Posted by Tom Preston on August 17, 2007 at 14:30:20:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Top 500 CountDown!!!! Labor Day Weekend! posted by Marty Glenn on August 17, 2007 at 13:45:06:
You might be correct, Marty.
But, this is a motivated response survey in the jargon of pollsters. That means that people that care the most answer the most. It's not a random sammpling. Since many of the people who care the most about WCBS FM would like it to play more doo wop and other 50's music, those songs are likely to get a significant vote count from people who really care about them. In the last years of the former survey, songs that made the list were on average, older than the songs on CBS FM's playlist. So, you might expect a song like "In The Still of the Night" to get more votes than it would get if the station polled a random sample of its listeners.
On the other hand, as has already been suggested here, most polls like this when run by radio stations are doctored to conform to the station's format. "In the Still of the Night" is too old and too doo wop for the station's current format. So, if it gets a lot of votes, it might be played because it's very popular with a certain segment of the listeners. But I'd bet it certainly won't be #1.
As an experiment, I'd suggest getting a lot of people to vote for something the station will probably never play, not even on the Hall of Fame, like maybe "Danny Boy" by Jackie Wilson.