34 Million Views ... And 38 Spins
Written Apr. 20, 2009 by Sean Ross in Content with 2 Comments
I was the last person on my floor of the Edison offices to actually watch the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed A Dream" on "Britain's Got Talent." Seconds after I started, the entire third floor staff was engulfed in discussion: all of my co-workers were able to discuss the clip in depth already. Even by then, the fact that it was a performance of a showtune that didn't intersect with their personal tastes in music was entirely beside the point.
On Saturday, veteran AC programmer and journalist Eric Norberg wrote an essay in his Adult Contemporary Music Research letter urging AC programmers to put the song into power rotation. Norberg, who was AC editor of the Gavin Report and for the last 20 years has published a newsletter whose "AC listener focus group" methodology anticipated Hit Predictor and Rate The Music. Norberg noted that the YouTube video was up to 26 million views as of Saturday; (it's now at 34 million).
"If radio is not about bringing a performance like this to its listeners -- already known to them from press reports, if not from viewing the video itself -- then what CAN it be about?" he asked. "This song and its story were made for radio, so it's high time radio now grabs it back from TV, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet!"
So has Norberg found any takers? Did any programmers come to that conclusion separately? Susan Boyle has certainly been a major discussion on morning shows, but has that translated to airplay? I checked Mediabase. So far, 38 spins, almost all of them in mornings. No more than three at any one station (WRVF Toledo). The most were in AC, but some were in formats as far afield as Classic Rock KLOS Los Angeles. And while that number conceivably may not have captured partial spins of the song or perhaps some of the earliest airplay, it's still a chilling reminder of what being a pop culture phenomenon gets at radio when it's not specifically put in front of them.
Reader Comments
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Just being "Mr. Skeptical" here, but wondering how many of the 34 million page views actually listened to the entire song? Or would remember it if played back? Played out of context, the song might just sound odd. I'm guessing that the effort in constantly setting context on this brief pop culture phenomenom seems more work than most AC programmers are willing to take given questionable returns for it.
Almost everyone I know who saw it, saw it all the way through, and saw it multiple times. This was a no-brainer for AC and hot AC, and apparently they missed it. It's one textbook example of why contemporary music radio is becoming irrelevant to listeners. HELLO--they care more about their cellphones than their radios, because YOU'VE made their radios less pertinent to their lives than their cellphones.