"What’s Happening?" Still Works

Reduce the clutter generated by sales value-added by making use of a weekly promo from sales inventory to group together a lot of smaller sales promotions on air.

These promos are :30 seconds in length, have a standard music bed behind them, run as a normal commercial unit, as read by your station’s “Fun Finder” personality under the umbrella of “here’s what’s happening at (brand name).

Place all sales events that appeal to the mass audience including remote broadcasts, personality appearances, concerts, et al.

These “sales promos” generally run once per daypart.  It’s tempting to bump them when you’re sold out, but don’t do it. 

If you promised it and got a “buy” as a result of that promise, you’ve got to deliver on ‘em and that’s another reason to count them as commercial inventory.  You can even affidavit them as long as you keep a good paper trail of everything you run.

If a client doesn’t want their mention included in a carry-all like this, of course, you’d be delighted to sell them their very own commercial to say whatever they like!

“Selling Low-commercial Load Station Time Is Easy”

That’s what Bill Moyes, Dan Vallie, Mike McVay, Jerry Lee and others started exemplifying when strategic research dominated major market radio in the 80’s and early 90’s.

“In this era of increasing clutter, the only way for an advertiser to stand apart is to use a radio station which limits advertising to a certain number of messages an hour.  By selling the idea that you have an environment of integrity,” McVay taught me, “And then framing each advertising message by surrounding it with music, you make it stand out from the crowd.”

Lee's More-FM, Philadelphia, still stands up for (and seems to prove it still works!) making use of low commercial limits to keep rates high to make sure you can showcase a marketer’s message.

This selling idea should be a primary weapon of a low-load station’s sales arsenal.  Position spots as an adjacency to entertainment.

However, with the arrival of consolidation in the mid-90’s, another, even "easier" way to sell emerged:   add more and shorter units and lower your rates, pricing for revenue share. 

Once upon a time radio’s total revenues were some $19-million and 40% of radio stations were losing money.  Now, radio’s combined top line has been climbing back up to $17.6 billion after falling precipitously in the early 2000's, creating a need to cut costs in order to sustain and grow profits while paying off the debt incurred in pursuit of a maximum allowable share of market dollars.

Cutting commercial loads was never easy, requiring tremendous courage and excellent execution.  Not everyone can accomplish it, but those who do have the potential for completely dominating weaker facilities.

The smartest among us, as they convene in Indianapolis, need to be thinking and talking about that with their investment bankers and corporate boards.


And, if you as an owner are lucky enough not to have to answer to those things, you're in an awesome position to get aggressive and press your advantage.

It’s time to do things differently.  And, the past has a lot to teach us all if we learn from it.

Sit Down, Kid, And Let Me Tell You How Much Better It Used To Be

Once upon a time, radio “programmed” commercial breaks. 

• Best spot first, second best last, worst ones in the middle of the cluster.
• Never put the same voice back to back in a cluster.
• Longest first, shortest last.
• Tags last and only one per cluster.
• Live reads first and only one per cluster.

I considered these things very important and felt that I could quickly recognize "a great radio station" because they executed it all so cleanly and consistently.

Then, almost three decades ago, digital traffic systems came in and made changing anything about the way commercials laid out either very difficult or completely impossible.

By and large, radio stopped "programming" clusters.

Ratings never changed at all.

That was one of the many times I have re-learned to embrace change, and focus on recognizing the things which matter from the ones that really don’t.

You Go First

Sean Ross (Why The Audience Now Wants Shorter Breaks) initiated not just a great conversation last week but the savvy and experienced folks adding comments since that time simply can't be ignored!

However, I'm not yet convinced.

Back when John Hayes ran Corus and Canada was just starting with PPM, with the help of the brilliant Bob Michaels (I STILL miss him so much - a smart researcher and a wonderful communicator!), all Corus stations were mandated to do six two minute breaks and promote that they go back to the music faster than anyone else.

Finally, after more than a year of disappointing ratings all of the Corus music stations went to two six minute breaks per hour and the ratings improved almost immediately across the board.

In Canada, BBM doesn't use "five minutes equals a quarter hour" as Nielsen Audio does, so it's absolutely a "most minutes" wins game and all of the Canadian country stations we work with are doing exceedingly well right now sticking with the "hour glass" or "bow tie" approach, so I'm welcoming anyone else who wants to take the Edison Researcher's advice and "go first."

My sense is that this is a case of perception vs actual habits.

TV commercials are all run at the same times so that viewers then are forced to choose their favorite shows based on the content not the commercial load and I believe that the same is true with radio when the measurement is PPM.

The major consolidated US group owners have shown me by their actions in PPM that it's possible for one station to play at least one minute more commercial time than a direct competitor and still win by carefully placing their clusters to maximize the time measured by the PPM, which like your cell phone "knows what time it is," so a few seconds can be the same as a minute depending where a tune-in or tune-out happens.  Thanks to Nielsen Audio's editing rules, that minute in the right place can be credited as a full quarter hour (or also cost you one if it's improperly placed).

Perception still drives expectations, which does make listeners go to one station "first" over another, but when at that station "time matters" much more than perceptions, I maintain.  Great content drives usage in the moment much more than the image that if I am patient I'll hear more of what I want in the long term.

Each "stop" causes a huge loss in the "switcher" audience and the more times per hour that happens the stronger that image of "it's worth waiting for something terrific" must be, my current experience still indicates.

How about you?  Ready to go first?

Now, The Bad News

At a CRS 2014 session Nielsen Audio revealed national country format trend data showing weekly cume among teens rose 8% and was up an impressive 15% among 18-24s helping country’s audience share grow 17% among teens (12-17 year-olds) and 16% with young adults (18-24), allowing the format to leapfrog past CHR in persons 18-24 and move from third to second among teens in diary markets.  At the same time, country’s share of 25-34 year-olds slipped 9% (still holding onto #1 in that demo).

The cume increases came largely as a result of new listenership, driven by population shifts.

We're fortunate that happened.  Here's why, thanks to another CRS prersentation, from Stone Door Media Lab's Jeff Green:

Larry Rosin, Roy H. Williams and Fred Jacobs have all fretted about a potential cause of this trend in recent blog posts and I can't disagree with any of their concerns:  the increasing de-localization of radio and extreme commercial loads.

This is important because normally it's far less expensive to improve time spent listening than it is to grow cume.

Country's core audience complains twice as much about music repetition as their reason for being dissatisfied/listening less than they do about "too many commercials," so country programmers have it in their power to turn our negative TSL trend around at almost no financial cost if we take listeners at their word and don't continue to virtually ignore their complaint.

To do so will mean letting go of some old habits and traditional wisdoms.

All next week, I'll offer my reasoning and proposed strategies. 

Watch this space.

I Feel Better Now

My week started out with my head hurting as word of a new mandatory policy at a major consolidated group dictating at least 15 or more units in a break twice an hour was confirmed.

Next day, Natalie Swed Stone of OMD at RAIN SUMMIT asked “how will listeners tolerate 15 minutes of commercials” (in an hour’s worth of a radio station's streaming simulcast) and added that “a 60” spot on the air is insanity.”

Thankfully, about then, Mary Quass called 'spotload one of multiple things we have to "suck it up" and fix.'  (thanks to Sean @RossOnRadio for Tweeting it today.

It felt like an extra strength aspirin, targeted right where my head was starting to hurt.

Quality Is As Important As Quantity

Irritating commercials are becoming an increasing cause of listener tune-out. 

The quality of the commercials is more of a potential tune-out than the quantity.

Today, the greatest missed opportunity in radio is to produce spots that are clever, ear catching, compelling for listeners to hear and compelling enough to move product for the client. 

When it comes to local “in house” spot production we turn out a lot of “average” spots. A trend as winning operators consolidate is to have a full time production person who does nothing but sharpen the production images for all of the companies properties. 

If I were a General Manager, I would invest more in a Creative/Production department.  I would want to have better spots to lead off my spotsets and create demand in my station’s creative department.

 

Be known for great production.  Your TSL will go up (ratings) and make your station in demand for production (revenues)!

Seeing With Your Mind's Eye. Are Drop In Ads Spoiling The View?

Thanks to Blaine Thompson at Indiana Radio Watch for spreading the word on this from CNN:

• Bob Greene: Baseball radio play-by-play is working commercials into the announcers' descriptions
• He says baseball on the radio is still special -- it's free and comforting commentary in summer
• At times, play-by-play can reach heights, as in description of Stan Musial's last at bat, Greene says

Stop for a moment, click the link and ponder the ramifications:

It shouldn't be surprising that this is happening. Baseball has always been a relentlessly and unapologetically revenue-seeking enterprise. Have you ever seen photos of the outfield walls in big-league ballparks in the early to mid-20th century? Even NASCAR's marketing strategists would have been envious of the don't-waste-an-inch commercial clutter.

"And baseball on the radio -- distinct even from baseball itself -- is durable and steady in ways that can't be easily spoiled. Baseball on the radio is one part of the sport that somehow, despite everything, still manages to feel good."

"How good can it get? For a gold-standard example from the history of the sport and of the medium, listen to the KMOX radio broadcast of Stan Musial's final at-bat for the St. Louis Cardinals before his retirement."

"Take a good look, fans. ... Take a good look.  It's possible, on summer nights, to see most clearly with your eyes closed."

Let The Other Guys Try This First

Anybody who can write, as he did this morning, "as obvious as an erection as a leotard" is worth reading if just for the titillation and powerful use of language which we can all emulate.

I try never miss what Jerry Del Colliano writes.

You too?

Then you know that he presented research at his just-concluded Media Solutions Lab in Scottsdale with the intent of warning media content providers that attentions spans have been reduced so drastically that radio stations need to rethink the way they present content.

Streaming video users lose patience after just 2 seconds according to a recent University of Massachusetts study.  That’s only 2 seconds and then they move on.  Ever wonder why they can’t listen to, say, a talk (bit) that takes ten minutes or more to get a topic rolling?

Half of the people who use a high-speed, fiber-optic connection believe that five seconds is too long to wait for streaming video.

Each additional second of delay resulted in a 5.8 percent increase in the abandonment rate.  That’s major.  It only takes two additional seconds to lose another 10% of streaming video audiences.

Survey participants were more forgiving when waiting for longer content like movies than for short form videos.  But not that forgiving.  Ramesh Sitaraman, science professor at the University of Massachusetts sums it up like this: “If you start out with, say, 100 users — if the video hasn’t started in five seconds, about one-quarter of those viewers are gone, and if the video doesn’t start in 10 seconds, almost half of those viewers are gone.”

 
He advises:  "Get into your topic within seconds – perhaps 15 seconds and set the scene as they proceed.  The old master Larry King used to be skilled at this before short attention spans became a much discussed attribute of today’s digital age.  When Larry did his Mutual show and came back after the hourly news, he was in the interview within a minute." 

Smart advice.

Two other bits of Del Colliano programming guidance, provided in light of the data, running commercials one at a time instead of in long clusters and that music sweeps are useless shows the danger of applying research on one thing to another, making me think that perhaps he's been out of programming a bit too long, at least for music radio.

Sitaraman's "half the people" cited above isn't too far away from Coleman's PPM-based (actual radio usage) finding that 40% of the audience tunes out the instant they think a commercial might be starting.

That factoid notwithstanding, using data from a full year across all 48 PPM® measured markets, the study shows:

• Radio delivers more than 93 percent of its lead-in audience levels during the average commercial break.
• One- to three-minute commercial breaks deliver radio audiences levels that are practically the same as the lead-in audience.
• Longer spot breaks of four to six minutes plus delivers a surprisingly high an average percentage of the lead-in audience level.
• Commercial breaks in morning drive deliver some of the highest percentages of their lead-in audience levels, on average. In the study, you’ll discover what drives this daypart’s performance.

 The difference between radio and You Tube is that radio's cume audience is constantly like a subway car with people getting off and on, thanks to a growing cume throughout the day for the average radio station.

My advice:  keep clustering commercials.  Work to make them as engaging as possible, but no matter how good they get and how few you run, listeners come in for compelling content delivered by fun personalities who know how to entertain mixed with long sets of music.

It's a mistake to apply research on one topic to something completely different.

Three Things About Radio Commercials We Can Agree On

• Commercial free hours beat hours which contain irritating commercials hands down.
• Radio programmers make bad grocery store managers/media buyers, and the reverse is true too.
• Radio can always use more entertaining, creative commercials. (click to hear a bunch of them, presented their trophies and cash just last evening), including the big winner.
  

Another Win For Radio: The Science Of Ad Placement

Radio-Info's Daniel Anstandig reports today that a new study by Casale Media, a digital display ad network, affirms that “reach and frequency” works online the same way it does in radio or TV.
They recently analyzed a random sample of two billion ad impressions from Q1 2011 across their display ad network and found that online ads are most effective when they are placed in the top of the page and first in order.

.. which reminded me of a BBM/Canada presentation earlier this year by Alex Petrilli from TiVO who gave some results from their StopWatch research which measures second by second viewing of the US PVR audience.

This has shown the importance of the 1^st in pod position in terms of retaining the audience during a commercial "break."

Other strategies have proved successful in preventing the audience from hitting the fast forward button, particularly “promercials” such as the recent campaign from American Express using the cast from Glee.
This brought to mind the PPM research using actual usage data (What Happens When the Spots Come On) from Arbitron, interpreted by Coleman:

The fact that radio's cume is always going up throughout the listening day as PPM proves, means that no matter when your commercial runs on the radio, it's on center stage.

How much clutter is too much clutter?

The more compelling the personality and the content, the more. The less personable and relatable the non-music programming on a music FM is, the better the station will do with less of it, as long is the goal is short term only. LONG term, developing strong entertainers who know how to use content as a magnet, the better the station will do. Listeners like it best when there is NO clutter. Limiting unwanted elements that make money has always been the greatest programming competitive challenge. Running any clutter of any kind which doesn't drive revenue or usage is foolhardy. - Thanks to Radio Ink's Ed Ryan for including my perspective in the discussion.

Ed: Should announcers back-announce and intro all songs, every hour throughout the day.

Yes. In fact, Mike O'Malley and I have been urging it for many, many years.

The first A&O client to make use of it was Clear Channel's KIXZ-FM, Spokane a decade ago, suggested by then Clear Channel VP Programming Rich Hawkins and PD Paul Neumann is still there, more than willing to testify that this baked in product attribute is still a big part of our secret sauce.

Citadel's Thunder Country Grand Rapids, Maverick Media's WAXX/Eau Claire, Midwest Family's BOB FM/Springfield and Morris' KBRJ/Anchorage are just a few of the others you can hear online if you want to listen to how it's done.

If you'd like to know if listeners like it, just talk to any of those PD's or either one of us!

Can They Really Make Radio Say “Sex” And “Rape”?

...I hope not, since not only are broadcasters responsible to community needs, good programmers work hard to build a large audience so that advertisers trust us to get them more results than what they expected.

It would be nice to think that in Pennsylvania a very good cause is using the request for a change in their copy to get more publicity than the actual ads would get and you sure can’t blame them for that as long as once everything dies down more reasonable heads prevail and ultimately make everyone involved, including B-101 listeners, "feel good."

Meanwhile, ironically, ad wizard Roy Williams has also recently been on a tear about buyers and agencies having the right to super-saturate radio with annoying ads.

I’ll permit Williams a bit of slack since I am a longtime "beagle" of the wiz, but it is possible that he’s been hearing from PPM market stations he'd like to buy, informing him that running the same piece of copy, intentionally written to irk, several times per hour is damaging both his and the stations' interests.

He wants to buy radio and control the creative in the same very successful way he has used to get clients outstanding results for many years, and you can’t blame him for that.

Metered behavior, however, is now giving us information that would be foolish for a competitive programmer to ignore. Some commercials, for example, lose as much as 40% of the audience within the first seconds. And, when the average listener leaves for another station, it typically takes more than 45 minutes for them to come back.

The tension between sales and programming goals has never been greater since it’s now possible to know exactly how many commercials per hour listeners can accept as well as which ones, right down to the minute, drive listeners away.

Hopefully, media buyers and clients - let alone our own radio company executives - know as they incent air personalities and programmers to build audience, we work in their best interest to improve the reach and impact of their messages as we police what listener actions show is “clutter.”

Once this PR tempest dies down, in addition to the words “sex” and “rape,” I’d like to nominate some other phrases radio has a right to insist be removed from the air: “open every Friday night ‘til nine,” “check our website for more details,” “for all your (fill in the blank) needs,” "we'll do whatever it takes to get your business," “your big volume dealer,” "if you're $10,000 or more in debt, you need...,” "best selection", "bigger variety", "no one has better service," “save, save, save,” “going out of business,” and a plethora of long-hackneyed phrases and words that have gone far past being irritating and entered into the lexicon of things listeners simply avoid or ignore, which is a fate even worse than tune-out.

Hopefully, both charities and advertisers will pay attention to the recommendations of the people who know the medium and the target best, so that we can work together to build and hold audience, making fully-engaged listeners respond with the actions we all want and need.

Radio must be fully accountable as the business listens to clients .. and our community.

We have always had two sets of customers, but now - thanks to PPM - the one which used to silently change stations when we offended them now have a loud, clear, statistically-trackable voice it would be foolish to ignore.

How Will Your Self-Promotion Fare?

Accountability IS the future, and now that new measures are evolving to check - down to units smaller than a minute in the not-too-distant future - to see which of the things we broadcast engage/relate and which things are counter-productive to both usage and brand-building, you don't need to listen to very much radio to get very worried about our medium-term future.

We simply MUST stop talking about ourselves and what we do, and begin to sell benefits instead of features in entertaining and compelling ways.

"Content" is not where your next remote broadcast is going to be, or who the guest is going to be on next Sunday's 5:00 am public affairs show.

"Data is going to begin changing the way ... advertising is purchased or managed -- finally -- and "tune-in" is quite likely to be first in line. It certainly won't happen overnight, but the multiples involved are clearly too great to be ignored. 2% improvements won't move markets, but 20% or 2X improvements will. This is going to have a lot of impact in TV measurements, metrics, processes and, very likely, business models. It will certainly be disruptive to many of the incumbents -- and will also present many of them with extraordinary new opportunities -- but it will certainly be crazy getting there."

How many media pundits/research studies have to say this and for how long before radio starts to sound like it's stopped being narcissistic?

Pregnant With Irony (And Laughter)

Allan G. Lie of Golden West Radio in Manitoba, in a playful moment, applied his writing skills to something he calls, Radio Babies, forwarded yesterday by Broadcast Dialogue's Howard Christensen.

Listen To Some GREAT Radio (That Just Happens To Be Commercials)

You no doubt saw the PR today:

The finalists for the 2009 Radio Mercury Awards, which recognize and reward bold and effective commercials and campaigns exemplifying good Radio creative were announced today. The winners in the competition awarding a total of $125,000 in prizes will be announced at the annual gala on June 17th in New York City. The winner of this year's Grand Prize will receive a $100,000 award. In addition, two new awards were introduced this year; a $10,000 Integrated Radio Campaign Prize honoring the best use of Radio in an integrated multimedia plan, and the Marketer of the Year Award. The Marketer of the Year finalists, selected by a committee of industry-insiders, are: The Coca-Cola Company, GEICO, The Hershey's Company, McDonald's(R), Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign, chosen for their commitment to Radio as a creative medium.

Now, in a very cool touch, you can listen to some of radio's best spots of 2009 and even email them to a friend by clicking here.

Thank you RAB for doing something great for our medium, which we all - too often - take for granted. Like the press release on the finalists says: "The long-term goal of the Mercury Awards is to reposition Radio advertising as a showcase medium for the creative community," said Rick Boyko. "The winning spots will be smart and entertaining but, most importantly, they will forge an emotional connection with consumers."

The Rules Of Bad Radio

The RAB's Radio Mercury Awards are back with a $100,000 cash prize as well as $10,000 and $5,000 awards for great creative use of the audio medium, so that kind of dough alone is worth clicking their website. However, the Radio Mercury folks got pretty creative themselves this year, providing a list of rules you need to break each and every time you open a microphone:

• Rule #1: Don’t attract the listener’s attention. [Ever heard a radio commercial that didn’t command your attention? Make sure your spot doesn’t have the same effect on listeners.]

• Rule #2: Fail to paint a picture. [Radio is a visual medium. Your words create a mental image that inspires and motivates listeners to act. Words are powerful – choose them carefully.]

• Rule #3: Be so clever or creative you forget to sell. [A good commercial isn’t one that just makes people laugh; it motivates them to act. Make your message clear. Don’t bury it in a clever idea.]

• Rule #4: Use cliché-ridden copy. [Commercial clichés are trite and empty and don’t communicate anything to listeners. Find a way to say it fresher. It’s worth it.]
  
  
• Rule #5: Write way too much copy. [Read your copy out loud at a normal conversational pace and time yourself. If it takes you seventy-five seconds to read it, what makes you think your talent can do a good job with the same copy in just sixty seconds?]
  

As If We Didn't Know: Ad Clutter Degrades Brands

(click the image to enlarge it) Yes, this is about online ads (Burst Media defines ad clutter as the overcrowding of a web page with advertising units to the point of degrading the web users’ experience), but does anyone have any doubt that it's true for radio too? PPM is going to prove it, if it even NEEDS proving.

Fewer Ads Target Younger Internet Users

Young people between the ages of 2 and 17 experience the least amount of online advertising “clutter” on the internet, while online adults age 65+ are subjected to the most, according to (pdf) research from Nielsen Online.

Since websites designed for children have little to no advertising, it is not surprising that the youngest Web visitors are typically exposed to a low level of advertising clutter, Nielsen said. But teens (age 12-17), the highest indexing age group on MySpace, also encounter relatively low clutter levels and are accustomed to less clutter than all adult age groups. This could potentially make them less tolerant of additional clutter than older adults.

Nielsen said that identifying ideal clutter level can drive successful online media buys and ad inventory and has introduced a new ad clutter metric to help advertisers leverage the right combination of web traffic, ad volume and demographic targeting.

“For decades, advertisers and publishers have struggled to define the right balance of content and advertising. Used in conjunction with other metrics, such as unique audience, the clutter measure provides a relative benchmark to help media buyers understand the Web sites that provide the optimal level of impressions within an acceptable amount of clutter.” -- Jon Gibs, vice president, media analytics, Nielsen Online

Ya think there might be a lesson for us in "old media" here??

Cox Gets Aggressive In Louisville

Market watch alert: keep an eye on WAMZ and WRKA (check out their TV spot, not a new tactic for Cox, of course, but with Clear Channel redefining 'less is more' and reportedly adding units right now, the timing of this move is fascinating!) .. and an ear on both streams in the coming months.

Meanwhile, New Country - on its new, improved signal - is already starting to keep score.