My blog last week (Country Fans & Republicans) reflecting on the headline of researcher Mark Kassof's latest national "Listener Think" study (Country Fans: Born This Way?) and the fact that after all the great new country music of the last five years the largest group of our listeners proved to be what seems like the same folks who have been listening all their lives made me feel a bit like Reince Priebus, Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Frank Luntz and other leaders of the Grand Ole Party who are juggling expectations of a life-long-loyal core with their own hopes, attempting to grow their pie.
I took solace in the latest CMA Insider Panel research showing how active, youthful and family-oriented our users are, but also asked Mark to crunch his numbers to see what was there below the headline picked up last week by the trades.
• RAISED ON/GREW UP WITH IT is #1 with both younger and older country fans. • Younger country fans are more motivated by RELATES TO ME/MY LIFE, REAL/TRUE/HONEST and SOOTHING/CALMING/RELAXING than the older group. • Older country fans are more motivated by UNDERSTAND THE WORDS, LIKE THE SOUND and >THAN/DIS OTHERS (translation: like it more than or dislike other genres) than the younger group. • Men are more motivated by RAISED ON/GREW UP WITH IT (30%!) and RELATES TO ME/MY LIFE than women. • RAISED ON/GREW UP WITH IT still ties for #1 with women. Women are more motivated by TELLS A STORY/STORIES, UNDERSTAND THE WORDS and SOOTHING/CALMING/RELAXING than men.
As strong as country radio's ratings are, it still has more room to grow by leveraging the music's relatability and power to keep building appeal among men and younger listeners.
"Raised on it/Grew up with it." - one of five of the 121 who named country as their preference of 805 18-64′s nationwide on WHY IS COUNTRY YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF MUSIC TO LISTEN TO ON RADIO? when questioned by Researcher Mark Kasoff
We've been hearing these comments on both our music and many of our core listeners' vaues for 30 years.
Maybe it's because 18-64 is too wide a swath to accurately reflect what Roadmap 2013 and rating trends across North American are documenting, but as Mike O'Malley said after seeing Kasoff's report "nothing about exciting new acts, nothing about how the format has evolved, nothing about the powerful younger demo growth?"
Fortunately, another new research study on country music partisans also just came out yesterday from the CMA:
The latest member-only research tracking the country music "Insider's Panel" by the Country Music Associations research department shows a young, active, well-educated group of country fans lead active, busy, youthful family oriented lives.
Top single-day family activities include going to the movies, attending a concert or music festival, and visiting family entertainment centers.
To grow a country brand: don't be like Republicans.
Meanwhile, the inspiring author Andy Andrews is on a book tour promoting his new very easy and quick read How Do You Kill 11 Million People?.
I'm not going to wade into those controversial waters today, but all of that focus on the public's lack of trust of institutions that seems to pop up for me each time I pick up something to read right now is also a good reminder that radio stations so routinely lie to listeners needlessly that, just like most of us with politicians, they are turned off and have stopped paying attention.
Do we really need to "promise" 50 minutes of music every hour when we actually only play 48? Do listeners conduct an hourly auction with their time and only spend it with the station that promises to be the highest bidder? Would they listen less if we told them how much music we really play in the hour?
If the cost of a commercial free hour is a commercial-filled hour in the hours just before and after it, who are we kidding?
Is saying "the station that cares about the community" believable on a 24/7 voice tracked outlet?
"12 in a row coming next" is followed by an eight unit commercial break.
Positioning "best new music" on your radio station is followed by yet another play of Garth Brooks' "The Dance."
I could go on. So could you.
Listen to your radio station today and listen for those little lies you're telling so routinely that many jocks think that's "personality" and "entertainment."
Get them off the air. Entertain, interact, make the listener the star. Keep it upbeat and fun. Make me feel something. Paint me colorful word pictures. Tell me a story. Involve me.
Just not a fairy tale, please.
Why do radio stations get away with lying? Could it be because no one is paying very much attention?
Listeners are more loyal to DJs than "XX in a rows;" sell personal aspects of the station including the people who work there.
Sell beyond quantity, mix. Use Symbolism - attach yourself to positives, your opponent to negatives. Don't put listeners in the middle of the battle between you.
Use Powerful Words: verbs not adjectives drive action.
Avoid clichés like “the best music” and use action and specifics, “we’re playing more Blake.”
Press The Flesh. It's incredibly powerful; people remember where you go. In politics, the chance of someone voting for a candidate skyrockets if that person has met the candidate.
Work Grassroots Organizations. Charity work feels good to do, of course, but it's also helpful for this reason too.
As ARB and BBM struggle to reach younger demos, the type of people who can be reached by their current methodology drive the rating results, just like elections. With so few voting, get those who’ll vote for you to do so (analogous with working heavy users, motivating the core to vote for you). It's useless if your biggest fans won't participate in radio ratings surveys. Encourage them, reward them for giving their opinions.
Database management is increasingly important; don’t just complain about returns, act on them. It takes excellent organization and execution to win.
Play “Retail Politics:” service the constituents; cater to heavy users. Make sure they know that you know their name.
Research: uncover deeply held values and key issues and act on them.
An article in Bloomberg Business Week on the Obama campaign "geeks," whose job is to write software that can make sense of the reams of voter data the campaign collects, searching for information that will enable a not-so-popular President running in a lousy economy to wring out every last vote he can provides another way radio stations today can "campaign" for new listeners, a lot like politicians do.
The idea is to take the now-standard practice of “microtargeting”—where a campaign repeatedly pesters supporters with phone calls, volunteer visits, and fundraising e-mails—one step further by tailoring their message to the concerns of individual voters. A woman who tells an Obama volunteer she’s standing with the President may receive an appeal for a donation a few days later. But the software will warn fundraisers to avoid hitting up that woman’s unemployed next-door neighbor for even the smallest amount of money, which could sour him on Obama for good. Instead, they’ll try to convince him that Obama is on his side. The campaign has come up with a friendly term for this kind of data manipulation: “microlistening.”
Here’s the key point that some seemed to miss: do the majority of your negative advertising and attacks OFF THE AIR - on media appropriate to the message, television with humor (when appropriate) or direct mail/telemarketing with specifically-targeted verbiage designed to secretly reposition your opponent on the key strategic issues that are important to ‘swing voters’ in carefully-selected areas.
It is best to take the high road on your own air! Why build negatives among people who already consume your station, when your current listeners probably don’t need to be sold in the same direct, comparative way that “their” listeners do?
Bill Clinton managed to survive in the 90's by understanding this.
Keep yourself above the attack on the air.
Carefully focus any negative message directly at the listener - where they live, work and listen - who will find it credible and understandable.
Listeners of the other station who may be dissatisfied with what they hear do not yet know you present a viable alternative.
You would be wasting energy to sling mud on your own station and could even irritate your already-loyal listener.
Which reminded me of a presentation Edison Research's Larry Rosin did for A&O clients at our Pre-CRS seminar in 1996. Back then, Larry was just starting to do research in the political realm and he shared this advice based on what he was learning:
"Meet regularly to discuss strategies and tactics; politicians meet every morning. Think of yourself as a campaign manager; there are two battlefields: your station vs. other stations and your station vs. listeners’ votes. Be good at being both an attacker and an incumbent. Radio is usually better at attacking. We wait too long to respond to attacks by clinging to a “we’ll wait till we see what the book says” attitude."
Today, Edison conducts exit polling for all the major networks and Larry appears on media often, acknowledged as an expert on opinion research which drives election result.
My notes from his client presentation 15 years ago, like that quote above, hold up very well with time and I'll share highlights of them over the next few days.
In 2011, let's resolve to understand why the PPM panel seems to under-represent country's ethnic listening, especially from the 2010 census' fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population ... or were Hispanics writing in diaries listening they didn't actually do?
Is country radio's share of Hispanic listening in 2010 going to be down to merely a two share? That's what I heard last week at the annual ARB Programming Fly-In.
Even with numerous media alternatives through which consumers can entertain and inform themselves, radio’s overall reach among Hispanic listeners has remained between 94% and 96% ever since Arbitron's annual "Hispanic Radio Today" studies began in Spring 2001. 2010's update is coming soon and I hear that it continues to validate that Hispanics remain the fastest growing population group, America's heaviest radio users (those figures have decreased less than 1% over the last decade).
Among Spanish-dominant Hispanics, radio’s reach in 2008, for example, was 95%, and it was more than 93% with English-dominant Hispanics.
Last year's report showed growth in country radio's share of Hispanic listening to a 2.9, but whispers coming out of ARB hint that the news is not so good (if you want to call less than a three share 'good') for country radio in this year's update.
Whether Spanish-dominant or English-dominant, radio reached at least 91% of Hispanic men in every age group, and attracted more than 91% of Hispanic women in every demographic cell 12-64. Country's reach among that group is in the very low single digits.
In addition to the first-time use of PPM data in this edition, Hispanic Radio Today 2009 highlighted language preference among Hispanic consumers. Arbitron asked Hispanic respondents about the language they prefer to use.
The options are:
•All Spanish •Mostly Spanish •Mostly English •All English
Country radio's tiny share of all Hispanic listening, of course, comes primarily from those last two groups.
While in the nation's capitol for an annual meeting, Kix Brooks, Victoria Shaw, Randy Scruggs, Bob Dipiero and nearly 50 other members visited the Library of Congress for a tour and a presentation yesterday.
"Our strategic mission first and foremost -- it's been for 50 years -- is to promote the format, to promote country music," said Steve Moore, chairman of the CMA's board of directors. Visiting the Library of Congress "is a great opportunity to meet the staff and look into collaborations."
Hopefully, the behind the scenes negotiations on royalties and performance rights between NAB and RIAA will be half as productive in the due course of time.
With apologies to Bill Maher and HBO, the concept of some rules seeming to be constant and others requiring updating came to mind as I was cleaning out old files from two decades ago and came across a monitor of a very successful country station, noting ten things they were doing, some of which still work in today's radio and some of which require revision in light of PPM measurement and changing demographics and culture:
1.Two simultaneous contests - one to promote TSL (Count the Country Favorites) and one to promote cume (Country Cruiser/Super Stickers, free coffee at remote location all morning until 9). New rule: contests are not as important as crisp, concise, compelling content. Off air cume-building and direct marketing may be a more effective way to spend your money than attempting to bribe listeners to listen longer.
2.Clear, simple positioning:Country Favorites, today's country, new country, classic country, the legends. This one still works. Own one word.
3.Everybody has a nickname:"Uncle" this, "Rhymin' that, "Dancin'" this, etc.No nicknames for newspeople! Crazy names still help convey character and personality, but authenticity is even more important than just adopting a zany name. Newspeople? What are they?
4.News on hour and half hour, headlines at :15 and :45. Lots of service elements - staff meteorologist, traffic reporter.Fresh story selection, avoiding the sense that "the same stories are repeated all morning".A good news teaser that SAYS this clearly:"coming up, stories we've haven't covered yet (headline)..." Freshness remains a good rule, repetition is still the enemy, but who has time to wait for a newscast today?
5.They use a format-specific comedy service, but LOCALIZE everything (i.e., Randy Travesty/Pint of Light song parody). Localization remains crucial, but pre-produced content and interviews have to be trimmed to the bone.
6.Name the show:Breakfast Flakes.Name the elements:Highway Patrol Traffic, Radar weather. Branding is still a good idea, but what you do and how well you do it now defines your brand far more effectively than any clever name.
7.Production.Morning show jingles, beat beds behind everything.Lots of music and sound effects, to keep momentum moving.They don't limit length of anything, but keep it high energy and limit to one fully developed punch line per set.Produced intros (short and a BIG variety of them) on everything.Production inside news:intro, punctuators before spot, weather and traffic sounders. That was then, this is now: contemporary, organic, spontaneous, tight.
8.Involvement.Many listeners on the phone.At least one such phone bit per quarter hour.In 2009, that still applies, but now you add texting, emailing, IMing and social networking to the ways listeners share their stories. Ifthey aren't part of creating the content, it's not engaging enough.
9.At the start of each hour (5:59 and 6:59), they immediately promote to 6:20 and 7:20 am with a specific reason to listen an extra quarter hour. That "old" rule still rules with me.
10.Double time sells.Analog and digital. Talk about outmoded! Who needs the radio today to tell what time it is? Scratch rule #10. Completely irrelevant today.
10a.No mixed messages, cynical attitude, dirty stuff.Funny, bright, warm, friendly attitude. Now, that's a Rule #10 which has stood the test of time.
Charlie Daniels performed during the christening ceremonies for the USS New York at Northrop Grumman shipyard in Avondale, LA., Saturday, March 1, 2008.
Approximately 7.5 tons of steel recovered from the World Trade Center are cast in the bow stem of the ship. The bow stem is the foremost section of the ship's hull on the water line. The New York will be officially commissioned in New York City in the fall of 2009.
PR CONTACTS: Christy Walker-Watkins - AristoMedia - 615-269-7071 ext. 124 - christy@aristomedia.com Paula Szeigis - Management - Charlie Daniels Band - 615-443-2112 ext. 123 - paulacdb@aol.com
Garth Brooks'next concert will raise money for the victims of the recent California fires and for the future of fire fighting in the State of California. The concert will take place on Saturday, January 26, 2008 at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.
According to Brooks’spokesperson, California elected officials have come to Garth to ask his help in raising money for those affected by the recent fires.
“I’m flattered they’ve asked and I’m honored to accept. This is going to take a team effort like nothing I have ever been a part of before.” -- Garth Brooks.
For more information on Garth Brooks contact Nancy Seltzer at (310) 938-3562.
"Country music has always reflected the country's mood, but it also challenges that mood," says David Whisnant, a professor emeritus of English at the University of North Carolina who has studied the politics of country music.
Clearly, some country music singers ate a big bowl of testosteroni right after 9/11. Just as clearly, the menu has changed.
Consider Toby Keith, who declared himself the quintessential Angry American as he sang about the Statue of Liberty shakin' her fist, Mother Liberty ringin' her bell and U.S. bomber pilots lighting up the Afghanistan sky like the Fourth of July, "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue."
That was when the war was just beginning. Now he's distancing himself from a war with no end in sight. In June, he told the Associated Press that, contrary to the impression he may have given everybody, he was actually a "lifelong Democrat."
"I supported the ousting of the Taliban [in Afghanistan] 100 percent," he told AP. "My 9/11 song was all about that. But the far left won't allow that to be. They have to plug me into every pro-war thing they can find. . . . I never said I support the Iraq war, but I never said I didn't, either. That war has been over since 48 hours after it started. Our military disarmed them in two days. The dictator has been ousted. They [Iraq] need to step up with their oil money and fund it on their own. I don't say we shouldn't be in there. I say we should be there and step back and let them have their own fight . . ."
Singer Darryl Worley started out gung-ho about the war, too. Annoyed with those who opposed it, Worley also tried to tie the 9/11 attacks to Iraq with his song, "Have you Forgotten?"
Four years later, he was singing a different tune, this one titled "I Just Came Back [From a War]." He wrote it after learning about a U.S. Marine who was struggling to readjust after his return from fierce battle in Fallujah.
Worley looked mighty battle weary himself, his long, scraggly hair framing the hard face of a man who'd had his fill of someone else's big idea. The Marine in his song had returned to "a land where our brothers are dying for others who don't even care anymore."
Tim McGraw .. made news around the country by singing "If You're Reading This" at the Academy of Country Music Awards this year.
The soldier in the song wants his family to know that the letter in their hands means he's "already home." With God, that is.
After McGraw finished singing, the lights rose over a group of people standing silently behind him. Overhead, a sign read, "Families of Fallen Heroes."
McGraw just stood there as the tears flowed all around him.
But one thing was missing.
I looked and I looked at his plain, dark shirt, but it just wasn't there.
The flag pin on the patriot's shirt was nowhere in sight.
What do you think? Have the opinions of your listeners on the war changed enough that it's safe to talk about it in anything but an "I support the troops" way? I don't think so. America's continued polarity as viewed through the lens of country radio listeners in the fall of 2007 still scares me a lot more than the threat of international terrorism does.
Maybe it's because MY birthday is July 6th and theirs is July 5th.. and perhaps I am biased because of my own personal loyalties to Country 105, Calgary, with memories going back to work I did starting in the early 90's for the station. (I was brought in as a consultant in 1993 when we were all fearful that Rawlco, who had done the most amazing country launch I had ever seen with their "Mugged and Kissed" Toronto event and of course Rawlco also owned CMT/Canada back then too, so it was a big relief when they actually came on - complete with a huge fireworks display at dawn as an AC-country-rock hybrid. I feel confident that CKRY could have withstood even a head-on attack, but it was quite a compliment to find out that Rawlco felt the same way. I can't wait to hear what other memories of those days others much more directly involved have!)
The Odd Squad morning showand then-MD Phil Kallsen are still all there (Phil is now PDand owner Corus Director Of Country Programming, of course), so I really want to hear what wonderful memories they all have, since I was just a witness but they lived it... but in typical CKRY fashion, they seem to be more interested in their loyal listeners' recollections..
TK has a lot of buddies in rock and roll, like Sammy Hagar and Bob Seger, but says his friends, as well as other rock legends, are looking for a new home for their style of music, and Nashville just might be the place.
"I'll probably get flamed for saying this," he tells Dial-Global, "but rock and roll is dead, and all my friends who play rock and roll have a tough time finding a market to get airtime for their projects. I'm not saying that to bash rock and roll, I'm saying that my buddies like Sam Hagar and those guys, if they put a new album out, there's no stations really. When I was a kid you'd have thought rock would have lived forever. Rock and roll was like a religion, and it's gone. Country has stayed the course, and country is America's music now. We write the lyric that means something. We are America's music."
On May 5, 1862, 6000 French soldiers waged battle against 2000 Mexican fighters in two forts. Though one fort was destroyed, 2000 French perished -- and the Mexicans won the Battle of Puebla. Not exactly Mexican Independence Day, this was a significant victory -- one where heart and valor bested numbers and theoretical military superiority.
As an opportunity to celebrate one's heritage and take pride in their quest for autonomy, Cinqo de Mayo is a milestone that speaks to the heroism of a humble, but hard-working people. As a reason to be festive and come together, it merges struggle with euphoria: never a bad balance to strike.
"Country music itself is in a pretty strange place, too. It's arguably the only music genre that would dethrone its reigning queens for an off-hand political comment. But many Americans watching the Chicks fall from Country grace were not surprised by the backlash. Country music has conservatism in its DNA, right? Not quite. Country music married into the conservative movement -- it wasn't born there. Country music's roots are as much populist as reactionary. Always fiercely allied with working people, the earliest country stars were old enough to have campaigned for populist champions like Tom Watson; FDR was celebrated in songs of the Depression; and Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash were feted by liberals for speaking up for the downtrodden in the '60s. Country music only became synonymous with mainline conservatism -- indeed, only became consistently political -- in the late '60s, a shift that not only helped buoy Richard Nixon into the White House, but reshaped the media landscape. The wars of the Dixie Chicks are the legacy of these years, but so are Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News -- the conservative noise machine itself. The idea of values-based marketing to conservatives began with country music."
-
*This blog is no longer updated because Albright & O'Malley & Brenner's
prep producer Dan Van also maintains a blog for our client personalities.* *Bookmar...
This Applies to Programming Too!
-
If you are a Programmer Director, air talent, or anyone who interacts with
clients, event partners and listeners, you need to pay attention to the
“Sales ...
