Last week in FMQB (11/8), we reported on a new joint study from Jacobs Media and Edison Media Research in which an overwhelming majority of Rock radio listeners said that they were accepting of "shock" content. Granted, the study was generated from a self-selected sample of people already visiting Rock station Web sites, and, as Fred Jacobs put it, "this is not one of those perfectly sampled, 1,000-person national Gallop polls." So it is important to keep in mind the study should not be applied across format boundaries. Still, over 7,000 Web "interviews" were conducted and the message was clear – Rock radio listeners generally aren’t offended by "shock" content.

In case you don’t have last week’s FMQB handy, here’s a brief rundown of some of the findings. The study showed that listeners of Rock radio stations think radio is no more "dirty and explicit" than either network television or cable television. Fully 84 percent of respondents said they are rarely or never offended by pictures of naked women on Rock Radio station Web sites. Even 60 percent of the women in the sample said that they are never offended by such content. The way in which many radio personalities "push the limits" seems to be an attraction for many respondents. Respondents were more than 2 ½ times more likely to say they agreed that they "prefer radio personalities that push the limits" than disagree. Less than one-third of Rock radio listeners feel "Shock Jock Radio personalities have gone too far."

For some further meandering on the results of the poll, FMQB caught up with Fred Jacobs and Larry Rosin for a conversation on the results.

By Michael Parrish
 
What did you think of the results? Where they what you expected or did they surprise you?

Larry Rosin: It was parts of each. I thought it was likely that Rock listeners would be tolerant, but it was stronger than I thought it would be. While some people thought that shock jocks, or whatever you want to call them, should do whatever they want to, I expected others to disagree. But, pretty much across every subgroup, people agreed with the statement, "Radio deejays should be allowed to say whatever they please, and you can turn the station if you don’t like it."


Fred Jacobs

Fred Jacobs: My suspicion was that there would be quite a bit of tolerance and even enjoyment of explicit humor. But the fact that it crossed so many different groups was surprising. At the beginning of the study, we also suspected that people with children would be more conservative about many of these issues than people without. That turned out not to be the case. There was a greater acceptance for explicit material across groups that you might not have expected to feel that way.

LR: The other point is the sensitivity that a lot of people have is a projected sensitivity. In other words, they think, "I can listen to that, I’m an adult, and I can turn it off if I don’t want to hear it. But, I don’t want my children to hear it." Or "I would be uncomfortable listening to that if I were with another adult." But the research also showed that overwhelmingly people listen to the radio alone. Radio, for most people, at most times, is not a communal experience. It isn’t like the ’30s and ’40s where people sat around the radio in the living room all listening together. Therefore, the level of embarrassment or offense taken is reduced more than it would be if you were with children and even with other adults.

What changes from a younger person who is accepting of this type of humor to the adult who isn’t as accepting?

FJ: Whether you’re talking politics or music tastes, in general, the older you get the more conservative you become. That is a trend with many of the questions in the study. The 18-24s and the 18-34s are even more liberal than the 35+ people in the sample. But the 35+ people in the sample were also definitely on the liberal side of the spectrum as well. If you’re 21-years-old listening to an Active Rock or an Alternative station, the odds are good you are going to be more open to "shock radio" or certainly more liberal about explicit content.

What should radio companies take away from this survey? Should radio personalities move ahead with edgy type of humor? Or, should they relax on this type of content, given some of the reactions recently?

FJ: What this study has accomplished is perhaps filling in that final blank. To a great degree, when broadcasters have grappled with what is appropriate and where the line is, they have to think about a lot of considerations from what the company’s policies are to what advertisers might think and, of course, the FCC. But, even when radio stations do perceptual studies, there is rarely little time or even much interest in investigating the kind of issues we looked at in this Web Poll. This study provides a great look at what the audience thinks, and while that shouldn’t necessarily drive decision-making, it is an important variable in what’s programmed and what’s accepted.


Larry Rosin

LR: My biggest hope for this study is that the advertisers read it and realize that this is what these people want, and if you want to reach them, you should be advertising in this environment. I understand the advertiser’s concern about the environment in which their spots are placed. Some advertisers don’t want to be on wrestling on TV and some don’t want to sponsor other different kinds of programming. But when you look at the overall national statistics of young men listening to these kinds of morning shows throughout the country, advertisers who shy away from these shows are forcing themselves to find other avenues to reach what’s generally thought to be a hard-to-reach demographic. One of my biggest hopes is that this helps the radio industry in getting advertisers to realize that they should stop running away from these kinds of environments.

FJ: So many agencies are walking a very fine line themselves. When a company buys advertising on a radio show or a TV program that is explicit and it starts generating complaint letters, whether from organized groups or random listeners or viewers, it does go a long way in shaping content. Typically listeners or viewers that have opposite views, and enjoy explicit programming, are not usually heard. The other issue is that some advertisers overlay their own tastes on what is appropriate and what is not. Understanding that there is a large audience of Rockers, most of whom find a lot of this material extremely acceptable, hopefully advertisers will think twice before they issue across-the-board bans for particular radio shows because it runs against the grain of their tastes.

LR: I always use the expression, "no one ever picked up the phone and called the grocery store to say their milk was fresh." If you only looked at the phone calls, you’d come to the conclusion that everyone’s milk is bad, because that’s who calls. It seems unlikely that the people who love this kind of content every day are going to be compelled to pick up the phone and call people and tell them that. You have to be very careful about overly responding to the minority of people who are offended. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to make people aware that it’s potentially offensive and give them the information that’s important so they’re not surprised by the content they will hear. But beyond that, overwhelmingly people are saying, "Let me decide for myself." Also, this is not our respondents standing up for the First Amendment, it’s people telling us what they like and what they don’t like. Maybe First Amendment rights guide and have helped form these opinions, but it’s hard to believe that that’s what these people were thinking about as they took this survey. They just responded to the questions, and said, "Yes, let me choose for myself."

FJ: In the neighborhood of three-quarters of our sample firmly said that radio, network TV, and cable TV is "rarely or never too explicit for my taste."

LR: Another point I took from this study is that I believe the radio management world has fallen behind the tastes of the audience, including the researchers and consultants and especially the advertisers and probably television and other media. We, as a group, are now more conservative than the listeners are, whereas we once had a reputation for pushing the limits beyond where the audience was willing to go.

Howard Stern really led the way for edgy, adult content on the radio. Has what Howard started been diluted and somehow gone awry with so many other people trying to go further than he ever has?

FJ: I don’t know that it’s so much a matter of people trying to outdo Stern, as much as it is programmers and talent responding to what works. When you see Howard Stern working in market after market across the country, regardless of market size or geography, it sends a message to broadcasters and programmers and companies that research these issues and makes it crystal clear what’s working about these shows. It’s not a matter of trying to push it farther than Stern as much as it is to attempt to take advantage of where the public taste is at any given time, and to respond to that in a way that is going to generate ratings. There’s no question that some of the stunts that have been attempted or tried are clearly in bad taste and don’t work. At moments like that, the public does speak and makes their opinions known that not all shock jocks work.

LR: Personally, I think that guy in Phoenix deserved to get fired for what he did.

I don’t. To me, he did nothing wrong as a fan of his team trying to get the other team riled up. Where he went wrong was not clearing it with management.

LR: I thought what he did was cruel. If I were his GM, I would have fired him. But, it’s just one man’s personal taste.

FJ: More importantly though, if you had been listening in Phoenix, you could have turned the radio off. That is your right, and that’s what people are saying. I have a great deal of empathy for broadcasters, particularly when one of these shock jock shows goes off and does something that is particularly controversial and difficult, because it does put management and the company to a test. To their credit, look at the way Infinity has stuck by Howard Stern over the past fifteen years. They’ve showed a tremendous amount of courage. Emmis also has done so with Mancow. It’s not easy to be in the middle of these maelstroms when a jock goes off and does something that is intentionally controversial, and management is left to deal with all the different constituencies, and as the study points out, many of which are saying different things. It is a very difficult challenge to keep a show like this on the air and to serve the advertisers, the company, the FCC, and everybody else in the mix. It’s a tough challenge.

How far is too far and where do you draw the line? There are some deejays and programmers who step over that line without realizing it, and then look back and with hindsight say, "Yeah, we should have cut it off at this point."

LR: It’s very challenging to live out on the edge, but it’s what many Rockers want to hear. But, when you’re on the edge, you have a chance of falling off.

FJ: The really great jocks, the ones who are doing this kind of programming, have a built-in meter that goes off when they are close to that line. They are in much better shape when controversy starts brewing because we also know personalities that don’t seem to have a sense for where the line is. Having that inner sense of where the public taste is and at what point they reach the line between doing something that is controversial and shocking and something that is so heinous that it’s just going to cause all kinds of problems. That’s an incredible, innate skill that can’t be taught.

Could the results of this study make the FCC realize that the public is accepting of this type of content and change the way they handle these situations when they do arise?

LR: The FCC should think about these issues and think about them hard and think about them deeply. They have tremendous challenges in dealing with these sort of community standards issues and things of that nature. It’s helpful to have a lot of opinions in the mix as opposed to just having the loud people – the people who do call and say "my milk is spoiled" – to make sure you are looking at every side of the issue.

FJ: I would hope that the FCC begins to take notice that this study does send out the signal that tastes are changing, and perhaps inspires a question of: Is the Commission in sync with the feelings of the radio listeners they’re attempting to serve and protect?

Maybe the FCC needs to have a better system for determining what content is appropriate for certain stations. Would it be possible to have a rating system for radio, so someone like Mancow doesn’t have to be subjected to one person that continually monitors his show?

FJ: There have always been far-right groups that are well organized and are going after these kinds of shows and programming. Look at the controversy that happened before NYPD Blue first started airing. At the time, there were groups all over the country up in arms about the explicit language and the occasional butt shots that NYPD Blue was promising. You don’t think about that now when you think about that show. It makes you wonder why morning shows like the kind that are so common in Rock radio couldn’t just run a disclaimer or at least a statement at the beginning of the show saying: "There’s definitely going to be some explicit language and themes in this morning’s show. If you’re not into that kind of stuff, please go elsewhere." I’m sure every radio station that broadcasts this kind of programming would be more than happy to make that statement.

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