Time For Programmers To Learn A New Language

This development is not at all surprising.

As usual, they want us to cut our inventories while refusing to pay anything more when we do it, in spite of considerable data proving radio's impact.

If the only way they will pay more is when "cost per point" hits media buyer wishes and dreams, it's crucial that the people creating content fully understand which quarter hours and programming tactics have the highest potential to get target GRPs, ultimately ARPs, as high as possible.

Let's stop worrying about 6+ average quarter hour shares, replacing those with the highest payoff target points.

That's an entirely new way to approach formatic, content and programming metrics.

It's going to require a quick learning curve for most Brand Managers, but A&O&B can help make it simple and very rewarding for you to do so.

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."

(5 Last) "Measure It To Manage It"

16.     Number of local stories on your website with listener comments/reactions

17.     Number of blog posts by every personality ranked by page view and responses.

18.     Open rate of your weekly e-mail (to determine effectiveness of subject lines, etc.)

19.     Text Club subscriber rate and unsubscribes

20.     Website Metrics: 

           a.  Unique Users

           b.  Total Pageviews

           c.  Top 5 Most Viewed Pages

 - a final set of numbers from some smart managers willing this week to share what they watch to be sure their stations pace toward their goals.

No doubt, you can think of many more.

So can I, but if you have 20 priorities, do you have any priorities?

Start with this 20 and focus on the handful of them where you find your farthest from where you want to be that will move you forward fastest to where you need to be.

Once you ingrain the levers on them in your daily execution, pick another five and repeat until all 20 metrics are positive.

Only then, start to look for more metrics to measure and manage.

(More) Simple Stats To Track

Readers have been sharing the numbers they watch like clockwork to be sure their stations pace positively.

A few more:

11.     Number of public appearances per week by each on air personality/estimated number of people who attended each appearance

12.     Number of cold calls per week by salesperson

13.     Number of spec spots presented to new prospects per week

14.     Number of irritating commercials which harm listening levels per week

15.     Number of advertisers per month (and names) on your competition, not you

Thanks to BCAB for inviting me to moderate their research panel which featured Chris Byrnes, Warren Kurtzman and Sean Ross, providing the idea for creating a list of key objective management data.

Gauging Your Growth

I started the list with just five.  Now, thanks to many readers, you're going to want to start a table or a spreadsheet to track these numbers on the same date each month:

6.     Annual survey of email database: how satisfied are you 1-10? (% "very vs % not)

7.     # of Facebook friends + gain/loss + followed by # of people

8.     Twitter followers (gain/loss)

9.     Total number of units available for sale per week/revenue = average unit rate (track for total and also by sales person)

10.     Number of different advertisers per month by business category

Radio Management Vital Signs

Crucial (but no-cost) numbers to track to make sure your station is on course:

1.     Call your station’s business office phone.  How many rings before someone answers?

2.     (if you have ratings) Weekly cume (daily cume if PPM) trend

3.     Target demo TSL (daily sessions if PPM) trend

4.     Track streaming hours tuned monthly.

5.     Contacts in your listener email database (grown/loss)

Write these numbers down on the same date every month.  If they're not consistent or even better, growing, you're dying.

What else do you trend to be sure you are on pace toward your goals?
 

Bring It On

Yesterday, I wrote about possible upsides and downsides for today's broadcast radio in the recent Nielsen "lunch" which featured Arbitron as a main course (Hopes And Fears).

There's one aspect of the deal that doesn't worry me one bit:  Nielsen's intentions in acquiring Arbitron is to begin measuring online radio services like Pandora.

The research has already been done and it's clear that when measured on an apples to apples basis, both streaming of terrestrial and also over the air broadcast stand to gain.

The fact is that traditional "radio" (I can't wait to universally adopt the term 'audio' advertising) currently is greatly undervalued.

It's been happening in the real world for three years now in Canada with BBM using PPM to measure radio and television usage across the same panel.  It's possible to literally follow which ad on one affects the other and of course how a combination of both broadcast media can impact branding, product adoption and make cash registers ring.

James Cridland is a British radio futurologist and has become expert in the real world as well, consulting, writing and speaking about what happens when radio and new platforms collide.

He was a on air talent at local stations, digital media director at Virgin Radio in the UK (now Absolute Radio) and helped the BBC to develop the iPlayer. Cridland operates the website Media UK, works with The Radio Academy, is involved in RadioDNS and a co-organizer of the nextrad.io conference.  I love the way he puts it:  "Radio needs one voice." (click to read his recommendations for radio to make the most of their online presence)

An October 2012 EMarketer study on the growth of mobile found that broadcast radio has a 13.2 percent share of time spent wih all media per day, with a 9.3 percent of the U.S. ad share. 

It's a sad statement that our sellers have not been able to justify increasing radio's rates by the 30% the current audience rating shares affirm that we earn.

Perhaps when buyers see radio's online and over the air usage stats on the same page with all media based on the identical sample, we'll finally get the price we deserve.

If Nielsen's vision for Arbitron can help us do that, they are going to find radio managers and owners asking them "what are you waiting for?  How soon can we start?"