Re: W-H-RB on the Internet

[Rob Landry <umar@nerodia.wcrb.com>]

On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, A. Joseph Ross wrote:

> One of the things I've never understood about WCRB is how they can believe 
> their statistics which supposedly show the audience doesn't like choral 
> works when Beethoven's 9th symphony always ends up somewhere near the top 
> of their Top 40 survey.

Apples and oranges.

Participants in the "top-40" promotion are self-selecting, like callers to
station request lines. They do not necessarily represent the mood or
tastes of the audience as a whole. 

A good music research program selects participants at random from members
of a station's audience. It then attempts to quantify their appreciation
of different pieces of music and to derive from the resulting numbers
conclusions useful to the station's programmers. These conclusions may
differ sharply from those suggested by listener requests.

Rob Landry
umar@nerodia.wcrb.com