They Love Our Commercials! Yeah, Right!

As a programmer who has focused on research for over 30 years, I'm still amazed at how it can be misused, misinterpreted, and just generally screwed up.

Recently, Arbitron and Coleman Research released some information about commercial tune-out. I'm sure you heard about it.

Here is a small part of what they said:

"What Happens When the Spots Come On: The Impact of Commercials on the Radio Audience is the first in a series of studies on the radio audience behavior during commercials using the power of passive electronic measurement, both for audiences and for commercial occurrences.

The study dispels the mistaken belief among advertisers, agencies and radio executives that radio loses a considerable portion of its audience during commercial breaks."

This is wrong in so many ways.

First, I'm not buying their assumption that radio executives ever believed that "radio loses a considerable portion of its audience during commercial breaks". I think everybody with half a brain is well aware that we lose audience when they leave radio because they have something else to do. Don't you? Yes, some people in cars will push a button. But most listeners have a life.

Second, the study conclusions strong imply that an 8% loss of audience during a commercial break is a good thing. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. We don't have a breakdown of whether the commercials caused the tune-out. We don't even know if was tune-out, or turn-off. There is a difference. But nothing in the data tells us anything about motivation.

Third, they simply measured the wrong thing. If commercials on a station make listeners unhappy, because of the way they are packaged, or what they sound like, or how long they interrupt the programming, and they find another station that does a better job while also playing music they like, the listeners will leave. Not for a song, an hour or a day. Permanently.

They won't tune out, because they won't tune in.

How are you going to measure that effect? By asking people. And when you ask people, they have a lot of very negative things to say about how we handle commercials. We have a huge body of research about listener attitudes on everything, including commercials.

If you want to ignore everything the listeners are trying to tell you about what makes it hard to keep listening, and base your commercial policy on the fact that they don't immediately turn radios off the instant you play commercials, okay. And if your kids don't literally leave home the first time you treat them unfairly, you're a good parent, right?

I believe in electronic measurement. It has many benefits. Proving that you can operate your station with high commercial loads and low quality production standards is not one of them.

Bad research. Very bad research.

Don't you agree?