The "Other" Ah-HA In The Research Director's Report

Marc Greenspan, a managing partner of Research Director, Inc., cited the fact that the top four hours of listening occurred in three different dayparts. “Clearly the belief that radio is only a morning drive medium is simply not true.”

The Research Director Inc. PPM audience flow study which shows radio’s top hours are 3:00-4:00 pm and 4:00-5:00 pm demonstrates that radio's reach story is even better in the afternoon than in the morning.

It also illustrates another key programming metric.

Back when we all studied diary data to gain a time-spend-listening edge over the competition, we acted as if the average listening occasion was six or seven quarter hours and everyone tried to create three or four daily occasions built on habitual tune-in.

Then, having accomplished that, we worked to get one or two more days a week written in diaries at that same listening level.

Now that PPM so clearly demonstrates people really use radio in different ways than conventional wisdom dictated, we know that you build a quarter hour of listening one minute at a time.

Charlie Sislen, President of Research Director, Inc., commented on radio’s strength throughout the day. “The number of hours where AQH listening exceeded ten percent of the population is impressive and shows one of radio’s true strengths. Radio continues to be an entertainment media that has tremendous audience size
throughout the week. In these days of entertainment fragmentation, this is a real plus to any advertiser.”

Get your head around this, for example: "traffic every ten minutes on the tens" might actually not create more than a minute or two of listening in any one quarter hour, thus not even building a single cume (five minutes of listening) for you, let alone a, much more valuable, quarter hour (five minutes inside a quarter hour).

That traffic report may get you lots of regular drive-time tune-in, but you better tease something very compelling right after it that holds the audience more than a minute or two!