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"Favourites of yesterday and today" : Popular radio and risk management

University of British Columbia

This thesis investigates from a social-institutional perspective, the rationale for the dominance of one type of format over another in commercial radio. I argue that the panoptic sorting and selecting of target markets is responsible for the present status quo - radio which is dominated by particular formats and which has come to exclude the diversity that characterized popular radio in the past. In addition, the increasing reliance on information access and control as facilitated by technology, has led many commercial stations to follow the most important demographic group, i.e., the market most sought after by advertisers. Currently, this group is the "baby-boomers", and the proliferation of A/C, Classic Rock, Oldies and "Soft Favourites" stations reflect this strategy. This marketing emphasis also effectively marginalizes the great majority of new, non-mainstream music to non-commercial formats. The Vancouver radio market is investigated in respect to these issues. I present data from interviews with local radio programmers to understand 1. How do the perspectives of station executives affect format decisions? 2. What factors are most influential in determining format and to what degree are these factors standardized? 3\ To what degree is information shared and distributed (i.e., an open market) among competing radio stations? 4. How have format considerations changed over the past twenty years? and 5. To what degree do station executives rely on standardized information collection techniques to influence and/or determine decisions regarding the format? The data from commercial sources are compared with public, college and co-op radio material to highlight the importance of economics in formatting decisions. I suggest that an economically-based rationality characteristic of media operations in a "risk society" largely determines the format possibilities in commercial radio/This in turn, limits the choices available to the radio listener. Although cultural implications-are not discussed in detail, this thesis will provide substance for arguments examining the effects of the exclusion of an important cultural-expressive form from mass distribution.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-01-15

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/3685

Anthropology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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