School Closings

It’s time.  NOT do start doing them (yet), but to set up your radio station’s plan and organizational structure for how you’ll handle school closing announcements when they start to happen in late fall.

Contact every school district in your metro area and find out how they notify parents and media when changes happen in their normal schedules.  Come up with forms and web addresses now that will allow you to be first and “right” with ALL the info that your listeners need.

The days of reading lengthy lists of every single school in a radio station service area are long gone, replaced long ago by the crawl across the bottom of the TV screen that made it so that even stations giving the info every five minutes were boring to listen to and yet still most often were beaten by the video screen.  Now, the Internet has displaced morning TV in its leadership role, reopening radio’s opportunity to be “the official school closings radio station” by giving just enough major info to drive listeners to your website, email database/mobile text sign up and social pages to alert them immediately of precisely and only the facts they want and need.

It’s a lot more to accomplish and plan for than the old days, but the opportunity is bigger since every piece of it can also be sold.  For that reason, you’re actually probably getting a LATE start, but you’re not “tardy” yet.  Even if you can’t find a sponsor for all of this in 2014, creating the “(Brand) School Closing Center” this year and working hard to own that image locally will make it easier to sell for what it’s really worth next year.

If you announce school closings on air, place them in alphabetical order, so the list is easy to follow.  If someone who goes to Andrew Jackson school hears you announcing a closing at Martin Luther King School at the start of the list, they will know that their school is open today.

Does your station have a meteorologist or a weather person?  If so, their voice would be perfect for any promos you do for the “(Brand) Official School Closing Center.”  Promise that during bad weather days, you’ll “double” the number of weather updates.

Finally, if you give any school closing updates after 8 am, give the “new” ones FIRST before going into the alpha list you’ve been doing all morning.  Parents who are listening at work will have to make special arrangements for their kids and they’ll appreciate the special treatment.

The key point:  now that this info is available in so many places, from school phone trees and national internet sites, the local medium making it easiest, the most "usable" and high touch WINS.

The New Newsperson

“A drone owned by Castanet.net in Kelowna and being operated by a news editor was grounded after a fire information officer said it flew too close to a Peachland, B.C. wildfire. The officer cited the dangers of a drone coming into contact with aviation related to the fire fight as well as distracting crews on the ground. The use of drones is controlled by Transport Canada, which issues Special Flight Operating Certificates for approved operations.”
    — Broadcast Dialogue 

Wakeup call to news people who "read stories" from "the radio newsroom:"  a website - not a TV station or a newspaper - was flying drones over Kelowna, BC's wildfire area in their aggressive coverage of local news.

Today, listeners won’t accept news people not being involved with the stories they are reporting.

Doing so is easier for radio than almost any other medium making full use of all the theater of the mind tools available to audio media, especially now that smart phones have powerful video and editing tools built-in.

News value is measured by intelligent judgment rather than dollars and cents or weight in pounds and ounces.   A lead/top story simply must be fresh, something the audience hasn’t heard before that also captures the imagination of the highest percentage of the audience as possible.

Interesting.  Important.  A sudden change of pace.  That's "news to me."

Plus, something the newscaster has a personal connection/involvement/reporting direct from with if at all possible.

If you can't get out of your studio to deeply, even though briefly, cover what's important to local listeners, you need to find other ways by phone and social media to bring it to life immediately and authentically.

If that's not possible, reconsider whether you can do "news" today in a competitive way.  Maybe it's better not to do it at all than to do it poorly.

Are Station Promotions "News?"

No, not normally, but if anything out of the ordinary ever happens as you execute contests, special events, remotes, social media interactions and phone contact with listeners I hereby vote that they are.

Remind everyone on your team that “news” is defined as relevant new info carrying a story your target cares about.

Your best source for news stories meeting that criterion?

Local sources of things listeners won’t see on national or cable news, Twitter, the wire, the internet, Facebook, government agencies, You Tube, your music format, movies, TV, sports, weather of course, but never neglect to “report” interesting things that happen when the routine things your radio station does turn out to be extraordinary within your own newscasts.

Why Do Any News?

• Satisfy “the friendlies.”  TV’s network morning shows make this their specialty.  Being cheerful, upbeat with great rapport is a must if you hope to compete with them.
• Welcome “the belongers.”  These listeners have very high family values and are sociable.  Make them feel welcome, a part of your family.
• Reassure the folks who tend have trouble coping with life.  Bring listeners together to tell their personal stories of hardship and work to help solve problems.  Social media is a great place to do this and then repurpose the most compelling stories in your on air news packages.
• Shake things up.  If the news becomes too warm and fuzzy, some men will find it boring.  Crime stories, special reports and interviews with law enforcement and victims on the edgy aspects of life can add important balance.
• Time management.  Keep it brief and fast moving.  Satisfy the people who want no-frills news.
• Tell the ongoing stories.  Don’t make every newscast identical.  Even if you get in early and pre-write every one, build in “fresh new facts” on an item from thirty minutes ago.  Make your information packages benchmarks for “the longer you listen, the more you know.”
• Weather and traffic ARE news.  Present them with the all of the above in mind.

"It's an exciting time to be in news.  It's not going away anytime soon, and I approach it every time I get in front of a computer as 'This is exciting. This is not old. This is not boring. ... And the more people involved, the better."  -- Drudge Report's Matt Drudge (on WTOP) via Don Anthony's Jockline Daily

Information is a must for any well-rounded radio station.  What makes it work (or not!) is consistently achieving the right balance of all logical and psychological needs of the listener.

Can We Save "The News"?

I have been a huge fan of David Horsey for many years.  Normally, he's a man of potent cartoons and very few words.  

After the Seattle newspaper which employed him ceased publication he moved to The Los Angeles Times and this week the man of pictures not words penned a column for his new employer that isn't about radio, but resonates for all media, "Newspapers have a future, if they can avoid being 'click whores'" (click to read it!)

When Horsey decides he has something to say that takes more than just a cartoon, he has my support and attention.

Media has great responsibility to the people who read, watch and listen to us, far more important to our society than merely making money.

And, as the history and economics of newspapers has proven, when we do it responsibly big money comes too.

Who's going to fill their shoes?

Today? You're Memorializing Whitney Today?

Hopefully, Radio Ink's headline this morning "Radio to Honor Whitney Houston Today" was wrong, and as you read their story it appears that it is, since the info under it reads "the outpouring of prayers, thoughts, feelings and condolences was immediate and overwhelming.."

It's Monday. The event happened Saturday.

My Facebook friends and the Tweeters I follow were digging into it within an hour of the time that police set her time of death.

If you're still talking about it this morning, you better have some new info on it all that I haven't heard multiple times over the weekend or at least a very fresh perspective. That's relevance.

Rehashing old news is irrelevance. (thanks to Mark Edwards for a great read this morning)

News And Comment

News: A bit of poetic justice and extreme irony as CBS Radio resigns from the Country Music Association just as the organization started Country Music Month, after CMA signs a ten year deal for TV broadcast rights with ABC. They told CBS Radio/Phoenix OM and KMLE PD Jeff Garrison to resign his longtime position on the CMA Board Of Directors. Now, he gets a new assignment, as he explained to Country Aircheck “helping our Country stations and our digital platforms to work more closely with artists to extend the brands of our stations while promoting new artists, album releases, concerts and other projects" as VP/Country Artist Relations, in addition to his role in Phoenix.

Comment: Every country radio station in the world needs to join the CMA. Now, more than ever. As a board member, I promise to work with the other radio representatives on the board to make it more worth your while than ever in the coming year!

CBS may have a lot of reporting and monitored station muscle, but no one in the industry is as well positioned to aggressively assist “Country radio stations and our digital platforms to work more closely with artists to extend the brands of our stations while promoting new artists, album releases, concerts and other projects." Join. Then, let's join hands with CMA to do what CBS hopes to do without CMA within it and even better for all radio stations in every market size and ownership affiliation. That's what CMA was founded to do.

News: Cumulus/Atlanta has decided that the future for their new acquisition WKHX is to offer a choice rather than battle head-on anymore with Clear Channel's WUBL KIX has just gone from 220 tunes in its Gold catalog the week prior to 381 last week. If every song is a marketing message, KIX is saying "hellooo, 45-54." They now play only 37% current and recurrents and have added early Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, the Judds, Patty Loveless, Diamond Rio and many others from the 80's and 90's. CC's The Bull is 68% current/recurrent. It's "best country hits" vs "today's new country."

Comment: A&O's 2011 "Roadmap" national perceptual study certainly has shown that there's a large upper demo appetite for more variety and less repetition and Coleman's CRS 2011 research project replicates that it's also quite possible to build a very viable and unique music coalition centered on the highly familiar music of the class of '89 boom.

However, are there enough meters in the Atlanta country sample for two stations to create a "difference" that only half the audience will love?

Both Cumulus and Clear Channel managements are savy and smart, so you can be sure they looked hard at it before making this decision.

It's a first for PPM measured markets, though Cox's classic country KTHT/Houston, has proven that an even older narrow country target can perform consistently in a PPM market with a large enough country cume.

Keep an eye on Atlanta and be prepared to learn something about country's narrow demos and metered sampling.

The pressure is on ARB to deliver consistent samples in 18-44, men, women, and 40-54, men and women.

If they don't, the ratings for 'KHX and 'UBL will be more of an indication of ongoing panel sample issues than with the differentiation strategy Cumulus unveiled last Friday.

AM Listeners Are From Mars

... And, it sounds like New York and Chicago's newest radio stations are thinking that their FM listeners will be from Venus.

Both Arbitron and BBM offer some very helpful national perspective on why, even though we all love to cheer on a direct confrontation, it may be that everyone can coexist.

Here are three pages from BBM/Canada's 2010-2011 National Radio Data book which show how different the target audiences available on the two bands are today:



(click each chart to enlarge it in a separate browser window)

Two very nice things about radio warfare:

1, No one can take your audience away from you. You have to give it away.

2. No one dies, unless somebody ends up shooting themself in the foot.

Fixing A Problem Once Doesn't Mean It's Fixed Forever

As my last three posts have recounted, DR Audience Researchers Peter Niegel and Dennis Christensen used some clever research and training techniques to improve usage levels which dipped at the top of each hour, due to the start of newscasts on the Danish radio broadcaster.

.. but, then, "human nature" came into play as after a few months, things went back to where they were before:
After studying the hourly execution of the new "better flow" techniques and PPM results, they came to these conclusions on why newscasters had drifted back to the old way they did things which again cost audience at the beginning of each newscast:

The "cutbacks" meant, for example, that newscasters who were taught 'the new way' to do news reports in order to maintain listening levels had been replaced by individuals who had not received the PPM-friendly news training.

When news hosts reverted to the traditional approaches, listeners started changing stations exactly as they had before the changes.

It's an ongoing effort to keep news "alive" in the mind of the listener. If we don't constantly make an effort every single time, listeners will tune out.

This requires an ongoing effort to keep this issue in focus in both the newsroom and also the production departments.

"Every time we turn our backs, they have a tendency to slip back to the old ways and then the dips increase. We are still battling this issue. We have proven that the tools work, but it's a big challenge keeping journalists and presenters focused on what must be done differently. The problem is not solved yet," Niegel and Christensen reported last month to the BBM/Toronto audience.

80% Stayed, But 20% Changed Stations

How DR stemmed the tide:



.. but, then, after a few months, the audience dips resumed. Why that happened and what had to be done about it, tomorrow.

(Part Two Of A Series) How To Find Out What Listeners Won't Tell You (Or Write In Their Diary)

Niegel and Christensen at first turned to focus groups in their quest to find out why one in five diary ratings "news on the hour" listeners to the Danish broadcaster actually seemed to be changing stations when the news came on in PPM measurement.

The behavior appears to have been at a subconscious level, since in the focus groups, no one was "willing" (or able?) to admit that when news on DR started, they quickly changed stations.

So, the intrepid researchers recruited family members of the focus group respondents and unbeknownst to the original news avoiders, were asked to observe their actual behavior.

Then, both the "spy" family member and the "switcher" were questioned in detail to fully understand what was driving their avoidance of news even though at the conscious level they reported hearing it.

Tomorrow: what they learned.

Is News "Rotten In Denmark"?

DR Audience Researchers Peter Niegel and Dennis Christensen presented an enlightening case study of audience loss at the start of hourly newscasts even on the national broadcast service of Denmark in Toronto last month at BBM's annual "Staying Tuned" conference.

Buckle yourself in over the next few days, as I recap a few highlights of their findings:

Then, the measurement changed to PPM, rocking their world.


There was never a thought given to dropping news, given that 1) DR is the government radio service and 2) PPM showed that 80% of the audience continued to listen to news on the top of the hour.

What to do?

Peter and Dennis were forced to go 'under cover' to find out what was going on.

This t-shirt was their first graphic clue to what was happening, what had to be done about it.

Check this space over the next several days and learn what they
now know in Denmark about keeping flow and audience usage momentum when the newsroom (not "rotten" at all, but very typical indeed in the way they were doing things) opens their microphones.