A How-To Course In Using Twitter To Prep Your Show In Under Two Minutes

Twitter's 140 character discipline is honing the pace of everything.

Author and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead told MSNBC's Alex Witt recently how she uses Tweets to improve and write her show.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I will let you decide whether to stop her lesson at 1:40 in (and avoid the political edge that comes after it), which is pretty much the sort of jokes you'd expect to hear from Lizz on stage, in her books and coming out of the mouth of John Stewart.

Improve Your Efforts

Arbitron's Bill Rose and Edison's Larry Rosin shared more insights into "Infinite Dial 2012" Sunday at Kurt Hanson's RAIN Summit in Las Vegas. 

Country may rank #1 in "Radio Today" listening levels, but when it comes to engagement, we're tied with six other formats for FIFTH place!

The country format is, sad to say, "just average" when it comes to getting the random radio listener in their town to sign up for email loyalty efforts and we have a lot to learn from rock, religious, public radio and urban stations in the typical radio metro.

Social is certainly growing for radio, but its impact as a marketing tool on listening prospects is HALF the reach of email.

The 2013 data is telling us to spend at least as much time with email marketing - if not twice as much as you do with social media.

We have work to do.

Reasons To Simulcast On Your Steam

A great discussion yesterday at Kurt Hanson's Las Vegas RAIN Summit on monetization of mobile and streaming media.

Key takeaways for me:

1.  That email database you've been building and using for two decades or more is still much more important and valuable to you than social media.  Use your social to grow and refine it.

2.  Stop with the irritating/time spend listening-killing ad insertion and just increase your broadcast rates to compensate for the additional streaming audience, which is growing and driving more use of your radio station, as A&O&B's Roadmap 2013 of country radio users has tracked for years.

Listeners are loudly telling us that they don't enjoy our streams as much as they do our over-the-air programming:

Thank You Notes

.. to Florida Georgia Line, Dustin Lynch, Thompson Square and Brad Paisley, for standing up for country radio's place in their success on CBS This Morning.  You know that even more country superstars will do more of the same thing on the ACM Awards and we are endlessly in their debt for taking time to do it!

... to Arbitron and Edison Research for working together for the 21st time on their "Infinite Dial" studies, which not only give us a great help in future planning but also provides broadcast radio with credible, objective reinforcement in non-radio press venues of our compelling story, like this "Among Weekly Users, Online Radio Consumption Trounces Online Video."

It's nice to have friends like you and we never take your kindness and support for granted.

The New "Transistor Radio" Is Also The New "Alarm Clock"

While Arbitron and Edison Research's 21st "Infinite Dial" study proclaims that in 2013 AM/FM radio remains, for now at least, "king" in the vehicle, our early birds are migrating south.

It's imperative that your smart phone app have a "wake up to your station" stream function if you want to be in the at home early morning game

Especially if you target under 35's.

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway!) that your morning show needs to be as personal, fresh, fun, entertaining, interactive and as consistently-relevant as your real competition for listening time at home in the morning:  an alarm sound, email, social networks and a browser!

Triangulation

It will take many days to fully digest all of the findings released yesterday by Arbitron, Edison Research and NPD Group, but one thing is already obvious.

Thinking about many research reports one at a time won't give you the full picture of broadcast radio's place in media usage.

As yesterday's post proposed on an entirely different set of info, before you make use of any research findings you didn't pay for, it's important to understand who did pay for each study and what their motivations are.

For example, this chart from NPD's “Music Acquisition Monitor:"

As Tom Taylor notes in his report of the study: "That headline needs a bunch of qualifiers – like the age of those “younger Americans” (13 to 35) and the fact that the 23% figure relates to music listening, not total listening to radio and/or other audio sources." 

Arbitron's Bill Rose and Edison's Tom Webster were quick today with insightful recommendations in their recaps of Infinite Dial 2013, so I simply want to share the following chart from it through which I think we need to view the NPD data:

Certainly, not many people use their two ears to listen to two separate audio sources at the same time, but that's about the only form of media multitasking that isn't going on - and growing - now.

The strength of "radio" is that it's available to use while you're doing other things. 

Simultaneous media usage is our future.  It's no longer a zero-sum game.  You need to look at as many data points as possible to get the full story.

Heck, even the word triangulation has more than one meaning.

ITunes? MyTunes? WhoseTunes?

It was fascinating this morning to note who got credit for topping the week's country music charts.

• Country Aircheck gave credit to the promotion team working for Hunter Hayes' “Somebody’s Heartbreak," Chris Stacey, Kevin Herring, Kristen Williams and the rest of Atlantic/WMN team.
• Billboard's kudos went to the artist, as Hayes achieved his second—and fastest—No. 1 with “Somebody’s Heartbreak.

As much as I admire Hunter artistically on this day when Clear Channel radio stations are flogging The Band Perry and Cumulus is playing twice as much Kix Brooks as any other radio group thanks to lots of extra overnight spins you simply can't disregard the role of shadowy influence in what is being passed off as factual information today.

Research funded for radio by the music business (Zac Brown's "Colder Weather" was #1 in one out yesterday and Lee Brice "I Drive Your Truck" was #1 in a different one just the other day), download charts (Darius Rucker's "Wagon Wheel" was #1, up 23% from last week). MScore, AirplayIntel, streaming and album sales  charts are topped by different ones.

As with baseball, country radio has no shortage of stats with which to make music decisions and, like the national pastime, just because someone counts it doesn't mean it really counts.

Look at iTunes data rather like we used to view record sales back in the day when all of us used to call local record shops to check on sales figures.  It's certainly an indication of passion for something when a person is willing to plunk down their hard-earned money to buy something.

That seems more credible than playing a song that helps Clear Channel get another act for their IHeartRadio Music Festival or a monitored major market station get an artist for their NTR events. 

The challenge with any kind of retail data is knowing WHO bought it.

The #1 use of radio research is to TARGET what we play, to be sure we know that it appeals to the perfect mix of our core and lighter user prospects who might listen more to our station if we did more they liked.  And, of course, it's a mistake to reach too much in either direction.  Too much core focus, too much cume focus, too much male-appeal, female appeal, younger vs older, etc .. and we hurt ourselves.  No national chart can do that for you.

If you can't afford traditional callout and your local PPM music usage data, online testing at the very least is so crucial.  It's low in cost compared to traditional callout or auditorium testing and when you do it locally it provides a great snapshot of how our most loyal users feel about what we play and that feedback comes back in just a week or two so that we can look at every narrow demo we target, heavy users, light users, etc.   

It's the only data you absolutely know about the methodology behind it to be sure that it will affect your cume and usage.

A new source of "buzz" is YouTube and the fast-growing streaming audio portals.  In some ways, like with retail reports, they are also quite variable and manipulable -- how much did the track sell for, for example.  Is it fair to compare a $1.29 track download to a free fan club coupon offer?  This is a bit like the six track mini-LP vs full 12-14 track one's sales.  Certainly, it's more impressive if you sell 500,000 at $14.95 than it is if they cost $7.95.

SO, I do look at all of them, including Taste Of Country, The Boot and CMT views for example but sometimes - rather like Luke Bryan's spring break release, Kacey Musgraves album tracks or Old Crow Medicine show in the wake of Darius Rucker's success - you really have to listen and decide if it meets your needs and will draw your core closer or push them away. 
 
The top 30 on iTunes ranges from 75,000 sales in all of North America down to 25,000 fewer than that from #1 down to #2, and half that many by the time to get down to #10 and again half THAT many when you get down to #20, etc.  When you look at your LOCAL downloads, Soundscan or Hits, Street Pulse, Big Champagne streaming trends the numbers are very small for any one market.

Take it all with a grain of salt, but employ it to see if something very interesting is happening that you really like and believe might fit.  

Ultimately, adding anything new is a risk, so in spite of all the promotional tracker pressure to push you to go faster, go only as fast as your gut tells you your audience is ready for.  Then, test those things yourself with your audience as soon as you feel like 75-85% of your two hour a day listeners are familiar with it .. and learn from that, making your judgments better and better as you get to know "your" peeps better and better by age, gender and usage profile.

That should be the only #1 that really matters to you if your goal is to make sure your radio station will be a #1 too.

You Could Buy Facebook Ads

You know the drill:  "if you like Luke Bryan, like (station brand)."  And, it certainly works as long as your competition hasn't figured that out yet, but the goal is to drive listening to your radio station and hits to your website, isn't it?

Check this blog out on Seattle's 100.7 THE WOLF and learn how to move well beyond social media 101.

My Personal and Private Struggle with Weight, Body Image, & Self-Confidence by Ellen

When's the last time that listeners responded to anything on your website by writing things like this?

You are the real you, and people do see that, and soon, you will too!  
I feel your pain.
You aren't alone.
You just wrote everything I too am experiencing.
I'm here for you! Maybe we can start a FB page to help each other keep motivated? Like a support group.
Changing your attitude is the first step.
Thanks for writing this blog, it is good to not be alone. 
You are sooo my hero! You're not the only one! I feel the exact same!
Raining Hope!  What a great way to face this struggle.
Thank you for sharing.  I feel like I was reading something I wrote myself.
I love listening to you every day and enjoy you bring so candid but the bravery you exhibit here makes me love you even more.
I think you are brave and I have so much respect for you sharing your most personal thoughts.
Your transparency truly says the most about what is on the inside and your character - thank you for sharing your heart with all of us.
You Can Do It!  We all struggle with something in our lives.
You so beautifully expressed . . . Exactly the way that so many of us feel every single day. You are an amazing woman to share this with your fans, and I am hopeful that you stay on this path with your guardian angel. 

Being yourself, opening yourself to others is a magical thing.  

So is opening yourself to listening to the responses genuine authenticity elicits.

Time Saver

Kevin King, PD and aka "Hobie" at Cat Country 98.7/Pensacola taught me this trick more than a decade ago and I can testify that it works!

For all the paper on your desk that never goes away and doesn't require action, put it in your "MTWGA" file. 

Check the file every two weeks, either take action right away or toss. 

"MTWGA - Maybe This Will Go Away"

Do your 'to do' list for the next day before you leave for home.  Check e-mail in the morning before you leave for work.  Saves an hour of work starting your day.

Face it:  managing your time requires quickly deciding what NOT do to.

Avoiding BEING An April Fool

Every radio station has a great April Fool prank story.  (click to hear a great one (mp3) from Chris Reiser)

One of my all time favorites (click for a montage mp3) was performed a few years ago by Nanaimo's 102.3 FM The WAVE and was the result of considerable planning, even involving advance conspiracy by city officials.  And, as with any great radio bit, it also involved a replay and reaction element for the "day after" (click to hear that mp3)

Another tradition:  Broadcast attorney David Oxenford's seemingly annual blog cautioning against hoaxes. 

In 2011, he wrote:  "...have fun, but think through your April Fools gags carefully.  Don't do anything that could make you look like a fool after the April 1 has come and gone.

Last year:  "While a little fun is OK, remember that the FCC does have a rule against on-air hoaxes - and, of any day in the year, April 1 is the day that the broadcaster is most at risk."

I'm sure that another one is coming any day now.  Don't make it be about you.

Once You Learn The ABC's Of "Y," Here Comes "Z"

Kudos to Russ Penuell for a terrific recap of A&O&B's client seminar session on connecting with the Millennial generation.

As I said, we really don’t need to work hard to understand millennials because almost all of our new superstars are them.  If you simply follow the trend in music and understand what they’re singing about, what their lyrics are saying and what their shows are like, you’re probably going to figure it out.

Like Blake Shelton said yesterday about his new LP Based On A True Story:   “It’s the best way to put into a song my personality, and the kind of people that I hang out with.  (the album’s lead-off track “Boys ‘Round Here” which features Pistol Annies)  This [song] is about the guys back in Tishomingo, OK and every town around this country.” 

But if you’re determined to be the you that you’ve always been and aren’t going to change, you have about three to five years to figure out that’s not going to work before your ratings figure it out for you as the audience evolves and the demographics shift.

WDAF/Kansas City PD Wes Poe and WUBE/Cincinnati PD Grover Collins are two programmers whose ratings prove they "get it."

• “We’ve all encountered people who are fake or who turn it on when they’re around us, and those people are often avoided for lack the ability to have real relationships.  We need to let our guards down and be real. For example, we use a music-quantity position that is clear and honest about what we offer listeners and we deliver on it. And we’ve been lucky enough to come out on top in the Country battle several months in the last year. When we do, we sincerely thank our listeners for putting us there and explain what they’ve helped us accomplish and what it means to us. If you’re a radio station with empty promises and fluff, your days are numbered in my opinion.  But authenticity won’t stand alone in a world with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Flickr, Socialcam and more."
• “We’re rolling out a new wake-up app exclusively for the morning show that will work like an alarm clock.  They’ll set it and wake up to Chris Carr & Company. It’s just another feature for people that are not listening to regular radio first thing in the morning, but streaming more with their smartphones.  With the exception of the digital and tech aspects, I consider [millennials] to be a lot like everyone else.  They want to be entertained, they’re looking for quality content and they’re looking for things that intrigue and engage them. Our job is to keep them coming back.”

MediaPost's Jack Loechner calls it "Generational Progress" as the segmentation of the marketplace has fallen into several categories, but none so ubiquitous as age or generational similarities. He notes that William Schroer, SocialMarketing.org, hasthoroughly described population cohorts in a convenient fashion for planning purposes, including the NEXT one we need to start to think about.

Generation Z
Born: 1995-2012
Coming of Age: 2013-2020
Age in 2004: 0-9
Current Population: 23 million and growing rapidly

While we don’t know much about Gen Z yet...we know a lot about the environment they are growing up in. This highly diverse environment will make the grade schools of the next generation the most diverse ever. Higher levels of technology will make significant inroads in academics allowing for customized instruction, data mining of student histories to enable pinpoint diagnostics and remediation or accelerated achievement opportunities.

Gen Z kids will grow up with a highly sophisticated media and computer environment and will be more Internet savvy and expert than their Gen Y forerunners. They are also loving country music, so for more to come on Gen Z...stay tuned!  (.... To THEM.)
 

It's About Time

There’s no doubt that the winds of change are blowing and a robust discussion that seems to be taking place in every radio publication right now is timely and important.

For example, A&O&B’s “Roadmap 2013” country radio listener online perceptual certainly contains evidence that new media is arriving in our listeners’ dashboard at a rapid pace.

Almost one-third of country listeners report connecting to the internet in their vehicle and among those folks almost one in five spends more than two hours a day listening to “internet radio” as they drive.

We have been tracking HD Radio for many years in these studies and though the very small percentage of folks who actually owns or knows someone who has it did increase from 2.5% to 3% of country listeners sampled, even “awareness” of HD Radio was down a fraction this year and, ironically, was exactly the same percentage who claimed to have tried internet in their vehicle is aware of HD radio, just about a third of the total (31.7%). 

If you accept my educated guess that these most likely are the same “high tech redneck early adopters,” it’s quite probable that HD Radio today is on the radar with more or less the same level as internet radio with those people in our audience who matter most to acceptance of any new technological development.

As someone who was already working in radio five decades ago, when The Beatles released “Please, Please Me,” I want to remind the skeptics that one of radio’s pioneer companies, Westinghouse Broadcasting which had started to develop FM in the 1940’s decided that it wasn’t going to be successful and silenced most of theirs in the 1950’s.

My very first job in Cleveland radio was in 1962, doing nights at an easy listening (WNOB-FM) and I hosted a Broadway show tunes special each week.  A year later, I was doing mornings for an all jazz commercial FM, WCUY.  I was a musical snob back then and we thought FM was “our” place, as the great majority of people listened to AM.

We flogged FM car radio converters in an attempt to get people with only AM in their vehicles to plug our little device into their cigarette lighter and tune to an AM frequency on their radio in order to hear “FM.” 

Small wonder that the “big stations” - WHK, WIXY, KYW (yes, KYW, Cleveland.  Look it up.), WJW and most other AM’s cleaned our clock in ratings and revenues.  They were the ones playing those first Beatles and Rolling Stones songs.

Jim Duncan’s “American Radio” documented it at the time as the growth of FM took decades and really didn’t begin its ascent until more than two decades after “Group W” decided there was no future in it.  It took until 1978 for FM listening levels to overtake AM’s.

Chart Credit:  David Giovannoni: “AM Radio Listening: An Annotated Graphical and Tabular Treatise of the Audience to Broadcast Stations on the AM Band;  with Historical Perspectives and Extrapolations for the Future.”  Takoma Park, MD:  The Station Resource Group, 1991.

Giovannoni’s model for the 1990’s downtrend for AM radio failed, just as Westinghouse had with FM’s potential, to foresee that very small uptick in AM share in 1989 on his 1991 chart was being driven by a talk show that had launched in Sacramento in 1984 and just went national from WABC-AM, New York, in 1988 and single-handedly reversed that slide as his show and approach spawned a new format, rejuvenating the AM band.

Programming drives usage.  And, the adoption curve doesn’t always move at the speed of Facebook and Twitter.  Just ask Bing.

Rather than pulling the plug on HD Radio while it’s still in its infancy, let’s remember how long it can take for emerging technologies to intersect with radio formats and target audience desires to move from awareness to adoption to loyalty.

Making history doesn’t just take courage and creative innovation. 

It also takes time.

Can We Finally Talk About More Consistently Engaging Content?

First, please read Billboard.biz's Ross on Radio column today, Can We Finally Talk About Spotload? by Sean Ross.   Don't read another word here until you fully understand Sean's point.

Under the new thinking, shorter listening stretches became almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The brief moment in which a top 40’s power rotation could  be 45 minutes has mostly passed. But there’s still an emphasis on instant gratification—e.g., all-news stations with traffic every four minutes, even if it means sending people on their way sooner.  But how many more occasions can you get from listeners if the three places where they might have consumed radio are down to one, in some cases? “At home” is diminished by the competition from morning TV and, increasingly, by the lack of a radio at home. “At work,” the usage that lends itself to long listening stretches, is threatened by other choices that offer even more continuous music and fewer interruptions.

Don't think that just because you read that paragraph it's really now OK to read on.

No.

I want you to click on that link above and read his entire piece, so that you are fully aware that I agree with him as far as he goes but also believe he's totally missing something more obvious and even more important.

To make my point, I want to share this graphic being used in presentations all over Canada on PPM listening lengths by Catherine KellyVice-President/Western Region for BBM.

It's a view of life at breakfast time at Catherine's house.  She undocks her meter, turns on her radio and starts to get the family ready to face their days.

One of her kids is slow to get out of bed, so she has to go up to his room at least twice before he comes down ready to go.  The dog needs a walk.  She's busy and moving all over the house.

In about 45 minutes her PPM listening is broken into four sessions totalling 39 minutes.

The radio stations she's using could stop for commercials whenever they want.  They can tease as enticingly as they desire.  They could cut their commercial loads.  They could hyper-spin her favorite songs, and none of those things will impact the reasons she's leaving the radio and coming back to it.

It's about what she's doing, not about what we are doing.

Here's the deal on the “9-10 Minute” myth of the "average" occasion length, as Kelly explains:

• Much has been made about the 10 minute attention span of radio listeners – apparently brought about by insights from PPM.

• When looking at number of listening events and average session length, it is consistent to see a session length of between 9 and 11 minutes.

• Keep in mind, these numbers are averages – they include people who listen for 30 minutes and people who listen for 3 minutes.

In fact, here's the math:  if you break session length into quantiles of usage, the session for the average "heavy user" is 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, if you calculate the "mode," the most frequently-occurring number in that nine-ten minute average is actually 2:30.  Two and a half minutes.

That's why moving the average is so difficult, not because we play too many bad songs or too many commercials.

Sure, it makes your PPM ratings better if you play the best songs and minimize interruptions for the switching audience, which absolutely changes stations while they are in the car each time anything they don't like comes on, but MScore, AirplayIntel and other PPM-based music research is based on tracking only the "switching" audience, those folks who switch from one station to another.

That's only half of the total audience.

The other half isn't tracked by that approach because their listening goes from "you" to "off" and from "off" to "you."

Those are your most loyal listeners and yet the PPM-based music research doesn't measure their usage.

Rather than focusing so much on eliminating reasons why people change stations, it's just as important to figure out what things you do bring those people back and do those things more often.

AM/FM Radio Holds Competitive Edge for Music

While Two in Three Adults Listen to Music on Broadcast Radio Weekly, New Music Platforms are Playing a Bigger Role

Toronto-based Vision Critical in conjunction with Canadian Music Week just released online survey results that show that broadcast radio stations continue to be the leading music source for North American adults. However, a wide range of digital options appear to be closing the gap.

Nearly two-thirds of North American adults reported listening to music on AM/FM radio stations via standard or streamed radio in the past week. 

Responses show that Canadian adults are slightly more inclined to listen to broadcast radio than Americans—70 percent compared to 63 percent listen weekly.

Though AM/FM usage remains considerably higher than competing platforms, emerging music sources such as YouTube, music download services, Internet radio and streaming services have gained a foothold among online adults.

Key findings include:

• YouTube is a widely used platform for listening to music, especially among 18 to 34 year old adults. About 66 percent of 18 to 34 year old Canadians and 61 percent of 18 to 34 year old Americans listen to music on YouTube. This is virtually the same proportion of 18 to 34 year old adults who listen to music on broadcast radio stations (66 percent in Canada and 62 percent in the U.S.).
  
• Though music consumption patterns are generally similar between Canada and the U.S., the use of Internet radio and music streaming services is considerably higher in the U.S. More than one in four American adults listen to music on the Web, whereas only about 20 percent of the Canadian adult population do so where services such as Pandora and Spotify are not available.

“We are seeing that music and in fact, radio itself are shifting platforms. This is not necessarily at the expense of broadcast radio but as a result of the expanding array of music platform choices.  Radio still plays a key role in keeping its listeners connected, but digital options are clearly moving into the pure music position.”  - Jeff Vidler, senior vice president of media and entertainment at VisionCritical

The survey was conducted between March 19-20, 2013 among 1,506 Canadian adults ages 18 and over and 1,004 American adults ages 18 and over. Email invitations were sent to members of the Vision Critical Market Panels, offering a nationally representative sample for Canada via the Angus Reid Forum and for the United States via Springboard America. The survey was fielded in association with Canadian Music Week, March 19-24, 2013 at the Marriott Eaton Centre in Toronto. 

As "Loyal" As Jerry

All good radio sales people have two common characteristics:  One, they want to make as much money for themselves as possible.  Two:  They want to help you program the radio station.

If you're tired of trying to explain why you can't play a sales-staffer's favorite new song, suggest they watch the Tom Cruise movie "Jerry Maguire". 

Cruise is driving down the road after closing a big deal.  While he's driving, he hits the scan button repeatedly, looking for a song he's passionate about.  He finds a few tunes that he likes, but it's not until he finds one that he knows every word of that he finally takes his hand off the radio.  He's found a song he's passionate about.  And because he has, he' sticking with that station.

As Thor Kolner, who did marketing for us 15 years ago preached, you want your listeners to respond to your radio station the same way Cruise does to that station in the movie.  To do that, you need to play songs that listeners are passionate about.  Finding those songs isn't always easy.  It takes a lot of work and experience.  The stations that don't play the right music, are the ones listeners like Jerry Maguire pass over.

But if the music experts in your sales department still insist on telling you what songs to add, just remind them:  It's passionate listeners who respond best to the advertising messages they're selling.

And besides, "Jerry McGuire" may be listening.

When's The Last Time You Evoked An Emotion In The "Red?"

Billboard Top 40 Editor Mike Stern at A&O&B's Pre-CRS client seminar at the Country Music Hall Of Fame encouraging us to broaden the range of emotional content on our radio stations:

“Be a friend and a companion. Be a filter, give them something they can steal to use themselves, and focus on things that make you react.”

I Wonder What Cluster This Guy Belongs To?

Earlier this week, BBM Canada announced implementation of geodemographic classification of its PPM households using an aggregated version of the PRIZM consumer segmentation system from Environics Analytics. 

These categories, which are based on the characteristics of residents living in each individual geographic area, use geodemographics and psychographics to provide insights into the behaviour of Canadian consumers.

The system classifies all PPM households into one of 14 segments based on the location of each PPM household.  The classification of households will be reported as a demographic category through currently available respondent-level data analysis software and will be accessible to all BBM Canada members that subscribe to the television or radio PPM service.  

These demographic classifications were introduced into the overnight TV data this week (starting 3/11).  For radio, the classifications will be added effective with the April 4, 2013 data release. 

Right now, country radio seems to be doing very well in PPM measurement after a rocky start in many markets, so I suppose there will be some who say "don't TOUCH my sample," but as Arbitron continues to weight its sample by ten factors, this addition of geo- and psycho- targeting in Canada is going to be fascinating to study very carefully as it rolls out.

Political targeting has demonstrated how people tend to live in "tribes" of folks similar to them geographically and so with PPM's smaller samples who remain in the panel for long periods of time, representing every category possible is a step in the right direction.

It's too early to tell if this move will improve samples in that way, but at least the ability to run analyses based on them sounds promising to me.

Let's watch and see how many of the 66 Prizm lifestyle types the sample is able to accurately represent in proportion to the actual population in each market where this is being implemented.  That will start to indicate just how large each local sample should ideally be, at least, and perhaps even demonstrate why share compression is so typical in PPM numbers.

Thanks to BBM's visionaries for providing us with new numbers to hold their feet to the fire with.

Now, Tell Me Something I Didn't Know

• 78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of them own smartphones. That translates into 37% of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.
• 23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.
• 95% of teens use the internet.
• 93% of teens have a computer or have access to one at home. Seven in ten (71%) teens with home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they share with other family members.

"The nature of teens’ internet use has transformed dramatically — from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day.” - Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and co-author of the Teens and Technology 2013 report. 

“In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population.” 

These are among the new findings from a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey that explored technology use among 802 youth ages 12-17 and their parents.

"Radio Expands Its Audience with New Platforms"

I didn't say that.  Arbitron did (click to read the press release). 

The report shows radio’s audience increased year over year, adding more than 1.6 million weekly listeners.  Radio now reaches 242.8 million listeners on an average weekly basis.   

Much has been written over the last few years by people much smarter than me about the issue of declining time spent listening (click the links to read a few).

This much I do know:  cume going down is not a good sign in spite of the fact that average "time spent listening" often goes up, at least at first, as fewer people use a medium.

Healthy cume increases often, at first, cause average time spent listening to drop as new folks discover the new product and get familiar with it.

Only good things can happen, whether you believe that cume is "really" going up or not, if content creators act as if we have a problem with time spent listening.

Building cume is hard.  It requires advertising, cluster cross-promotion, social media expertise, buzzy content, raving fans.  Arbitron's optimistic stats appear to demonstrate that new media is helping radio do it in spite of the difficulty.

Growing time spent listening is comparatively easier and free.  Set listening appointments, driven by having engaging, relatable things to say, never wasting the listener's time.

Why wouldn't everyone who opens a microphone work harder to pick that low-hanging fruit?

Act as if you have a TSL problem and work harder to "fix it."  Only good things can happen.

If You Want To Be A Radio Personality

It has been too long since I recycled a Jay Trachman treasure:

Focus on four areas, which I think are universal necessities for putting yourself across as a "friend" -- someone who's "for real" -- and training the listener to pay attention.

1.  You've got to be speaking to someone specific.
Not a demographic, not an average - someone who is very real to you (even if it's a fantasy), and with whom you feel comfortable. Two reasons: first, the safety this Personal Listener affords you - to block out the masses and picture yourself with this one valued friend - allows you to display a spectrum of emotions you'd never reveal to a crowd of strangers. (More about this in a moment.) Second, when you truly believe you're talking to one person, everyone listening who seeks companionship from his/her radio will fantasize that this person is them.

The Personal Listener has a name, a family, a history, an occupation, a hair color and all the other attributes required so you can picture him or her in your mind when you open the mike. And their primary reason for being there is not the music or the information you offer; it's to spend time with you, because he or she enjoys your company. Not what you do - who you are.

2.  You've got to be focusing on the person you're speaking to, rather than the words you're saying.  
Otherwise one hears strange inflection patterns and often a hyped energy level that sounds phony. A programmer tells the young jock, "Be up and bright!" It's nice when you are, but it's not appropriate coming out of a soft ballad. When you say the station identifier - no one could possibly be that enthusiastic about something they say every five minutes for four hours. You can announce those words and say them authoritatively - but when you feign enthusiasm, you destroy any chance that the listener will relate to you as a person.

3.  In order to be perceived as a friend, you must behave like one.
That means doing the things all human beings do. Among them: showing the spectrum of your emotions. Sometimes people are happy; sometimes they're sad. Sometimes they're angry and sometimes they're tender. You don't have any friends who don't show all these emotions - and more - to you, over a period of time. It's something people expect from one another. You can't achieve emotional intimacy - friendship - with your listener without doing it.

4.  You have to prepare material for your show.
Most important, you need to be armed with Life Content when you walk in the studio. Life Content:  brief bits about your life experiences and your responses to them. Anything which caused you strong feelings is worth talking about with your listener. Most jocks don't do show prep - especially after the morning show. I've heard every excuse in the book. But the bottom line is, they almost uniformly fail to entertain.

Most of the jocks I hear who don't prep rely on station slogans, positioners, promos and whatever other liner-card junk they can come up with. One of the hallmarks of the DJ who has nothing to say is that those crutch phrases get repeated way more than the programmer or consultant requires. These DJs train the listener to tune them out anytime they open the mike. Ultimately, a survey-taker comes along and asks people what they like least about the station, and they'll reply, "The DJs talk too much!"  They don't talk too much - they don't say anything worth hearing!

Entertainment means: enabling another to experience his or her feelings in a safe environment.  Make a person laugh, make them cry, make them shake their fists in anger - you have committed entertainment. Every bit you do should lead to an expression of emotion, calculated to make your listener feel something in response. This is exactly what the music you play does.  You need to do it, too.

Being a radio performer isn't rocket science... But it does require some understanding and a good deal of work - both before air time and during.

Or... you could settle for being an interchangeable jock who wonders why you can never make much more than minimum wage...

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."

Another "Enlarged" Title

If it seems like you have more on your plate today, as my Monday blog Today's World Class Radio Program Director showed, you are not wrong.

Now, the former managers of Entravision's 48 radio stations have new titles, as Inside Radio reports: 

Senior Vice President/Integrated Marketing Solutions

“They are literally spending 100% of their time now on sales and we have centralized all operations through our corporate staff,” CEO Walter Ulloa said.  While it’s too soon to assess its full impact on sales efforts, Entravision has logged double-digit increases so far this year.  Through the end of February there are gains across a number of ad categories, including professional services (+14%), auto (+12%), telecom (+16%), financial services (+13%) and grocery (+15%).  “It’s terrific to see these core categories growing,” Ulloa said.

Of course, they got to keep their old jobs too.

A Tip To Help You Speak Better

.. from Ryan Seacrest? 

In the New York Times?  Yep.

The Big Profile

By Dave Itzkoff

In his earliest days as host of “American Idol,” Ryan Seacrest was plagued by his persistently parched mouth.

“I talk all day for a living — why do I feel like I’ve just run at an incline on a treadmill?” says Seacrest, who is also a radio D.J. and a fixture at red-carpet events. “

And I realized: Ah, I’m having sushi and soy sauce and edamame before I went on the air.” Now, he says, “I always brush my teeth and use mouthwash so my saliva’s not too thick and I can speak quickly.”

Today's World Class Radio Program Director

Spotted on the wall of an Entercom PD's office.

When Nielsen Takes Control Of Arbitron (Some Wishful Thinking)

During this legally-mandated silent period as Nielsen does what it takes to close on Arbitron later this year, no one is talking about what will actually happen to radio and TV ratings.

My hopes:

• Nielsen solves its "set top box in a four screen mobile world" problem by moving to the Portable People Meter (either its own or ARB's, which ever can be accredited in every measured market) to get out of "household" TV ratings and move to individual measurement.
• Arbitron stops hitting its sample targets by trying to find homes where they can place (many!!) more than 2-3 meters by going to one meter per household.
• The sample for both will include cell phone only persons in their exact proportion to the general population.
• The sample sizes are quadrupled (or even more) as the same meters follow all media use of one large, perfectly representative group of people at home, at work, in their vehicles, no matter where or how they access them.
• Reliability of all estimates is doubled, breathing new life into low cume, high loyalty niche formats and decreasing the silly, unbelievable share compression infecting today's ARB numbers.
• Stations with poor signals are rejuvenated, once again becoming viable businesses instead of low rate bottom-fishers.
• The antique "radio diary" is retired forever and all 210 TV DMA's are measured by portable personal meters, tracking usage of all media in real time in all of them.
• New media measurement opens the service to working for many emerging media clients, dramatically increasing their revenues.
• Nielsen's Radio and TV rates are lowered.  Using the same panel for all media is more efficient.
• National and network buys start to increase for the most-used radio stations in all markets, not just the major markets as is increasingly happening now based on this deeper understanding of radio's amazing reach everywhere.
• Cross-media measurement proves that radio is 15-20% of the average person's media day, and at first media buyers attempt to keep cost per point levels and radio's share of media buys the same as they always have been, but ultimately radio revenues almost double over time as buyers can't deny the reach, usage and effectiveness of radio.
• Nielsen saves money as they do all of this, making it possible for them to easily retire the debt they have incurred to do the deal.
• Arbitron and Nielsen - as well as all of their existing clients - live happily ever after in a lovely marriage.

I can dream, can't I?  And, sometimes, dreams even come true.  Let's hope they do in this case.