Case Studies

Media Research
Content Research / Alternative Radio Format
A step behind the development of Triple A, the Alternative format debuted in the early 1990s but found its roots from college radio in the early 1980s. (Paragon’s Mike Henry was on the leading edge of this early phase Alternative called “New Wave” in Athens, Georgia, where he launched the format as student General Manager of “Athens’ Rock Alternative,” WUOG-FM.)

However, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that broadcasters were willing to take a chance on a new, young targeted format that unabashedly claimed to be the “alternative” to everything else on rock radio. In 1991, Paragon client “99X” (WNNX-FM) in Atlanta was one of the first stations in the nation to take this leap of faith. Paragon’s application of sophisticated Market Segmentation, Music Testing, Perceptual Studies and Focus Groups helped define the early listener benefits for a new format that spread very quickly and eventually defined the music of an entire generation throughout the 1990s.

Media Research
Concept Testing
Very early into the Internet revolution, some of Paragon’s most astute traditional media clients embraced this new distribution point. Our research told them that their users were quickly adopting the Internet for basic information…breaking news, in-depth news, weather, music, event information, etc. The two primary points of discovery…information and music…hit traditional media squarely between the eyes. Fortunately, Paragon’s media clients’ eyes were wide open.

Paragon worked in the earliest stages of media website development with many of the grand daddies of old media—Boston Globe, Portland Oregonian, Denver Post, KNBR-AM/San Francisco, and WNNX-FM/Atlanta to name a few—to determine what and how their audiences were using the Internet. We employed all forms of research, including Concept Testing, Market Segmentation, Perceptual Studies, Focus Groups, and newly developed DigiSuite (online) research, to follow their patterns and preferences.

With our propriety research informing them early and often of the shifting landscape, Paragon’s media clients counter-punched quickly with robust websites of their own. Years later, traditional media have not only avoided greater attrition due to Internet penetration, but in fact they have benefited from extending their brands into healthy media websites of their own. In most local markets today, the websites of traditional media dominate local web usage.

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