and number 5 on AOL music), it's all about the girls as song creators and exemplars and not at all about the relationship problems described in the lyrics. And the "Chemicals React" video was all about the girls performing, not about the boy-girl sexual chemistry that was the song's subject. Curious what you thought of "Blush," the song where Aly is telling the guy that she won't go all the way but she very much wants to be touched, even wants him to try to cross that boundary. (Could one describe Aly as a sex-positive virgin? This would make more sense in a culture with more traditionalist sexual mores: e.g., good-Catholic Shakira remaining a virgin for so long while shaking her tush wherever possible.) So the relative absence of boys in the Aly & A.J. videos may be a way of avoiding some of the tensions in their lyrics, but also might take those videos outside the male-female mating dance that's so much of pop music, so keeping those videos farther from supposedly grownup or even teen concerns. (Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw" implies very much that the relationship between the narrator and the boy included intercourse. And of course Tim McGraw, the singer after whom the song is named, had a song where early love and intercourse leads to an abortion.)

[koganbot]

Those vid numbers are especially impressive since the vid's been around for something like three months.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is another specific problem with Aly and AJ - the whole religious virgin thing can sit as part of their biography in the US, and will appeal to some and not appeal to others. But in the UK, even to the teen audience, I'm sure that stuff still codes as "weird". Fine, leave it out. But that kind of leaves a gap where a Big Fact might be.

[koganbot]

So, what's at stake? Why do we care whether "Potential Breakup Song" hits big? What would its hitting big represent? What would its relative failure represent?