Looking for honest answers on this

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:30:29 -0400 (EDT), Rob Landry <011010001@interpring.com> said:

> On Wed, 11 Jun 2014, Garrett Wollman wrote:

>> A non-representative sample of university students suggests that the 
>> current crop of twentysomethings will tune out for *any* spoken word, 
>> whether jock, news, or advertising.

> As my Usenet friends used to say, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Indeed.  They still say that.  Perhaps some survey research could be
done.  I think most national surveys are not done with large enough
samples to actually make conclusions about such a small demographic
group, however.

> If it's true that this demo does not want any spoken word, then it is 
> effectively unreachable by radio.

Surprisingly enough, they do listen to spoken-word programming -- most
in my unscientific sample are NPR listeners, if they use radio at all.
But they don't want talk interrupting their music, and they don't look
to commercial broadcast radio as a medium for musical entertainment.
(And of course some listen to "NPR" exclusively through the medium of
podcasts and/or streaming.)

This may be reflected in the number of college stations where every
"show" is just an hour of some student's iPod set to shuffle, until
they get to the end and have three minutes of "...and before that
was...".  (I exaggerate only slightly.)  It's a rare college station
where the main air studio doesn't have a 1/8" phone jack for a
student's music player.

-GAWollman