[BC] What the listeners hear

[David Reaves]

I really believe that the way a consumer relates to entertainment
(and its electronic devices) is pretty primitive.

I would even venture to say that once you disregard the primary focus
--the programming-- MOST of their interaction is sub-conscious, with
little or no actual conscious thought process involved, never mind
verbalization.

Either they are satisfied (stay with the program) or they are not
(change channel/station...or turn down volume...or turn it off)

Any reason we give them to make the decision to leave hurts us. Yes,
I believe that the *conscious* reasons to stay or go will most often
be programming-related, but that decisions are also made intuitively
due to technical irritants.

When your signal clearly has a 'sound' (whether intentional or not)
there is always the possibility that this sound will be irritating to
a number of people. Sometimes the sound only becomes an irritant over
a length of time, and people will put up with it, especially if the
content is compelling.

If the distortion should rise to the level of being really
noticeable, they *might* talk about it. Otherwise, they may just
mysteriously tune away, for reasons even THEY couldn't tell you.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to quantitatively or qualitatively
segregate the technical irritants from the programming ones as
relates to ratings. Some people may use this as an 'out' when
advocating hard processing, but I think that one could use the same
reasoning to reach the opposite conclusion.

You can look at radio as being in a long-term listening test. It is
and has been interesting to see if and how this ultimately affects a
station's (or a technology's) success or failure.

Kind Regards,
David