What is the basic idea?

Telephone research has gotten so expensive that very few stations do it compared to 5 years ago. And most of those who do it don't do it as often as they used to. If it hasn't been a victim of budget cutting by now, it probably will be soon. Yet, the information obtained by doing telephone research is just as valuable today as it was in the past.

Media Score, Inc. has replaced the expensive part of telephone research - the phone calling to an increasingly hard to reach public - with the Internet. The concept is simple. On your own air, through either live jocks or produced promos, you ask listeners for their feedback on the music they are hearing. You direct them to your website and tell them you care about what they think. When they do, they are asked some screening questions and then listen to song hooks. They answer with a mouse click. Not only does Media Score let you test songs, but you can test all facets of your broadcast and station. Instead of testing songs, test morning bits, radio spots, station bumper stickers, television commercials, printed advertisements, or the latest billboard about to go up.

Are the results valid?

Media score and others have conducted several tests over the past several years - real stations using real on-air promos testing real listeners compared simultaneously to the standard telephone methodology they had always used. The outcome - songs ranked the same using both ways. The results are convincing but should not be surprising. Listeners like to be asked. They like to give their opinion. And those opinions don't change based on whether they are on the telephone or online.

How many people will I have in my survey?

That is a function of several things. How big is the station cume, how often do you promote it on air, how compelling are those promos, how long do you keep one session in the field before you start the next. Generally, the number of people will be considerably larger than the number of people in telephone based research.

Will the same people go through over and over again?

People can go through each time a new session is started. This is not only possible it is encouraged. As people complete a survey, they are added to a database for the station and asked if they wish to be notified of upcoming surveys. Those people that accept are then notified by email the next time a survey is run or there are songs to test. Anyone going through this process is doing so without pay or bullying. Feedback from respondents is that they do it because they like to give their opinions. They like it that stations will listen to them. Because they gave their opinion one week does not mean they should be ignored the next week. Many stations spend large numbers of dollars trying to organize their faithful listeners in 'Frequent Listener,' 'Loyal Listener,' etc. Clubs. The people who take the test are a different version of the same thing. These are the folks whose feedback is really worthwhile for things like 'which songs the station should play.' And their opinions change from time to time. It would be a mistake to ignore them.

However, we don’t require you to do it any one way. See the next question.

But, I don’t want just anybody telling me which songs to play.

All consideration of ‘whose opinion to listen to’ is in the hands of the station. Every session is custom designed for the station by the station. Anyone who wants to can go through the test. But the results can be filtered by any criteria the station feels is important. This includes age, sex, race, station partisanship, cume, etc. If you only want redheaded dressmakers, then screen people for hair color and sewing ability and you can filter only those people when looking at results. The advantages to having everyone who wants to be allowed to give feed back are, 1.) you don’t risk alienating someone who likes you but is not in your target, and 2.) you might change your mind and want to allow brunettes in to the results. Since they all went through, you just change the filter to include them. You can also filter people who have gone through a survey in the past if you feel that they shouldn’t be allowed to participate again.

How does it work?

Once your account is activated, we will help you set up a link on your station website for your listeners. (If you don't have a website, that's ok. See # 13.) We want to make your listeners feel that they are always at your website, even to the point of using your logo for the survey sessions. Then, you can begin to build your first survey. You determine a start date, end date or minimum number of respondents, the screening questions, a montage they must like (if desired) and the song hooks or any other media - audio, image, video - you want to test. You can also ask some extra questions at the end. This process can be done in as little as 15 minutes or as long as you want. But once you have decided on the questions you want to ask and the media you want to test, you are ready to run it.

Hooks? Where do I get the hooks?

Search and retrieve song hooks by artist and song title. When you want to choose a hook, simply click on the song name. It's that simple and fast! You can retrieve song hooks from either your own private Media Library (see more information on My Media Library in the question "What Else Can I Test Besides Songs") or one of the two leading hook providers in the industry - Autohook & Hooks Unlimited, offering a combined 120,000+ song hooks. Both song hook catalogs updated daily.

How much do the hooks cost?

Autohook and Hooks Unlimited bill radio stations directly for hooks used in each survey. Both providers charge $1.45 per hook per survey. Thus, a station doing 40 surveys over a 12-month period with each survey having 30 hooks would pay $1,740 for the entire year.

What else can I test besides songs?

As part of your account, you get your own private Media Library where you can upload song hooks produced in-house as well as any other form of media - image, video, or audio - file that you wish to test with your listeners. After being uploaded, Media Score will optimize your media files to ensure the best, fastest playback to listeners taking the survey. Media Score is more than just song testing, it is about testing your entire broadcast.

Who are you guys?

We are technologists, experts in radio research, and music lovers. We have been working for many years with online survey and streaming technologies. A long-time radio audience researcher closely guided the development of the online survey service and how to apply these advanced Internet technologies for radio stations.

Will people with dial-up connections be able to participate?

Certainly. Over one-half of Internet users have accessed some form of streaming media, whether video, news, or audio. Many still access streaming media by dial-up. Today’s streaming media technology has advanced greatly and makes listening to audio online a positive experience, even if you have a dial-up modem (56K). The speed in which a streaming hook is played is not only a function of the connection speed of the user, but the user’s processor speed and their ISP’s network capacity. These hooks are so small that using a ‘dial-up’ connection adds less than 1 second to the experience of listening to a hook. We have seen no difference in the voting patterns of respondents with ‘dial-up’ compared to ‘high speed’ connections. Recently, Media Score has introduced proprietary optimization tools that configure any size of media file uploaded into the system into a streaming media file that will recognize the listener's bandwidth and adjust to ensure maximum playback performance for the listener.

Who helps me set up my survey?

We can! However, once you experience it for the first time, you will realize how easy it is to setup and run surveys on your own. As a paying subscriber, we are always available to help you, but after the first time or two, you won't need it. Media Score is very easy and user friendly. You will be able to do everything for yourself after a few callout.

What if my competitor wants to sabotage my results by voting several times? Is it possible?

Yes. But it is also possible that they could disrupt your auditorium test, or your sales promotion or your remotes, or whatever. The reality is those times are for the most part behind us in this business. People have more to worry about than one station’s callout. However, we do have some built in safeguards. Our technology enables you to not let a computer from the same IP address participate more than once per wave. So unless someone changes IP addresses several times they won’t be able to overload the data. You also have the ability to export the data set into excel and look at every individual’s response. If there are some results that look a little odd, or look too much the same, you can remove them from your analysis. By the way, we will be able to monitor that kind of activity and notify you that something unusual is going on. You will know where the offender is coming from, so you can… whatever.

What if my station doesn’t have a website?  Can I do online callout?

We anticipated that you might not have a website so we built in the ability to have it look like you do. We will go out and register you with a URL of your choosing (as long as it isn't already used) and enable this web page with your survey for you to send your listeners to. When the listener types in your web page address, they will see your callout presented in your choice of colors, font style, and your logo. If your station has an email campaign tool (e.g. Email Director, ListenerEmail.com…), you can copy and paste the unique survey link directly into a listener email you have created and let listeners access the login page through this email.

How often can I test new songs?

You can test new songs as often as you want - once per week, up to 50 times per year. The standard subscription offers unlimited usage. You may have a smaller cume that requires 2 or 3 weeks to get a good sample through your test. It is all dependent on you to determine when a wave starts and stops. Many telephone based callout programs are using 40 people per wave and then combining two waves to make 80 people. Stations pay less this way - usually $700 to $1,000 per 40 or 50 people. (This is just a form of billing slight of hand. For 80 people you pay $1,400 to $2,000.) If you are happy with 40 people, fine. If you want to wait for 80, fine. It is all up to you.

Who is this good for?

You'd think this would only be a good tool for stations playing current music, but we have had an interesting reaction from stations that would not have considered telephone callout in the past. It is so easy and cost-effective; several programmers feel that Media Score would be valuable to their station. In 'Oldies' for example, there are times that a song that has a history of testing as a 'Secondary' all of a sudden tests 'Power.' Should these results be ignored? Can such a song survive a higher rotation for the next 6 months or year until another auditorium test takes place? And the strategic questions that can be asked are valuable to a station in any format. When you reduce the cost and time required to conduct surveys, suddenly it becomes valuable for all radio station formats. We work with all station formats - AC, CHR, Oldies, Classic Rock, New Rock, CHR/Rhythmic, even Talk. Our station clients test more than just songs - they test television commercials, logos, billboards, print advertisements, morning show bits and radio spots.

Strategic Questions? What do you mean?

You have the capability to ask as many strategic questions as you want. Multiple choice, open-ended, whatever you need. And you write the questions using any wording you want and make changes to them as often as you want. It is all up to you.

How long do I have to wait until results are available?

Only as long as it takes someone to go through the questions and rate the hooks. You will see results as soon as the first person has completed the session.

Will you Fed Ex those results to me?

We are faster than Fed Ex! They will be right there on your set up page. With one click, you can have your results in HTML or Microsoft Excel. Once exported into Excel, you can sort them in any way you want or weight some scores over others. It is always in your hands.

I’ve already built up a database of people who like my station. Do I have to start over?

Of course not. We can send out the initial email invitation to your listeners for you or we can work seamlessly with your 3rd party email campaign tool (e.g. Email Director, E-Listener Suite). You simply paste the unique survey link from Media Score into the email you have constructed using one of these 3rd party tools. You don't even have to use our online panel database if you already have one. We are very flexible.

This is so good, I could hear about this forever. What other benefits does Media Score deliver?

Sure, here are some of the other things we have heard from users of our system:

• It is a great way to bond with your listeners;
• It provides a REAL reason for listeners to visit your website;
• You can get up-to-date answers to non-music questions, like “Have you heard our contest at 7:15 in the morning?”
• You can get open-ended answers to questions like, “What would you change on our station to make it better?”
• The database of listeners stays constantly updated.
• You have a reason to email that database.