Committee Blog // The Schedule Applications - Some Interesting Statistics

Now that the scheduling process is beginning to settle, I thought it might be of interest to some people to have a bit of an inside look into how the scheduling process works. One of the recent innovations to Fresh Air's programming is that it is using online forms for applications - the happy by-product of which is that we get some pretty snazzy stats that we didn't have before. Now they can be boring, and hopefully I have highlighted some things which might be useful to know for the next time you apply for a show... and if you can't be bothered to read it all, I've highlighted some key things in bold.

Basic Stats

So, this year we had about 96 applications for shows in themselves - which is about typical, just shy of the 100 shows that is the average. However, as part of this, there were a significant amount of members deciding to join HUB shows, which accounts for a slight drop in applications. As a result, the amount of people doing shows has increased quite a lot, making this one of the most competitive broadcasts in quite a while.

Availability

Because of this, perhaps the most interesting statistics take a look at the availability of applications. Breaking down applications by day, the following stats highlight a trend towards a demand for shows in the evening.

Weekdays

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday
Thursday	Friday

Weekend - Saturday and Sunday

Similarly, we can also see that most people tend to be free at the weekend - which is slightly odd due to our being a student station, but of course our society include a number of former students and other members.

Saturday

Sunday

From this, we can overlay each of these graphs on top of the other, and expose the reality of show applications - an explicit trend towards evening show demand.

What We Learn: If you are applying for a show, you have far more chance of getting your desired slot if you are available at times that aren't on weekends or in the evening. For the second semester, programming might be better suited to the station by choices made from stronger applications, with evening schedules dominated by the best shows, and not necessarily providing shows for all members. 

About The Station

One of the most striking statistics we can see is exposed by an indication of who our members are and what they want from the station.

Student Membership

First and foremost, the make-up of our society is shown with this graph

Though a pretty even distribution, the largest group are second year members, many of which will be our future committee - which bodes well. Secondly, non university students out way our postgraduate contingent. This may well suggest we don't attract as many postgrads as we should, which is something for the. Similarly, there is little suggestion that we have fewer members who are third and fourth year, i.e. membership numbers don't deteriorate as might be expected - in short, if you are a fresh air member, you tend to stick around in your honours year, which I hope means that people enjoy being part of the society!

What We Can Do?

As for what we can do as a station, there are a couple of stats. On the left, a pie chart of the number of shows that are new or continuing, and on the right, people's response to a question on demo feedback

A lot of new shows this semester, which I would like to suggest is slightly out of character - I happen to know a lot of members left at the end of last year, but this has been replaced with a whole new generation of radio people, all keen to hear how their demo went! As a response to this, we are hoping to host a 'demo factor' feedback session for all those interested in the next few weeks.

Music

These next two graphs are related to music decisions by individual shows. The first graph show the percentage of shows that consider themselves specialist, while the second respond to the idea of playing from our playlist.

55 Shows believe themselves to be 'specialist', where as 46 are okay to play from the playlist . Perhaps more interesting is the distribution of specialist music genres - which suggest that not only do we have no dub step shows - contrary to UK trends, but that most specialist shows cannot be fit into a box. Do we do enough to support specialist music shows?

Podcasting

The simple statistic is that half of shows intend on doing podcasts -

As a response, we as a station should do more to support and publicise those who podcast. Thankfully, our newly launched site has podcast integration as standard in all show pages.

Show Member Distribution

One interesting feature of the form asks if you would consider others to be included as part of your show, which is shown on the left; on the right, a response to a call for those who wish to be considered for the 'presenter standby' list.

Quite staggeringly, most shows do not want others to join, and are adverse to being combined with other similar shows. And yet, most shows want as much radio as possible, and would like to be asked to fill in for other shows. People want as much airtime, and for themselves, which I think reflects a trend in radio towards the idea of being heard, that radio is for some about vanity.

Deadlines!

Finally, we turn to this last graph, and an issue closeclose to my heart, showing a distribution of when forms were filled in.

Now, on its own, it doesn't say much, until a little bit of basic analysis is applied:

Each point on the graph is a new day; the deadline is added, with areas in green pre-deadline and areas in red post deadline. The first few points are me fiddling and checking with the form, but then there is no activity until the day before the deadline. This may have something to do with the members' email, but that form was available for all for a week without much interaction. Even more remarkable are the number of applications after the deadline - my own grace aside, these shows may not in future get a show, but I think what they show is far more significant - less about our members, it may reflect human nature - but maybe not leaving things to the final moment might make all our lives a little easier!

What Next?

The next piece of interesting work will come from our recently launched last fm page which will scrobble all the music that we play - from which we will be able to publicly keep track of all sorts of things from the most played tracks, whether or not they are on our playlist, as well as where our identity as a station equals our actual station sound - I will report back at the end of this semester with more! For my next blog - some feedback on demos, and a look at suggestions offered by members in the applications.