[BC] Understanding TSL

[Craig Bowman]

Over the years I have participated in countless focus groups and music tests.
Focus groups must be:
Moderated by someone without an agenda (you can get whatever answer 
you want by asking the question the right way).
Both requires a group of subjects selected from a good screener (the 
questionnaire which qualifies a person to participate)
Proper mix of partisans and pro competitor.
Conducted Locally
and most importantly..... interpreted properly!  Music tests are less 
up for interpretation but simply should not be placed in a category 
based on where it fell numerically.

Because this kind of research is very expensive, companies are very 
reluctant to share the data with others since it could be used 
against them.  All you will find are trends nationwide (mostly 
because it is the same people running the research) which are not 
documented.  Using research (non music) from a different market is 
useless and might even be reckless.  Using Music research from many 
markets to develop a "safe list" is a good place to start but by no 
means a good way to program a radio station.

Craig Bowman
Bowman Engineering
Local HDTV, Inc.
989-277-8835

On 2/2/2010 9:07 PM, Robert Orban wrote:
>At 08:07 AM 2/2/2010, Jeff Glass wrote:
>
>>I have asked membership of this forum several times to produce some
>>audience research that describes what the consumer wants. That
>>request goes unanswered. I can only conclude that their IS NO market
>>research. That's a problem.
>>
>Jim Schulke did a lot of research regarding processing and audio
>quality in general. But that was with a now-obsolete format
>(Beautiful Music) and it was a *long* time ago.