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

[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).