Imponderables: Fun and Games Read Online Free PDF

listeners, including people who might not have been alive when a song was recorded.

4. IDs create clutter. An old broadcasting bromide is that each music set on a radio show should stress one thought. Considering that there are many elements in a radio show—music, talk, promos, ads, weather, contests, jingles—IDs can cause more confusion than enlightenment. Steve Warren, a veteran New York radio personality now heading his own programming consulting company, MOR Media, reminded us that for most of the audience, radio is a secondary medium. Most listeners are doing other things, such as driving cars, sewing, or taking a shower, while listening to the radio. Overloading any format with too much information can backfire.
     Even pro-ID programmers realize that, for example, during morning drive shows, when information about weather and traffic may be paramount and commercials are most frequent, backselling may not be prudent. They often fine-tune their volume of ID’s by daypart.

5. IDs slow the momentum of the show. One of the tenets of CHR radio is “always move forward.” The name of the ratings game in radio is to keep listeners as long as possible. Unlike television, where viewers generally have some loyalty to particular shows and are likely to stick with them for the half-hour or hour, PDs are acutely aware that listeners in automobiles have push-buttons that can “eject” their station the moment they hear an unwanted song or one too many commercials. This is one reason why many stations start a new song before the DJ talks over it—subliminally, this tells the listener, “Don’t worry, there is no advertisement coming up.”
     
    One of the main strategies for keeping us tuned in longer is to promote what is coming up next. As Danny Wright puts it,
     
    Never talk about last night or a movie you saw last week or what you just played. Billboard the next few tunes and events to keep listeners sticking around.
     
    PDs employing this strategy often frontsell. Before a commercial break, a jock might say, “Coming up, the new Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston, and an oldie by the Beatles.” The hope is that the listener will stay glued to the station if she likes one or more of the songs.
    Of course this strategy can backfire too. If a listener would rather hear fingernails on a blackboard than Whitney Houston, he may desert the station, even if he was mildly curious about the identity of the Beatles oldie.
    Many of the “more music, less talk” stations feature “music sweeps,” in which five or more songs are played in a row without commercial interruption. Frontselling eight songs at a time is tedious, and backselling is deadly. Some stations solve the problem by frontselling only one or two songs and doing the same on the back end. Some feature what Al Brock calls “segue assists,” in which the jock IDs the song before or after every record.
     
    6. Selling records isn’t a radio station’s job. We spoke to several radio programmers who echoed this sentiment. The trade association of the recording industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), launched a campaign to promote IDs, plastering stickers on DJ record copies saying, “When You Play It, Say It,” the “It” meaning title and artist. In 1988, the RIAA released a study of over one thousand radio listeners, between the ages of twelve and forty-nine, indicating that about two thirds of the respondents would like more information about the records they heard on radio. Listeners between twenty-five and forty-nine years old were particularly vehement, and several programmers we spoke to revealed that the lack of IDs has surpassed “too much talk, not enough music” as the number one complaint of listeners.
     
    Increasingly, radio stations are conducting “outcall” research, telephoning listeners and asking them about their musical preferences. This type of research is of little value if respondents don’t know the