When we were done with that, the real drudgery began. The first of nearly 700 song excerpts (called “hooks” by the radio industry), each about 8 seconds long, rolled out of the speakers, and we had to rate each and every one by checking off boxes on a list. There was little time to make your judgment: as one song excerpt faded out, another faded right in, and there were people walking up and down between the tables making sure we were all keeping up with the pace and rating each song. The six possible ratings were: “unfamiliar,” “dislike it,” “liked it, but tired now,” “so-so,” “like it,” and “a favourite.” Each rating had a little smily face or sad face or whatever corresponding with it. The first time I did this kind of radio station survey, they played over 300 of these “hooks” in a row before we got a break. I think they figured out that this drove people crazy, because this time we did them in chunks of around 100. Still, after the first batch of song excerpts, I felt like I was trapped in a K-Tel commercial with no escape. The novelty of wondering what song you were hearing wore off pretty quick, as you realized that it was yet another classic rock song you’ve heard a gazillion times. Boston. Lynrd Skynrd. Supertramp. You get the picture. They certainly weren’t interested in testing anything new on us: more like testing our patience.
Still, there were some keeners in the crowd who were obviously getting excited by their mega-dose of dog-eared rockers. One white-trash looking couple blurted out “Yeah!” and “Awright!” anytime Led Zeppelin or George Thorogood whizzed past. At one point someone even yelled “Turn it up!,” and by the time they did turn it up, the eight-second excerpt of their favorite song was long over. I was kind of pissed off that they actually turned it up, since it was already louder than I like Bryan Adams to be.
When the first batch of “hooks” was finished, the moderator dude actually said “How’s about a round of applause for the music!” and a ton of people actually clapped! I wanted to clap when they finally told us we could have our free supper, which was after we rated a couple hundred more song excerpts.
We were very surprised to find that they catered a real supper this time. There was a buffet of Caesars salad, fresh rolls, vegetables and ranch dip, some pasta dish and a choice of desserts. They must have remembered how cranky everyone was the last time, and figured that we’d have more patience on a stomach full of actual food. We all piled the food on, and some in my group took advantage of the situation to augment their home supply of cutlery.
During the survey I took notes as to which of these dinosaur bands were being played the most, and informed some of the people next to me who was winning at half-time. It seemed the Beatles and Stones were way ahead, which was a bit surprising since the last time I remember Elton John and Phil Collins (including his Genesis dreck) being way out on top. Still, we all agreed that any Phil Collins is too much Phil Collins. (See accompanying chart for the big Classic Rock Survey Top 10.)
During those bits where we had to fill out questionnaires about local radio, I was surprised to see some people again taking it very seriously, even asking for more time to finish it. Were these real local radio nuts who relished this chance to provide feedback on it? More pertinently, how did they think, if at all, that rating the oldies was going to really change anything? It’s not like they’d get rid of the commercials if everyone wrote that they thought there were too many commercials.
One of the exercises we had to do was listen to 12 groups of song excerpts which they called “style montages.” Ostensibly, each grouping consisted of a distinct style, for which we had to rate how much we liked it, as well as which of 6 listed radio stations we thought played these styles. In reality though, you could hardly tell any of these “style montages” apart from one another. There were perhaps 3 “style montages” which mixed in some kind of “alternative” rock (i.e. Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” or, gasp, Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”.) Another montage seemed slightly heavier, containing an AC/DC and Metallica song along with the usual U2 or whatever. Otherwise, the exercise only served to convince me that there is no imagination whatsoever in today’s radio world; that all of Montreal’s local stations, at least, were practically identical; and that they all play totally overplayed crap, decade after decade with no end in sight. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were testing new stuff on us to see how much of a risk they could take, but they instead seemed to be testing our patience and endurance in hopes of keeping things as stale as possible.
Of course, the whole thing really has less to do with improving or altering local radio than it does with “mining” data the marketers will sell to all kinds of music-industry clients (see the article below.) All the people who were impressed by the amount of money that was spent on the catering and on giving 120 people $60 didn’t realize that this investment could end up generating $50 000.00 or more, that each of us was helping to make the marketers far more money than they were paying us.

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