Twitter Ye Not!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ditto.

[3rd Viennese School]

Nice to see Harrison Birtwistle on here!
Never did get to confirm wot LOL means. Lots of laughs or lots of love?
Or wot sic means.
Or pragmatic. Keep hearing it on the channel 4 news.
What DOES it mean?

Of course, I cant use twitter or facebook at work. And still in the dark ages at home!
3VS

P.S. Hello Harrison.

[scottycelt]

Hey, even some of the most famous twits tweet ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11986826

[Frances_iom]

Nice to see Harrison Birtwistle on here!
Never did get to confirm wot LOL means. Lots of laughs or lots of love?
Or wot sic means.
Or pragmatic. Keep hearing it on the channel 4 news.
What DOES it mean?

LOL = laughed out loud
sic - usually Latin = 'so' or 'thus' indicating an abnormal or erroneous entry in original source (the OED also has other uses )
Pragmatic - from greek and later latin skilled in business,law etc usually I take it as verging on the immoral, illegal or similar tho I like one of OED's entries - officiously busy in others affairs

[3rd Viennese School]

I can understand "thus"

as in

thus

d/dx sin 2x = 2cos 2x

but "sic" makes it sound like they're about to throw up.

And the famous channel 4 " so they are going to take a pragmatic approach...
at the end of the day...
etc..."

[Roehre]

I am sitting in the smallest room of my home.
I have the BBC-twitter still in front of me.
In a moment or so it will be behind me.

(free after Max Reger)

[french frank]

I honestly believe that if the FoR3 were to put some real effort into conducting scientifically valid, statistically-sound surveys of the R3 listenership at large, you'd be providing a valuable public service.

I don't know how you would begin to construct an appropriate model. What is a Radio 3 listener? A person who once listened but gave up because they didn't like the new style? A person used to listen to CFM but couldn't stand the ads so switched to the Nu-R3?

This isn't a numbers game. It's about the principle of the BBC providing an expert, professional service which satisfies people with a reasonably advanced knowledge of a range of arts, music and intellectual content as well as people who want to attain that knowledge. We don't need a survey to tell us that a majority of people want a radio station to be lively entertainment, not too much like hard work and, at lowest, pleasant background listening. If R3 had succeeded in attracting an overall majority of listeners who want 'CFM without the ads', that wouldn't mean that the BBC should be providing it.

I see your policy of 'making the best of what you're being given' as - Appeasement. No surrender! Nous contestons! No pasarán! Death or glory!

[Panjandrum]

Pragmatic - from greek and later latin skilled in business,law etc usually I take it as verging on the immoral, illegal or similar tho I like one of OED's entries - officiously busy in others affairs

Sounds like one of the good Dr Johnson's definitions

[Eudaimonia]

I don't know how you would begin to construct an appropriate model.

Well, it wouldn't be easy: one of the biggest pitfalls you'd have to avoid would be selection bias. For instance, if you polled people around here, you'd probably end up with results like "twelve out of thirteen crotchety old specialists agree-- Roger Wright is the spawn of Satan and should have been fired yesterday!" Which wouldn't be very helpful, heh. Even if you passed out survey leaflets at concerts, you still wouldn't be getting a representative sample, since you'd totally exclude the kind of listener who won't and/or can't attend concerts, etc.

In order to reach a large cross-section of the public, you'd probably need to do some kind of random probability sampling involving cold-calling around Britain until you reached an adequate number of people who answered yes to the question "Do you (or have you ever) regularly listened to R3?" and then take it from there. I can't think how anything other than relying on self-definition as "a current or former R3 listener" could give you a sampling frame that would be sufficiently broad and unbiased. And if you can't measure your sampling error, you might as well be guessing.

The easiest thing to do would be to contract it out to a reputable research firm-- you'd almost have to, in order to be credible. But I'm sure that wouldn't be cheap. I don't know, maybe "leaflets at concerts" isn't such a bad route after all. As long as you were upfront about exactly where your data came from-- and everybody knew what your survey's shortcomings were-- it might have some real value.

[french frank]

In order to reach a large cross-section of the public, you'd probably need to do some kind of random probability sampling involving cold-calling around Britain until you reached an adequate number of people who answered yes to the question "Do you (or have you ever) regularly listened to R3?" and then take it from there. I can't think how anything other than relying on self-definition as "a current or former R3 listener" could give you a sampling frame that would be sufficiently broad and unbiased.

But the purpose of the survey still seems to bear the underlying assumption that what the majority of 'R3 listeners' (tbd) want is therefore what Radio 3 should do.

My view would be that there is a point of principle involved (as I said), that Radio 3 should be 'providing an expert, professional service which satisfies people with a reasonably advanced knowledge of a range of arts, music and intellectual content, as well as people who want to attain that knowledge'. That doesn't assume that it can provide programming 24/7 which pleases all its listeners, nor that any individual listener should expect to be pleased 24/7, or even 6/24.

The average listener might be expected to say: I don't want to listen to X, but X is exactly what Radio 3 should be doing and how it should be doing it.

[doversoul1]

Eudaimonia
<… to contract it out to a reputable research firm… But I'm sure that wouldn't be cheap>
I’d say that’s The Understatement of the Year.

I don’t think we can expect french frank to go out and find half a dozen wealthy patrons who would fund the Forum for the purpose. But if you have the resource, please go ahead and do the survey you are suggesting. I am sure a lot of members will be interested in reading the result. And I think we can leave the talk of surveys at that.


BTW: While we are talking about surveys: I posted the Guardian’s link on the Mozart Fest thread. You can vote yes or no to the event. The poll closes tomorrow. Here’s the link if you haven’t seen it. A chance to add your voice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/poll/2010/dec/15/poll-radio-three-3-mozart

So far 35.7% for Yes and 64.3% for No.

[Zucchini]

doversoul
Yes, let's leave it at that. I've spent all my working life in media research and only comment that she's written total and utter garbage that would disgrace a trainee.

If I showed Eudaimonia how to use a hammer and a pencil, she'd soon be telling you she's a revered cabinet maker and furniture designer. It's a pity, a few of her posts are quite good.

[Eudaimonia]

How terribly convenient of you to toss off insults rather than offer anything constructive of your own.

I never ONCE claimed to be an expert in media research. But I do know that in social sciences research, if you're not concerned with establishing an appropriate sample frame, overcoming selection bias and eliminating sampling error, you're going to end up with a piss-poor product no matter how widespread your practices are.

You're right, I don't know: how would you reach an unbiased, representative sample of current and former R3 listeners without relying on random probability sampling? Seriously, what would you do?

[Roehre]

I never ONCE claimed to be an expert in media research. But I do know that in social sciences research, if you're not concerned with establishing an appropriate sample frame, overcoming selection bias and eliminating sampling error, you're going to end up with a piss-poor product no matter how widespread your practices are.

You're right, I don't know: how would you reach an unbiased, representative sample of current and former R3 listeners without relying on random probability sampling? Seriously, what would you do?

Professionally acquainted with general as well as a range of applied statistical methods, I wouldn't know how to tackle this problem easily. The main obstructing factor being how to approach R3 listeners exclusively. To get an unbiased sampling group out of BBC radio listeners is not too difficult, but to get a special R3 related sample is I'm afraid a completely other matter

[Frances_iom]

...but to get a special R3 related sample is I'm afraid a completely other matter

wouldn't one useful statistic be the overlap of listening between BBC radio channels and possibly TV - if R3 is listened to by many who switch channels then the constant cry 'think of the new listeners' might well be justified - if however very little overlap then possibly the posters here might well be more representative than RW wishes to acknowledge - since I suspect RAJAR figures might well indicate such listening overlaps I'm surprised that RW has not already countered such criticism - but I accept that arguing from such negative deductions is error prone.