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"We're concerned with being people's favourite station," proffers Paul Fisher, vice-president and general manager of CHFI-FM in Toronto. "Our role is to play the songs that people like." Outsiders may feel that Fisher is stating the obvious but insiders know that deciding what's hot and what's not with the target audience is any station's trickiest job.
Spinning the right songs at the right time determines a station's success, success measured in dollars. Revenue comes from advertising; advertisers want big audiences; audiences go where the good music is. That part is straight-forward; the rest isn't. There are many tools to help grab, build, and gauge audiences but auditorium testing is one of the most effective.
Auditorium testing is a bit of a misnomer. Today it usually takes place in a hotel ballroom or large conference room. Between 100 and 150 chosen participants gather for an hour or two to sample, in audio splendour, 600 to 800 songs, carefully marking a scorecard as they go. A $50 thank-you ends the session. The testing itself is just one step in a fairly standard process. Here's how it typically works.
At a strategic-planning meeting, the station's program director, music director, and probably an outside consultant decide to test the market. Has there been a shift in age, gender, or musical taste of the audience? Is a new station affecting ratings? Should the format change? What are the boundaries of the target audience's taste? And above all, is the core audience being served as well as it possibly can be? "Are they getting the music they want?" is a question no station ever stops asking.
Depending on market conditions, stations will test one...
