That trend has drastically changed however, and we might have seen the last of the format for a while, at least on radio.
Stations that featured smooth jazz have seen their ratings plummet recently, causing most to bolt to another format to attract more advertisers.
But why? One theory is that smooth jazz stations struggled to attract younger listeners, which is the most desirable demographic for advertisers. Still, there seemed to be plenty of listeners in the almost-as-desirable 25-54 age demo.
Which means that the demise of the radio format may in fact be due to bad data supplied by Nielsen, who's the dominant ratings provider for both radio and television. The idea is that people were still listening, but they weren't being counted due to being in the wrong demographic.
I'm not a proponent or listener of the smooth jazz format, but the lesson here is that if it happens to one format, it can happen to others as well. Having listeners doesn't equal having the right kind of listeners for many advertisers, and by extension the station groups that own the radio stations. No wonder radio content is worst than ever. Thank you very much Madison Avenue.
2 comments:
Neilson may not merely have been counting the wrong demographic, but because they switched to counting listeners using a watermarking technology with watermarks in the audio frequency range, those watermarks weren't being picked up by their "Portable People Meters" PPMs).
Why? Because smooth jazz tends to have greater dynamics and also because it is often played at background music levels, the watermarks were replaying at an SPL that was simply too low to register on the PPMs.
Full explanation in the article here:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-nielsen-kill-the-radio-star/
Bottom line: the demise of the Smooth Jazz format, and the many jobs that it entailed, may have been largely due to defieicneies in the medium, rather than the message itself.
This should serve as a dire warning to everyone in the music creation, reproduction, and transmission industries.
Bobby:
Can you repost with my typos fixed, please? Thanks!
Neilson may not merely have been counting the wrong demographic, but because they switched to counting listeners using a watermarking technology with watermarks in the audio frequency range, those watermarks weren't being picked up by their "Portable People Meters" PPMs).
Why? Because smooth jazz tends to have greater dynamics and also because it is often played at background music levels, the watermarks were replaying at an SPL that was simply too low to register on the PPMs.
Full explanation in the article here:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-nielsen-kill-the-radio-star/
Bottom line: the demise of the Smooth Jazz format, and the many jobs that it entailed, may have been largely due to deficiencies in the medium, rather than the message itself.
This should serve as a dire warning to everyone in the music creation, reproduction, and transmission industries.
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