MLK Day Must Have Been A Slow News Day For Radio's Trades

• Radio Ink's top story:  musicFIRST Slams NAB, Radio on Playlist Repetition
• Radio World: MusicFirst: Radio Song Repetition 'Shocking'
• RAIN:  Bill O’Reilly recommends Pandora
• Legendary programmer Bill Hennes wants us to factor in music sales data:  Programmers Take The Easy Way Out

NAB's Dennis Wharton, fortunately, was quick to add some facts to the fury:  “If the charge is that local radio plays popular music that listeners enjoy, we plead guilty."

In about three weeks each and every A&O&B client will know precisely how many of their listeners use Pandora and all other media choices at their fingertips and how satisfied their average listener is with their favorite radio station, thanks to Roadmap 2014.  If you're an A&O&B client, don't miss this free opportunity to get facts and stats to guide you in the coming year!

Weekly callout, online testing, other innovative music tests and mScore tracking are among the many tools that take the guesswork out of programming decision-making you should be using if you have concerns about your potential audience's music preferences.

You can literally ask a large number of your listeners whether they are tired of hearing a song on the radio, whether they'd like to hear it more, less or about the same.   Track this over many weeks, follow their guidance and watch repetition complaints go down and time spent with your radio station increase.

This isn't a new idea.  Radio has proven its effectiveness for more than 30 years.

Music sales numbers mean a lot to you if you're an artist, a publisher or a record company, but I hope my radio competition uses them determine their music rotations.  I'll test them with my target audience and beat them every time!
  
Finally, the only reason I'd be concerned about what Bill O'Reilly makes use of to get his music when he wants it would be if you know that he had previously cumed your radio station.

They Want What They Want When They Want It

For many years I have been recommending that country stations sound code every title in their library as "F" (familiar artist) or "U" (unfamiliar artist) or at least have some sort of similar system.

Here's why: if you code all tunes whose artist has had three or fewer hits as "U," you'll likely discover that more than 30-40% of your active library is by unfamiliar names - in spite of the fact that you play nothing but "tested" music in all but your light current category!

• The very same listeners who often complain in perceptual studies of "too much repetition" or even "too many unfamiliar artists' music" actually rate a significant number of songs by "U" artists rather high and no specific tunes have any significant burn on them.
• Likewise, perceptually, listeners say they want a station that's very upbeat and yet in music tests several hundred ballads consistently research through the roof.

Managing perceived expectations vs realities is what great programmers do, and A&O has developed music scheduling strategies to do just that.

If you're not happy with what's coming out of your speakers, send me a backup.

We'd love to help fix that.