Music Focus Groups

[kevin502]

I understand as John pointed out in a previous thread that stations play lots of Supremes and Bob Segar and such because focus groups indicate that's what the public wants. And I certainly understand radio is a business and must compete. But did WAKY do focus groups? I bet they didn't (I really have no clue if they did or not but I am going to go with it here).

WAKY was number one for a long, long time. Right? They were about entertainment much more than "focus groups".

So I guess my question would be: When did radio become less about entertainment and more about meeting the objectives of a survey? Is there a chance the focus groups are wrong?

Polls are wrong all the time. Remember when Kerry started celebrating early on election day because the EXIT POLLS indicated he had won?

[John Quincy]

Inquiring minds wanted to know, so I posed these questions to Johnny Randolph via e-mail: "When you were PD at WAKY, did you guys do any research to decide what songs to play? Anything like focus groups or music tests? Or was it just stuff like checking the local record stores, keeping track of requests and looking at the national charts?" JR responded:

"We did no focus groups at WAKY and I could never get any money for that type of research. Actually out promotion budget was a mere $100 a month. Anyway there was a record shop next door named Vines who sold a lot of black product, another Vine location sold a lot of pop stuff. A great outlet was Shivley Records which was in the blue collar section of Louisville.

"Every week I would look at the top five songs from R/B WLOU and Country WINN. Both of these stations were real aggressive musically and I would choose what would fit from their lists. All this and my weird taste went into the list.

"I relied a lot on local sales and requests and to a lessor degree the national charts. I never had much respect for the national publications with one exception: Bill Gavin."

I then asked JR: "How much control did the folks at LIN or Multimedia [two of WAKY's owners] have over WAKY's programming? Hiring, firing, station promotions, what jingles to buy, etc. Was there a National PD who had to sign off on certain things you did, or was all of the control at the local level?" Randolph replied:

"Neither LIN or Multimedia had a national P.D. or anyone associated in that area. With the station making so much money I guess no one was really too concerned as to what songs we played. As I think I told you [General Manager] Don Meyers was a sales type who never really understood why we did the things we did and simply left us alone. (This is not a slam on Don who certainly kept the reins loose on me.)"