A Sense Of History

As we all get ready the 39th annual Twin Cities radio meeting, I am reminded of an anonymous response back in 1996 to a "RadioIQ" (our client e-zene) report of CBS Radio President Dan Mason’s talk at the Upper Midwest Communications Conclave which continues to echo all these years later.
 

“Jobs on the programming side of radio will continue to be eliminated,” Mason correctly predicted back then. “For every position eliminated in programming this year, there will be three added in sales.”

Now that programmatic buying and selling is emerging, eliminating reps while making media sales more transactional and less seller-driven, I am reminded of an anonymous comment I got after that post from 18 years ago:
  

"…any medium which requires more effort to sell than to create is headed for a future no better than slimy posters on the brick wall of public consciousness."

I greatly respect Mason’s smarts and proven track record over the years since that Conclave speech, but I have always wished I knew who “anonymous” was.

That person may have been the smartest of us all.

Their comment remains true, now than ever.

Programming By The Numbers

Thanks to Radio Ink Magazine for being the impetus for this article by Mike, Becky and me.  They published it yesterday.  In case you missed it: 

Nielsen’s recent report that for the first time in many years the country format national average shares experienced three down months in a row combined with Mike O'Malley’s almost-simultaneous blog post highlighting the A&O&B national country music database music acceptance trends has to be at least a little concerning for Brand Managers.

My post last week in reaction to just-published NuVooDoo format perceptual data showing that country radio success tends to be more music-driven than other formats, while the highest-rated A&O&B client stations have more personality-driven appeal than our “average” client and at the same time Dan O'Day and Becky Brenner have been enumerating the traits of the very best PDs, all of which no doubt made any sharp programmer sit up and wonder what success factors most deserve their time.

Perhaps (though I doubt it) there may have been a time when a radio programmer only had to worry about how their station sounded and “sounding great” was sufficient to be a winner. 

Even all the way back back to when Gordon McClendon, Todd Storz and radio’s many other creative format and research pioneers of the last six decades attacked existing ways of doing things and won, they tracked specific numbers.  You could hear those stats reflected in how their radio stations sounded.

Today’s complex media, lifestyle and demographic environments create a new problem. 

There are so many things you could possibly track which could help you win or lose, the key to success is prioritizing them, understanding which ones drive you to where you need to be as well as what you need to do in your programming to bring them to life:

• Ratings:  Share, persons, total cume audience, heavy users percentage, daily, weekly, monthly trends.
• Stream audience:  uniques, average active sessions, listen live tune-ins, mobile downloads, mobile streaming.
• Music:  how many of the songs you play most often are “favorites” for a third or more of your target?  How many are rated “positively” by at least 65-70%?  How many are burnt to the point that double digit percentages of your target is tired of hearing them on radio?  How many of the songs you play were “never liked” by similar percentages?  Who do listeners feel plays the most?  The best variety according to their tastes?
• Formatics:  what proportion of the entire market’s radio listeners understand your unique position and consider it valuable to them?  Does your content drive usage at the exact times the rating methodology requires on a consistent basis compared to the other choices available?
• Personalities:  how likable are they face-to-face with those on other stations?  How memorable are they?  What are they being remembered for?  How high are their negatives versus their positive images?
• Outreach:  how many non-commercial appearances do you do compared to your competition?  How well do you take advantage of them in turning listener contact into loyalty, giving the folks who do see you reasons to listen immediately?
• Reception:  what are people coming in to talk about?  What questions are they asking when they phone us?  How many are positive/negative on specific things we do?
• Website and blogs:  Visits, page views, uniques, average session length, page views per session, blogs page views, video views.
• Listener phone lines:  what are they requesting?  Complaining about?  Where are they calling from?
• Branding:  how does your brand make people feel?  How does that compare to all other stations you compete with?
• Technical:  can everyone you need to listen receive you with a powerful signal?  How does your station compare to other choices?
• Social:  Facebook likes, people talking about this, engaged users, viral reach, paid reach.  Twitter followers, following, tweets.  Others:  what percentage of your target uses each of the others?  How viable in similar stats as above are you in the ones they make use of the most?
• Database:  Email database compared to your competition?  Loyalty club members?  Response rates?  New %?  % in metro?  Contests vs non-contest players?  Active in the past 90 days?  Text club members, # of texts, response rates.
• On air contesting:  how important is it to your usage?  Do you dominate the image or are you beaten by someone else?
• Info elements:  weather, news, community involvement and service.  How important is each to your success and how strong is your ownership of the images that matter most.
• Events:  what percentage of your target knows what you do?  Are they motivated to participate?  What other events do they attend and would like you do be involved with?  Where are the best locales for our external marketing?  What % of our time is being spent in those places?

Ask any radio researcher.  If you have the money and listeners are willing to take the time, they can design a perceptual questionnaire that tabs all of these metrics for you and many more.

The challenge for Audio Program Director/Brand Managers today is that every one of the time-proven data points still matters a lot, but the nature of today’s changing listening patterns means that many more new numbers you must track are also crucial to understand and compare in every heritage and new media competitive environment.

Prioritizing and measuring them all while acting on what they tell you about all station activities and endeavors in fun, creative, authentic ways so that it all feels and seems “easy” is what builds a lasting winner.

That is how you get to the number which has always mattered the most:  #1.

The Biggest PD Mistakes

1. Forgets that the most important part of the job is to protect the station's license.
2. Still thinks that it's a sales versus programming world and as long as (s)he gets ratings (s)he has done the job.
3. Doesn't worry about heavy radio-users or passionate fans of the kind of music the station plays.  Targeting takes care of itself.
4. Does whatever it takes to win.  Ethics and fair treatment of his/her employer and coworkers do not matter as long as the station is winning and profitable.
5. Has a 'not invented here' attitude about new ideas and approaches.  Doesn't bother to network or seek objective opinions of knowledgeable counsel.
6. Under-estimates the competition.
7. Sees radio as a craft, not an art.  You can get everything you need to know by copying winning radio stations in the same format in other markets.
8. Feels that people are replaceable.  As long as everyone is working as hard as possible, everything is fine.
9. Thinks that business management is the GM's job and time management is a sales thing.
10. Doesn't need research.  (S)he knows what listeners want.

Opening Your Promotional Tool Kit

An Example Of Each Implement:

• Build awareness.  Million dollar cash grab.
• Force listening.  $1,000 song of the day.
• Create sampling.  Premiums:  t shirts, stickers, refer magnets.
• Packaging.  Thousand song weekend, lunchtime requests.
• Loyalty/regularity.  Points program.
• Coupon/Discounts.  Commercial free Monday, at work kickoff.

Before employing these tactics, always ask yourself what your competition will do to top it.

Be prepared for that response and decide if you will have to top IT as well as how and when you'll do so.

Learning From The Students

On April 28, 1949, WGRE-FM was the very first ten watt educational radio station licensed by the FCC.  Its first official broadcast was a tribute to the President of DePauw University at the time, Clyde Wildman, who was unable to attend the inauguration of the new radio station because he was in the hospital at the time.  The students operating the radio station presented him with an FM receiver so he could hear the ceremony from his hospital bed.

The station’s programming has been worth listening and paying attention to ever since.

For example, this decade-old Operator’s Manual (pdf) which is still well worth emulating as you discipline and train your talent.

Dressing The Part

The attraction of a radio job for many of us was the fact that how we look doesn’t matter.  It’s all about how you sound.

Unless you’re doing a live appearance or event. 

It constantly surprises me how many personalities as they go outside the radio station to meet listeners need to be reminded that suddenly it’s even more important how you look.

Remember:  you’re a STAR.

Dress like one. 

It goes without saying, I hope, that you should always look neat when you get in front of the audience whether you’re broadcasting “live” from a farm show, a car dealer showroom or a high end fashion retailer.

DO match your attire to what would appear “natural yet high-end” for the place you are appearing AND always find a way to get your station logo and a name badge on your body somewhere.

You’ll probably be the only person who is being “paid” to be there.

Look like you're worth it.

How Not To Do A Live Broadcast

1. Set up your equipment on a card table.
2. Wrap a banner around the table.
3. Make sure you have a card table chair for the personality to sit on.
4. Require that the talent stay behind the table and as far away from listeners as possible.
5. Have the single person you or the client pays to do the broadcast both set up the equipment and handle the clients, saving sales department and engineering department lots of time and energy.  You can also save everyone money by requiring the talent to do them for free.  She'll enjoy the exposure.
6. Don't write any copy for the event.  Ad libs are fine.
7. Never brainstorm anything additional that might cost any money or bring people to the location.
8. No need to arrive early.  Just show up at the time the broadcast is scheduled to begin.
9. Even better, if your first break isn't scheduled until :20 after the hour.  There's no need to be there on the hour in spite of what the pre-event promotion promises.
10. What pre-event promotion?  No need for that!

Doing it this way will ensure that your station can charge the least for live broadcasts and events compared to anyone else in town.

That way, you'll get lots more of them to do.

Listeners will love that.

A “Job” That Gets Done Whether There’s A Person Doing It Or Not

It used to be that owners with just one or two radio stations billing less than a million dollars annually simply couldn’t afford a full time Production/Creative Director.

A good thing about the clustering of stations that began in the mid-90’s is that now even those stations have at least one person in the position.  Of course, that one individual is now charged with overseeing all of the production and writing - both imaging and commercials - for as many radio stations as humanly possible.

Wouldn't you know?

The job is not quite programming and not quite sales.  Responsibilities fall into both departments and that normally means that sales work that immediately drives money gets top priority and the majority of time, while branding the radio stations gets done as time permits.

Many of the production directors I have worked with tend to do the commercial work from 9 to 5 and save the station imaging for their evening and weekend hours in a home studio.

I’m not recommending a change in this, since the spots need to be great.  If clients don’t get results, they won’t be back.  Meanwhile, the typical Brand Manager/Programmer knows that great imaging can be extremely time-consuming and even though there isn’t a direct line from it to the top line of the station budget the creativity, localism and freshness of production pieces can make or break the ratings trends.

Cumulus VP Mike McVay puts it this way:  “The Sales Manager probably wants you, The Production Director, to be the in-house advertising agency, with the creative copywriting skills of an Addy-winning agency copywriter, the marketing sense of a behavioral psychologist, the engineering skills of a Hollywood record producer and the voicing ability to play many characters (sometimes in the same spot) with a voice that commands attention.” 

Sales wants you to crank out more compelling sales ideas at this level than anyone can possibly use, most of them good ones, turning them out under constant and impossible deadlines.

Programming asks for the same thing in spades, hoping for at least one or two new pieces of imaging every day as well.

You serve multiple masters and being a great Production/Creative Director means that you savor this pressure, know how to constantly juggle priorities set by others and yourself and take great pride in producing technically and creatively excellent work.

McVay taught me (and his many client stations over the years) that the Golden Rule of Production Director success is “figuring out what the other people want and instinctively knowing how best to give it them with a smile.”

Directing Traffic

If you build and maintain daily logs scheduling everything on your radio station other than music, I’d say that you and your station's music director are the "de facto" programmer and sales manager.

Most sales directors “get” this and the most skilled among them work hard to make the traffic person feel like they work for sales.

A great seller can close a deal, a terrific SM can manage the rate the client agrees to pay, BUT no money comes in until the spot runs, the account gets billed and the money collected.  The traffic department is the place where that all starts.  For this reason, it’s a rare radio station where sales doesn’t meet with traffic multiple times daily.

Meanwhile, I am constantly amazed by how distant many otherwise excellent Programmers/Brand Managers keep their traffic director.

Maintaining/helping programmers police and project commercial unit limits, balance and flow of commercial matter - that makes up at least 25% of every hour of programming - and accurately hitting financial goals impact everyone's pay checks.

It’s my experience that the majority of traffic people understand this and love being recruited as an ally of programming management.  They need backing and support in their attempts to keep a great radio station in balance.

Of course, they’ll get it from the Market Manager and Sales Management.

Can they expect it from the Programmer too?

I hope so.

The Hardest Jobs

Two jobs at any radio station require the folks assigned to them to be more efficient and diplomatic than almost any others.

They both fall into a gray area, not quite sales, not quite programming, not quite management with responsibilities which fall into all departments, even public affairs, community involvement and creative.

Traffic and production.

It takes a very special person to handle the all of the responsibilities they are expected to deal with every day from people skills, working to deadlines, honesty, judgment, organization, prioritization, just to name a few.

A bad fit in either role can quickly jeopardize a station’s ability to hit goals.

If you are a General Manager, Program Director or Sales Manager, here’s a reminder to "hug" your creative director and traffic person on a regular basis.

They can make you better at your job or undermine you.

Guest Commentary On Radio's Engagement Goals

Lately, every time I click on something, especially a link on Facebook, I have to sit through a commercial that's up to 30-seconds in length.  It's getting rarer and rarer that you get an ad where you can bail out after 5-seconds.

Yesterday, I wanted to stream a station and was greeted with a 15-second spot for the Washington Lottery.  But the stream died and I had to restart it, only to hear that exact spot again.  Without getting into all the reasons why, I had to hear that exact commercial 6 times within 5 minutes.  UNCLE!

Not all, but a lot of these ads are being bonused to stations' best advertisers.  So, if we're GIVING them away, why not stick to the shortest ones -- the 10s?  I've seen them cross my desk and it is frequently the option of the AE to select which spot the station can use. 

Have we reached a time when the sales department no longer thinks about the listener and what used to be part of what we called Listener Fatigue?  The Internet is not like a radio station where the listener knows he/she is waiting for music and can turn the radio down, mentally tune out, or literally tune out.   But when people click onto a link on the Internet, it's literally in your face.  You're sitting at a computer monitor or tablet with your nose pressed against a video screen, so it's difficult to escape the ad without shutting down the browser.  On top of that, you're liable to get the exact same ad over and over if you are clicking around to various sites.  I can't believe that leaves an impression that the advertiser wanted.

To me, there's no longer anything that is worth sitting through a 30-second spot in my face.  More often than not, I say, "Forget it," and go back to what I was doing. 

Doesn't it seem like a good idea to drop a cookie into the person's browser to let the advertisers know they've already made their point and to give the listener a break for a change?

  -- Jon Badeaux

PS:  When I first left BP Consulting Group back in the mid-90s and went back on my own as a consultant, Jon was my first associate and I still worship his intelligence and integrity, as do many of A&O&B's long-standing clients.

Managing Engagement

When Clarke Ingram was PD of KRQQ/Tucson he remembered the old radio programming saw "the more times you say your call letters, the higher your ratings will be."  So, he mandated that his personalities say "K-R-Q" a minimum of 60 times per hour and the station hit a TEN share.

PPM, of course, has changed the metrics in larger markets, but Lord Kelvin's maxim ("If you can't measure it, you can't improve it") still holds true with smart programmers.

• Want to improve the time listeners spend with your radio station?  Figure out how many occasions your average fan spends with you and create ways to grow that number.
• Want to build your email database?  Figure out why your current list subscribed and do more of the things - free concert tickets, discounts on valued planned future purchases, learn how to buy the best seats in advance.
• Want to improve the level of engagement your social and text fans have with your radio station?  It's tempting to begin counting the responses from listeners in answer to questions you post and ask more of those same questions day after day.  

That can grow your numbers short term, but it also will dilute the authentic character of your personality images, making the kind of social interactions you have more like the very same kind everyone else you compete with also has.

Just like a political candidate, it is important to resonate with the values of your target if you hope to win the election.  But, taken too far, everyone stands for the same things, making some positions and content too generic to build memorability and loyalty.

Before starting a count of anything, the savvy programmer figures out what makes each personality unique and appealing to the largest numbers of target listeners, coaching to improve the quality and consistency of those moments.

That way, as engagement stats build, so does the stickiness of each voice on the radio station on all available touch points.

Allow Me To Propose One More Initial

I admire Cox Radio for the way it operates and manages its radio stations as indicated by the titles it uses for programming executives and it was great to see the Drew Bland's appointment this week in Orlando as further evidence of it.

What used to be called a "PD" is now "B&P," and I'll bet it won't be long until that position gets another letter:  "BP & E."

Today's radio programmer certainly protects the brand, spending a lot of time improving programming, but the importance of new media can't be understated as well.

A big part of today's "B&P" job is also overseeing, encouraging and perfecting all forms of listener engagement as well.

Minding Your "V's" And "H's"

Horizontal songs can hurt usage if they are played back to back or even too close together.  These require coding and policies to make sure they add "surprise" and "variety" to the radio station's sound.  Too many of them and you get off target.

They are the spice in the recipe.  Program them like salt in your soup.  
 
Vertical tunes - for most radio formats music testing reveals that there are fewer than 300 of them - are the target listener's "bulleye" and the only risk of playing too many of them in a row is that the music mix becomes predictable and boring, which of course can also hurt usage.

Some programmers opt not to play any Horizonal songs, but that decision means in a competitive situation you need to test all of your golds at least quarterly.

Horizontal content often can be a personality's most viral and popular bits.  The Senseless Survey.  War Of The Roses.  Phone Scam.  Second Date Update.

Listeners love them, but too many in too short a period of time can be like having too many pieces of candy at one sitting.  It can make you sick.

Horizontal content is very promotable at "benchmark" times, driving habitual usage of more days per week.  It's not "the show."  It's a special event.  Too much of it, too often and it's not special anymore and stops accomplishing what it was originally designed to do.

Vertical content reinforces the character and values created by your best material but is the show.  It's the more routine content you do which listeners find informative, fun useful and helpful.

The challenge of executing vertical content is doing it with a fresh feel, passion and creativity each time.  No one is going to stop you at the Mall to tell you that they loved that clever intro of Tim McGraw's new song, but elements like it are the glue that holds everything together.

Great talent, formatics and programming begins by recognizing the difference between horizontals and verticals.  It then, requires the art of understanding precisely how often, when and where to perform them for maximum impact and minute-by-minute/day-by-day utilization.

Your Best Benchmarks Have Belly Buttons

They have characters, personal stories, loves, hates, points of view.  And, if you have any doubt of that, read this list of names and just try to convince me that you care less about THEM than you do "Battle Of The Sexes" or "War Of The Roses."

• Amy Robach
• Josh Elliott
• Robin Roberts
• Kelly and Michael
• Kathie Lee & Hoda
• Ann Curry
• Matt Lauer
• David Letterman
• Deborah Norville

Spend more time helping your people become voices that listeners personally relate to and care about than you do stealing someone else's benchmarks and content.

Benchmark Brainstorm

A few years ago Mike O’Malley and I conducted a day-long air personality development seminar in Atlantic City.  We used it to test eight hours’ worth of presentations which we have since used with great impact at A&O&B client radio stations.

One of the most fun exercises we did that day was called “Benchmark Brainstorm.”  The two of us took turns suggesting ideas for bits, stunts, contests, promotions and content that would be memorable to listeners, bringing them back day after day to hear more.

Alternating with our ideas we called on the audience to contribute their best and most successful creative.  A scribe wrote them all down and everyone left that day with four or five single-spaced pages of things to do on the air for fun and buzz.

Later as we reviewed all of the off-the-wall suggestions both Mike and I were at the same time proud of our group’s creativity and fearful that one of the stations in attendance would put them all on the air immediately.

Rating success is not driven by the number of clever nicknames for various forms of content a station does every hour.  It’s the very small number of them that listeners care about, like and use as road signs for their reason to turn the radio on.

The difference between “clutter” and “benchmark” is defined by the listener.

Almost universally the average radio station has far fewer “benchmarks” than they think.

The final step in any “benchmark brainstorm” is finding out which ones listeners love and dropping all of the others which are only wasting time.

Find out the small number of things you’re most famous for and do them a lot more.

Do Old Basics Still Work?

Legendary programmer/radio research pioneer Todd Wallace recently wrote this article for the Australian trade-publication RadioToday (Aussie's still are dealing with only diary measurement). Given last week's thread I opened, I am taking the liberty of posting it here in hopes it generates even more reaction):

One of the questions I get asked most often these days deals with whether the old “tried and true” radio basics, as they apply to Breakfast Shows, are still valid.

Here in North America, the introduction of PPM ratings technology (Portable People Meter measurement by Nielsen and BBM) has caused many programmers to question or re-think their stance on these basic programming truths.

What should be considered first and foremost are two facts: 

 1)  A strong breakfast show or personality is one of the most-mentioned reasons listeners still cite, even today, for why they like listening to, or feel compelled to listen to, a radio station first thing in the morning, My all-time favorite radio adage, “win breakfast, win the war” still stands. When Mulray joined Triple M numbers spiked, when Wayne “The Poo” Roberts joined 4BC the station immediately began making boatloads of cash, and recently then Kyle and Jackie O switched stations, the new world order of Sydney radio ratings instantly changed. 

2)  Nearly all truly great radio stations have defining breakfast shows.

A strong (as they say down under) "brekky" show..

• Can serve as a cume magnet, drawing listeners from other stations all over the dial (and even from other media)  
• Can provide an effective promotional vehicle which helps recycle listeners into other dayparts. 
• Can be the “center stage” for addressing community needs with outstanding, imaginative public service projects. 
• Can serve as an effective platform for sales promotions (in a way that couldn’t be supported in other music-driven dayparts) 
• Can be utilized to “camouflage” increased commercial inventory before 9am so it doesn’t have to run in other dayparts where it may be more noticeable.  

Some programmers seem to think PPM means everything has changed. But the more you examine what really drives breakfast listening, the more you see the validity of maintaining a strong basics discipline.

My friend and colleague Country Consultant Jaye Albright put it this way: “Listeners still perceive and make use of radio in the same ways they always have. It’s the measurement techniques and the sample that changed, requiring new usage tactics and perceptual- driven strategies”.

With that in mind, let us proceed to look at the bigger brekky basics and update some thinking to today.

Station Identification. You can be the funniest and/or most outrageous jock in the world, but it you don’t get proper credit in a Nielsen ratings diary, your numbers will never match your full potential. Even when being measured by PPM, regular reminders of who you are (call letters or brand name identifier) and what your address is (frequency) and what you’re famous for (“the new Country leader”) helps to remind a panelist of where and why they should return again every morning. That hasn’t changed.

Timechex. Breakfast listeners still largely listen the way they always have during their multi-tasked morning routine full of activities. Regular time-checks every 3 or 4 minutes help a listener maintain his/her body-clock without having to make a conscious effort to look at a clock or watch. (“I know when The Dirty Joke Of The Day comes on, I need to be out the door”) A time-check can also a useful punctuator or seque-tool in the middle of live content. Double-time, digital followed by analog time (“6:43, that’s 17 before 7”) reinforces the fact you are providing the time-check. (Many listeners may not notice you’ve given the time if you only give single-time.) That hasn’t changed.

Weather. Listeners still want to know what elements they’ll be facing on their way to work/school/etc. You still can’t give weather often enough in the morning (as long as it’s concise). Current temp, sky- weather, and a capsule forecast of the next extreme high several times an hour.
That hasn’t changed.

Humor. Even on a so-called “serious” station, something “magic” happens when you don’t take yourself so seriously. Most listeners still like hearing something that amuses them. Remember to keep humor positive (not degrading or poking fun at someone else’s expense). Funny is still funny. Most people like to laugh when they wake up. That hasn’t changed.

Features. Many listeners are feature-junkies, especially bedrock breakfast benchmarks. An effective feature can take what might ordinarily be just a throw-away line, joke, or concept, and give it new life in a way that cannot be ignored. Programmed at the same time every morning as a benchmark bit can generate a tune-in cuming-pattern just for a feature, which will have much longer time-spent-listening (diary) or time-spent-exposed (metered) benefits. Too often, PD’s or jocks tend to stop doing a feature long before its real “use by” date and sometimes end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As ancient as they may be to PD’s and jocks trying to stay on the cutting edge, “old” features like “the Mystery Oldie” or “the Joke Of The Day” or “Battle Of The Sexes” trivia can still be very entertaining to the average listener. That hasn’t changed.

Essential Information. When a listener wakes up, they want to know if the world is still there. And they expect an efficient summary of news they need to know. Enough of a story-count (of real news, not fluff) to bring them “up to date” is sufficient. (I suggest 6 quickies consisting of a clever grabber- headline and an explanatory follow-up sentence,) Plus traffic, weather, and sports-shorts. That hasn’t changed.

Topicality. What is today’s big local event? The thing that everyone will be talking about at work. It may not necessarily be “local” but it’s what locals are or will be buzzing about today. And keep it going all morning. Mentioning it once at 6:18 is not enough. You’ll have a new audience again by 6:55, and at 7:30, and at 8:15. That hasn’t changed

Music The amount of music that should be programmed is largely dependant on how much truly great content is regularly prepared every morning. Some personalities or ensemble teams have so much excellent subject matter that listeners actually prefer to hear them rather than a song. But most shows benefit from scheduling music at least once or twice each quarter-hour as part of the breakfast entertainment mix. I caution clients against programming music-sweeps in a breakfast show. In my experience, most listeners don’t wake up clamoring sweeps, they’d rather hear a great bit or feature after a song plays, and a great song after great spoken or produce content has played. That hasn’t changed.

So what HAS changed?

One way that the application of PPM measurement has changed breakfast shows in the States is that it has provided tangible proof to personalities and teams willing to dive deep into the numbers that brevity is indeed the soul of wit. Even that is an old concept that is still valid, even more valid, today!

Shows that have learned to get to the point fast and streamline their schticke have seen their numbers increase – often significantly – often very quickly. There was a time that some of those personalities just “started talking until they could finally think of something to say”. Now they’ve learned how to focus their content and improve their methods of show prep, often by hiring effective talent coaches.

The good news is that jocks who have educated themselves about what listeners will tolerate, minute- by-minute, find that when what used to be a 4-or-5-minute loosey-goosey rambling is transformed into a tight 2-minute efficient bit with a great payoff, there is a definite and immediate ratings benefit.

Bottom-line: You can never go wrong by making words work. And by getting morning personalities in the habit of scrutinizing every single bit and feature of their show.

    -- Todd Wallace (602-866-TODD), Phoenix, AZ

Brand Depth

What drives big ratings success?

Major companies like McDonalds and Burger King, Apple and Microsoft, Coke and Pepsi, GM and Mercedes, etc. research various attribution categories to shine major light on pinpointing consumer perceptions in their respective industries and who their customers really are.
Building far above average rating shares that completely dominate a market aren't as simple as figuring out how many different listener perceived needs one radio station can fill, but thanks to two-decade-old data from Todd Wallace's Radio lndex "Winning Positions 2014" report it's certainly very possible to see how "owning" many programming attributes it took for one station to build a four book average #1 11.5 12+ share and a cume rating of 25.

This battle, of course, continues today, though under different owners that operated the two of them back then when the country format held more than an 18 share of total radio listening.

Wallace says "I believe one of the most useful and actionable displays is what we call a Perceptual Mosaic for each station, whereby all of the perceptual questions are collected and presented in rank-order form.

"This provides an interesting look at how the audience perceives how effective each station is in delivering each position.

"Because the questioning process includes the words "if any" ("Which radio station, if any, do you think plays the most music?"), each mosaic sums up the factors which are truly most important to the listener (as the specific attributes apply to each station)."

Hopefully, this report sparks a few new ideas on ways you can use attribution research to zero-in on positions that can make a difference in your battle(s), showing where you're hot and not.

If you'd like a free eight page report documenting Todd Wallace's Radio lndex "Winning Positions 2014" Attribution Research, Email-him and mention A&O&B.

Domination

In 1992. KNIX/Phoenix had a yearly four book average market-leading 11.5 share, driven by a 25 cume rating.  Arbitron estimated at the time that more than one in four people who listened to radio used KNIX, which had a very strong competitor in KMLE, whose cume rating was a more normal 15.8 and average quarter hour 12+ share was a yearly average 7.0!

How did KNIX engineer such powerful market shares in spite of having a really good competitor?

Normally, it's almost impossible to get a totally unbiased, data-driven answer to that question in real time because the owners, managers, programmers, consultants and researchers with the perspective to know the answer are bound by confidentiality since an ally in one situation may be the competition in another.

Phoenix-based researcher-consultant Todd Wallace has done hundreds of perceptual research projects throughout the U.S and Canada but because they are conducted exclusively for just one client in a market, he still cannot share that confidential information with anyone else. 

Back in the 90's, several of the biggest radio stations in Phoenix subscribed to a syndicated version of his "Radio Index" service which provided weekly ratings tracking and a series of Positioning Questions covering all manner of subjects, 44 different viewpoints, including an Annual Report which summarized all of the monthly PQ's sizing-up the entire radio marketplace (with a sample size of over 15,000 completed interviews each year).  Fortunately, two decades later, he is now able to share those results.

Though the numbers and market situations are dated the principal remains useful in helping you gain some perspective on great ways to examine the audience at large and in-target.

At the time, KNIX dominated three non-music positions - not just in the minds of the country audience, but with all radio listeners!

In fact, in this major market with many very aggressive broadcasters, KNIX did what it took to give away huge prizes, cash and contests so that no other station came close.  Their lead with "best DJ's" and "most involved" wasn't as incredible as their ownership of best contesting, but even in those two images they were head and shoulders above not just their direct competition, but all other radio stations with the entire listening audience.

Ponder this as you plan to 2014:  what might you do to dominate key usage-drivers?

If you'd like a free eight page report documenting Todd Wallace's Radio lndex "Winning Positions 2014" Attribution Research, Email-him and mention A&O&B.

Imaging The Drivers

Once you decide what your most-important Value Drivers are, it's important to make selling them a priority on the air.

Does all station self-promotion center around just your ratings contest or money-making remotes/community appearances?

A major portion of your promotional inventory and production creative time should be set aside to remind listeners that you know why they pick your radio station from all the available choices.

If you take them for granted, they may take you for granted too.