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Re: Changing habits

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deanbedfordAug 30, 2012
 

 
yeah David, I agree about the changes in how people access content. This is a fascinating time in the media industry.

when I wrote about people being averse to change, I was thinking more about your question "why do popular shows get cancelled?" and more about content. A couple of examples from my experience. I was working in the business section of a daily newspaper. Someone came up with the idea that the share market tables would be better presented in types of business to make for easier comparison within sectors. After a couple of months, we had to return to an alphabetical listening, simply because the readers who looked at this sort of information were used to finding it in one spot.

Example two - on the programme I work for now, we changed the theme music very slightly about 10 yaers ago. It was the same music but set to a different tempo. It was cganged largely for a technical reason that I won't bore you with. But for about three months we were flooded with letters and emails - some long and detailed - from people complaining about the change.

The music only plays for about 10 seconds - why was it that so many people really cared passionately about this? Because how we use the media is a habit and we were disrupting - to the listener for no reason at all - part of the routine of their day.

That's why it's hard to make major changes especially to "flagship" programmes and content - but sometimes you need to, just to freshen the format.

dean

--- In just-a-minute@..., "David" <drling0@...> wrote:

 
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