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]

What's intriguing to me is that country music's big breakout performer over the last 12 months has been teen Taylor Swift (ages: Aly 18, Taylor 17, A.J. 16), and her lyrics are at least as teen specific as Aly & A.J.'s: first single, "Tim McGraw" is about a first love, mentions summer, then September (presumably he's off to college, or life, while she's back in school); the video for this year's big one, "Teardrops On My Guitar," is set in a high school. Album track "A Place In This World" is specifically teen identity angst. So, the country audience, mostly grownups, is fine with this teen content, which they're evidently seeing as part of the story of "country."

(Would be interesting to see whether, if Disney star (and Billy Ray Cyrus-daughter) Miley Cyrus does specifically country-sounding material - "See You Again," which isn't yet a single, comes close - she'll get country airplay. My guess is not; that the Disney story will drown out the country story.)

Btw, Taylor Swift is at least as good as Aly & A.J., and if Miley (age 14) can get the right material (i.e., if she works more with Armato and James and less with Gerrard and Nevil), she could be really good too. Has a deep roughness in her throat.