The Problem With Nielsen

and all the rest of your research…

 

The problem with Nielsen isn’t that you can’t get more numbers to crunch, more data to study.

As Seth Godin has said, the problem you’re facing before your decision is that you can’t really get more certainty.

And it’s certainty that you’re looking for in research.

But nothing about art — and Radio done really well is art — can be researched before it happens.

Steve Jobs took it a step further and concluded the same thing about any product.

Remember his statement, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

It’s a big problem in Radio today, an over-reliance on testing, on safety, on trying to avoid any mistake.

Centralized decisions, control from above, which weakens personal responsibility for the product we hear.

Worrying more about what listeners don’t like than what they may love gets you where you are right now: separated from the other stations in your town by a tenth of a point.

It strips the potential passion away before it ever has a chance to build.

And lack of passion for anything leads to mediocrity which results in weak loyalty.

Is that what you want?