Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio 
Spring 2000 

Just say the word “research,” and see how people react! For many classical music programmers the word stands for much more than its literal meaning, it’s the symbol of 
a whole set of attitudes and opinions. It seems to threaten creativity, favoring oversimplified numbers over qualitative standards like taste and excellence.

But is that really fair? Research is like a road map. It doesn’t tell you where to go, it just tells you where each road leads. If you know where you want to end up, the map will show you the scenic route, the most efficient route, the nostalgic route, whatever itinerary you want to follow. As long as you know what you want from the trip, the map will help you decide where to turn. (It shows the roads not taken, too.)

Of course, maps are all incomplete to some extent. Mapmakers can’t show absolutely everything, so they make decisions about what to include and what to leave out. That, in turn, can influence the decisions of the user, and in that sense maps are not entirely objective. They represent one way of understanding the lay of the land, but not the only way.

Similarly, radio researchers report their understanding of the territory. They aspire to be objective, but every time they describe a pattern or summarize a trend, they are interpreting information, presenting it in a way that reflects their experience and frames of reference. And there’s the rub.

In commercial radio the purpose of music research is simple: to select a short list of songs that keeps the most people listening the longest. Most commercial stations in this country lose money, so there is a constant scramble to stay in the front of the pack, among the minority of profitable ones. That means always trying to reach a sizable enough audience to attract advertisers; serving a narrow niche is not an option. These 
assumptions underlie most music research, and they don’t need to be articulated because everyone understands them.

In public radio there is less agreement about the assumptions behind the research. As a result, professional researchers who have no personal experience in programming classical music or jazz or folk music may not pay attention to the differences between commercial music research and the research of public radio music formats. Even researchers who do know these formats may make mistaken assumptions about what stations are trying to accomplish, leading to conclusions that don’t make sense for public radio programmers.

That’s why it’s so important for the objectives of the research to be clearly articulated at the start of any study. Too often this step is neglected, as if everyone already agrees on how the research is to be applied. That’s like asking for directions from New York to Boston without saying that you want to see the fall foliage in New England. You may be told to take the Interstates all the way, and that will get you there fastest; but that’s not helpful if it wasn’t the purpose of the trip in the first place.

In other words, it’s not research per se that’s the problem. When research is used to justify unwise programming choices, the researchers may have had in mind a different destination than programmers or management, or they may simply have prepared the wrong kind of map. (You can’t plan a hike through the mountains with a map that depicts political boundaries but doesn’t show terrain.) Those are flaws in the process, not in relying on research as a guide.

The truth is, research does tell us a lot of useful things about the territory we’re navigating. Sometimes we would rather not know some of those things: it can be painful to discover that a piece of music we treasure is a tune-out for the audience, for instance. But we need to know that if we’re going to program successfully. It’s like learning that it will add an hour to your itinerary to visit a scenic vista. We can make the decision to take the extra time for the sake of the view, and we can decide to program a complex masterpiece even if it temporarily interrupts audience building. At the same time, it’s handy to have the map so we can get back on the main road.

The inescapable fact about research is that its results are remarkably consistent. Arbitron ratings don’t fluctuate wildly from book to book; they change gradually, in ways that generally make sense. This has been true for decades, in several hundred markets, over and over again, even though the sample of respondents changes every month. Classical music research also yields much the same results from time to time and from place to place. This wouldn’t be true if the research simply reflected the researchers’ prejudices.

By contrast, phone calls and letters from listeners are completely erratic. They respond to novelty rather than to successful programming. It’s unlikely that someone will phone you excitedly because your station aired “All Things Considered” this afternoon, even though it’s one of your most popular programs. But if you air a bizarre transcription, or the Throat Singers of Tuva, you’ll probably get some reaction. Pay no attention to that reaction; for programming purposes it’s meaningless.

It’s also a mistake to assume that something is successful because your station has been doing it for a long time. Many stations have quirky local shows they think of as institutions, and they may say “we have quite a following here in the metro area for Cowboy Joe’s Radio Ranch.” Casual anecdotal impressions are a much worse indicator of a program’s success than research is.

Some programmers feel that their own knowledge and taste become irrelevant when research is used in music programming. It’s true that research data can constrain the impulses of your imagination, making it hard to justify playing some music that you’d like to program. If your goal is to communicate with your audience, however, you’ll be more successful if you recognize that the constraints aren’t being created by the research, they reflect the audience’s likes and dislikes, and researchers are just the messengers bearing the bad news. You can still offer your listeners variety, inspiration, and the benefit of your knowledge and experience. Just remember that the audience does have its preferences, and you will do better working within them.

In music programming, as in a more literal journey, it’s possible to make a wrong turn and end up going in circles or find yourself at a dead end. That can be avoided by drawing upon the experience of others who have traveled those roads before. A map lets you take advantage of what others have learned. It helps you to get where you’re going, whatever route you choose. Research can be used the same way. Take it in hand. Have a wonderful trip.

Bob Goldfarb, a consultant in classical music and media, has been the executive director of the American Composers Alliance since 1995. A thirty-year veteran of classical music radio, he has worked as music director of WCRB, Boston; general manager of WFCR, Amherst; chief operating officer of KUSC, Los Angeles; and program director of KFAC, Los Angeles. He returns to KUSC in May as director of broadcasting. Bob currently is based in New York.