the art of conversation

Pipe and Slippers - and Bling

A recent article from WARC reported our beloved Beeb as “prioritizing popularity” and marginalising its older listeners. If you are over 35, it would seem your radio tastes are considered second place.

But radio is a heartland medium for older generations. It’s what they grew up with and had to make do with, along with wire hangers for antennae and jumpers for goalposts. By contrast, young people nowadays have an over-abundance of media available, including radio.

But broadcast radio has a difficult future attracting young audiences with online music providers such as Spotify or Last FM arriving on the scene. Users now expect to ‘self-DJ’, 'self-generate' radio content whilst exploring and sharing new music. “Young consumers don't have that need that we older folks have to have someone knowledgeable about the music tell them what's new. They have their social network to tell them what's cool” says Jerry Del Colliano, Professor of Music at the University of Southern California.  

Are the BBC more concerned with chasing younger audiences at the expense of forsaking older audiences?

Surely chasing popularity and ratings should not be what the BBC stands for. It is one thing for commercial broadcasters to seek high ratings to attract advertisers, but the BBC has a duty to provide quality content to all audiences, as a license fee supported public service broadcaster. They arguably have a grander, implicit responsibility too, in leading and enriching the public’s tastes, rather than matching and following public taste through a populist agenda.

The BBC should not cast out pipe and slippers content just yet.

Simon

THE SCIENCE OF CONVERSATION

Conversation is our theme – see our essay, Conversation as the New Model for Qualitative Research, or the shorter Powerpoint version, with pictures, here.

But, are we qualitative researchers ‘conversation experts’, or is what we do a pale imitation of what ‘real’ conversation experts do? There is a growing field called Conversation Analysis (CA), which was the latest subject of the AQR’s excellent In Depth. (This post initiated by a review commissioned by AQR last week).

Why should any of us bother to learn about CA? As Ailean Mills says, we should ask ourselves if our methods actually help or hinder ‘naturally occurring conversation’. For example, the number of questions we typically ask, the discussion guide and the role of the moderator, these may hinder, not help: ‘the moderator… can determine and distort the discourse of a discussion from the very outset …The choice of language, and its structure, will be quickly mimicked by participants’.

The focus in CA is on ‘naturally occurring conversation’ and all the examples quoted come from real-life examples of conversations, such as a doctor’s interaction with a mother in a clinic and a telephone conversation between two friends. Most groups and depths, of course, are far from naturally occurring!

Which raises two key questions:
1.    Should we all be incorporating more ethnographic methods, getting out there and listening to what real people really say (without their realizing we are listening in)? If we did this, though, how long would it take before we learned anything about Pedigree Chum (or any other brand)?
2.    Are only naturally occurring conversations ‘real conversations’? Can an ‘artificially created’ conversation (ie all focus groups and interviews) not contain real conversational elements and therefore valuable insights?