For Your Tool Kit

My recent items (5 Last) "Measure It To Manage It", Simple Stats To Track,  Gauging Your Growth and Radio Management Vital Signs attracted a helpful, welcome response from Andrew Curran, COO at DMR:

Love your series of areas to measure. 

Since you mentioned having people start a spreadsheet, I thought I’d share with you one that we developed with a variety of Key Performance Indicators in mind. 

Feel free to pass it along (click to download the xls). 

One tab is a detailed view and one tab is a top line management view.

A new acronym to add to your vocabulary:  "KPI."

Yet Another New "Job Description"

Here's the next "Enlarged" Title after GM and Program Director.

Let's face it, the folks formerly called "listeners" (if they ever actually were really listening as intently as our talent felt they had been) clearly don't have the time or interest to pay attention to anything that doesn't immediately concern them right now.

DMR/Interactive COO Andrew Curran:  Back when AM radio played the hits or more recently when Howard Stern ruled morning drive, the term "listener" adequately described our audience.  In today's digital and mobile environment, we have an opportunity to think about our audience in a new way. They are no longer just listening to the radio. They are commenting on it, promoting it, creating it, sharing it, evaluating it, and talking about it. 

He just got the ball rolling yesterday by setting up a new LinkedIn group "Audience Evolution," (click to join it) facilitating a conversation that will help strengthen the relationship radio has with our audience and our advertisers.

One of the first posts to the group came from Arbitron Director of Programming Servicess Jon Miller:  "We should take a cue from other industries and start thinking of our target audience as consumers, not just listeners."

Others: 

Thom RogersBusy and doing at least one other thing.
Jim RobertsRadio should take a tip from the software industry where consumers are called “users.”

Add your voice to this conversation so your "listener" doesn't become "apathetic, uninterested bystander."

Tripp Eldridge: Does "The Truth" Hurt?

At the December Arbitron Fly-In Eldridge introduced the concept of "Moments of Truth" and equated them to a radio listening occasion:

“For programmers and marketers, the "Moment of Truth" occurs at the point where a consumer turns on the radio and (virtually instantaneously) makes the decision as to which station they're going to listen to. We looked at several PPM markets across all stations and found that, on average, the typical heavy radio listener has thirty-one unique "moments of truth" each week. That's thirty-one times where they turn on the radio -- radio listening occasions. (We used heavy listeners -- those who listen an hour or more a day -- because, while they represent just half of all consumers, they drive nearly all (88%) of the radio listening. However in case you're wondering, we checked and the average light user has just 7 listening occasions during the course of a typical week. The job of a programmer and marketer is to win as many of those ‘moments of truth’ as possible and the best way to do that is to win them first as soon as the radio is turned on.”

Tripp joined dmr as President and Chief Operating Officer in 1998. Prior to that, he spent 15 years in product management, consumer marketing, and media research.

A&O is excited that he'll be sharing "The Truth" and what to do about it at our Pre-CRS Client Seminar on Tuesday, February 23 in Nashville. RSVP now!