How Would Wharton Rate Your Radio Station?

I have become addicted to The Wharton School Of Business Future Of Advertising web pages and recommend you click around the many links and quotes offered, for example, at this one.

The faculty watched the Super Bowl and Tweeted their reactions to all of the ads making use of a rating system they term RAVES.

Relevance/Respect
Actionable
Valued
Experience
Surprise/Story

Now, it's your turn.

How does everything you do in generating RAVES?

OES ("optimum effective schedule") or OTS ("over-the-top spins)

Optimum Efficient Scheduling was never intended to be a guide to music scheduling, but just as with commercial "ROS" schedules of 12 and 18 times a week back when power rotations contained 9 or even 11 hits and a heavy rotation of 4 1/2 or 5 1/2 hours that math provided assurance to conservative programmers who improved their competition situation by upping the frequency on the most popular songs so that they play more often than they do on the folks across the dial.

With PPM's new math of doubled cume and "time spent exposed" (TSL/TSE) cut in half compared to diary measures, we all applied that old formula and upped the spins at some stations as high as once an hour and more widely two hours.

It seems to work and thanks to MScore tracking, it's no longer necessary to use an abstract formula. 

Now, you can literally watch and see if a higher spin count helps or hurts your usage.  In the chart to the left, one station's panel loves a song while another station in the same market's panel seems to hate it in the same period of time.

As repetition complaints from the small percentage of core listeners who say they have become dissatisfied with their favorite country station have become louder (though still only 15% of all listeners in A&O&B's 2014 survey), I think it's time to admit that there may be a perceptual toll to these tactics.

Yes, it seems that listeners have always said that they prefer variety and want less repetition and those beliefs can be tempered with online, callout and auditorium research, demonstrating that the right songs can be played heavily with "burn" and "dislike" tracked along the way.  Some folks now include "play less, play about the same, play more" in their online testing and listeners continue to say "play more" to the most popular tunes even as they get 75 spins in a week.

So, is it intelligent to simply ignore the repetition complaints and keep adding spins to the strongest titles as OES formulas seem to indicate?  As TSL and TSE drop and cume continues to trend upward, there is a siren song calling for just that.

Unless we're certain that we can keep increasing our cume hyper-spinning a small number of very popular songs - and I don't think we can - it seems to me that it's time to step back and look at the entire MScore, online testing, callout and auditorium data universe and recognize for the country format at least our listeners are extremely accepting of hundred and hundreds of songs which have little negative or burn.  Even with teens and 18-34, country isn't CHR.  We aren't limited to a very small library of common thread songs.

For example, the vast majority - hundreds - of gold, current and recurrent songs monitored by MScore at the average station track from between +4% to -4% which means they are all statistically virtually tied in terms of usage.  Only a very small number - often fewer than ten - float to the bottom having negative usage double the averages.

We are fortunate that our values and lifestyle appeal are pan-demographic, spanning at least five decades.

Let's look beyond one simple formula, use all of the tools to test music in our toolkit and think beyond just heavy play of one or two music categories.

It's time to start working as well on how long our heavy user/regulars listen in each occasion by offering more music new music discovery and impeccable song scheduling variety.

Best In Class

I love this job.  One reason:  I listen to a lot of radio which exposes me to lots of mediocrity, of course, but now and than something really stands out.

Like:

• This Killam Properties ad (click Killam Properties.mp3 to listen to it) on XL-96/Moncton.
• I'd bet that hundreds of us saw this item on Taste Of Country.com.  But only the creative folks at WZZK/Birmingham ran right into production and got this promo (WZZK-Luke Bryan.mp3) on the air.

Brilliance is taking the things everyone has access to and doing something extraordinary with it.

Radio Advertiser? Don't Waste Your Money.

Heard at The Conclave:  Tim Burt maintains that only one percent of all radio ads really work to convince and get results.

His tips to use with your clients to be certain that they get more than they expect from their investment:

1. As you refine their message ("a radio commercial is a business card, not a brochure") ask them "why shouldn't I go to your competition."
2. Challenge them to think about their spot as if they had :15-:30 seconds to talk to the crowd at the largest stadium in your town.  Would they say "open Friday night till 9 at our convenient location, stop in or call or visit our website"?
3. Have them take "the competitor script challenge."  Replace their direct competition's name in their ad and talk about whether their ad is the same as the guy across the street except for the brand name in it.  ("if you were lost in a forest, would you dress up like a tree?")

Make sure the communication contains ONE core, easily understood message, the element of surprise, an undeniable, irrefutable fact (results), exudes safety/trust and tells a story, ending with the principle of closure.

Paying Attention/Paying FOR Attention

The ad world according to Google:

Google uses the age old sales funnel of "AIDA" while taking all the credit for online processes leading to sale. 

Notice it also gives ZERO credit to any touch except online sources.

My take:  what online media misses is the "attention" part of the equation.  In traditional media we are so busy trying to be in that online space with them that we miss what we do best--generate attention for advertisers.

Occasionally, rarely even, online generates a "viral" action which brings people to the forefront without mainstream noise (see Psy, or Jena Marbles, or Ship My Pants) 

What we sell is attention. 

We are better at it than anyone. 

When you are on radio, you are on center stage.

Focusing on our strengths is a better use of our time and energy rather than trying to play a game on the other guys field.

KGHL/Billings General Manager Ray Massie spoke for me last month when he blogged: "You really don’t get anything for free–you pay for it with stress, time, opportunity, or cash."

So, radio seller:  Ask for a reasonable share of their budget.  Uncover their selling proposition.  Create a powerful message.  Run a good, consistent schedule.  Be a hero and get results.

That's worthy of your attention.

San Diego Jayebitrons Are In And AM-FM Radio Wins By Many Miles

Sometimes multiple data points all appear to converge, calling out for back-of-napkin research.  Your humble correspondent is delighted to do the math for you.

Blogger Jennifer Lane points to an "interesting new study by GroupM Next comparing broadcast and internet radio listeners. (GroupM Next is the “forward thinking, innovation unit” of GroupM, the largest conglomerate of Ad Agencies in the world. The unit studies consumer use of new platforms and provides insight to agencies on usage of such.) 

"The study reveals several positive facts about the Internet radio audience. The average age of an Internet radio listener is 34 years old versus the average age of a broadcast radio listener which is 47 years old. Since the average income was found to be similar in both groups, the Internet radio audience is more affluent given their substantially younger age.

"86% of Internet radio listeners listen to free services and have never paid to listen. They don’t mind ads, and don’t try to avoid them, and are twice as inclined to make a purchase after hearing an ad. In fact, 29% of Internet radio listeners have purchased something they heard advertises, versus 14% of broadcast radio listeners."

Today's Inside Radio reports on a Hivio San Diego presentation by Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds who said the the entire San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.  

That is when I got the napkin out.

• Say that in an average quarter hour in San Diego roughly 15% of all people are listening to AM-FM radio.  That would be a napkin-calculated average persons of about 354,000.
• Assume that 90% of the total population of San Diego cumes a radio station at least once in an average week.  That would put the total cume persons using AM-FM radio in an average week at 2.1 million.

Five to ten thousand people vs 354,000, let alone 2.1 million????

Is there any wonder why terrestrial radio is only billing 5-7% of its total revenues from interactive?

No wonder online ad rates are so low.  No one's listening, if you believe my trusty napkin.

Hey, you "forward-thinking innovators:"  caveat emptor!
 

Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds said the San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.   Two-thirds of the sessions were for Pandora, with the remaining third divvied up among all other webcasts, including FM/AM streams.  That portion of the pie is cut into extremely narrow slices — Triton says San Diego residents divided their listening up among 4,754 different stations, including many from outside the market. “They’re listening to a lot of local traditional radio stations online,” Reynolds noted, saying server log data shows stations from markets all over the country showing up.
Triton was also able to detect listening on 60 different devices, including smartphones, gaming consoles and desktop units like Sonos.  “It’s kind of complicated but you have to be in all the places that your people are if you want that audience,” Reynolds said.
He also noted that while about 80% of Pandora listening occurs on a mobile device, most radio groups pull in fewer than 50% of their users that way.  It’s why Reynolds thinks Pandora listening levels are so much higher than for everyone else.  “They’re where people are and they’re getting a big audience,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2667778&spid=32061#.UciFYYXtjJM

Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds said the San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.   Two-thirds of the sessions were for Pandora, with the remaining third divvied up among all other webcasts, including FM/AM streams.  That portion of the pie is cut into extremely narrow slices — Triton says San Diego residents divided their listening up among 4,754 different stations, including many from outside the market. “They’re listening to a lot of local traditional radio stations online,” Reynolds noted, saying server log data shows stations from markets all over the country showing up.
Triton was also able to detect listening on 60 different devices, including smartphones, gaming consoles and desktop units like Sonos.  “It’s kind of complicated but you have to be in all the places that your people are if you want that audience,” Reynolds said.
He also noted that while about 80% of Pandora listening occurs on a mobile device, most radio groups pull in fewer than 50% of their users that way.  It’s why Reynolds thinks Pandora listening levels are so much higher than for everyone else.  “They’re where people are and they’re getting a big audience,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2667778&spid=32061#.UciFYYXtjJM

Bring It On

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Radio Ads Make Me Want To Scream

On terrific websites and in very scientific research studies our business keeps trying to convince the local appliance, stereo stores and car dealers with sound logic that their use of our medium - shouting over-the-top promises and branding half-truths and even paying our personalities talent fees to hurt their personal credibility in endorsement spots and at remote broadcasts from their retail locations to do the same thing - isn't working.

For several years, Dr. David Eagleman has been writing wonderfully well-documentated books, publishing great research studies, magazine articles all in support of the idea that the brain's primary work is done at a subconscious level.

This is the guy who convinced his ethical review board that it was OK to drop his research subjects off of a tower in order to see if time really does slow down in frightening situations. (it didn't, though it seemed to during the fall to the subjects)

Read Eagleman.  Spend time with WriteToEngage.com and RadioAdLab.org.  The facts are clear:  logic isn't as effective in influence as is emotion.

Radio's pal Dan O'Day has been devoting his life to this crusade for many years, as this video from 1999 demonstrates. (we're often as guilty as our advertisers are)

Jeffrey Hedquist and the Radio Mercury Awards are just two of numerous others who have been fighting the good fight.
  
Meanwhile, people give us money every day to play ads which only irritate and insult listener intelligence in spite of all the very rational arguments our business has been making.

Is it time to try a different approach?

Let's equip every radio salesperson with a ball-peen hammer in their brief case.  The moment the client pulls out a CD with their new commercial which sounds a lot like their old commercial, have the seller brandish the hammer over the ad and yell "don't make me use this!!"

It can't work any worse than our current approach does, can it?

At least the buyer will feel something when your rep leaves her office.

Questionable Advice

1. In the March 26th issue of Radio Ink magazine, the Director of Media and Digital Marketing for La Quinta Inn, Amy Bartle tells radio that our stopsets are too long.

We train our sellers to really understand the buyers' business needs before pitching our wares, but it always seems that media buyers are at the ready to tell us how to run our businesses.

They are only one set of our customers and if their suggestions to stop promoting long sets of content listeners love were taken, we'd deliver fewer sets of ears to hear their ads.

Suggestion: if you want to be the only commercial in a cluster, pay a higher rate and if you pay enough we'd be happy to make your spot the only one we play. But, of course, that would be wasteful, given radio's efficiency and research-proven ability to hold listeners through stopsets.

Focus on creating more engaging commercials and they'll be up to 40% more effective for the same money, no matter where they run.

You want to see clutter? Read your newspaper or watch TV.

Your spot on radio is at center stage when it's on and, unlike TV, most listeners don't skip it.

2. In comments filed with the FCC for its media ownership proceeding, NAB says the current caps, tiered by market size, as well as the AM/FM subcaps that limit how many stations of one service a group can own in a market can no longer be justified and no longer serve the agency’s diversity policy goals.

Small broadcasters have no representation in Washington other than the NAB and perhaps their state broadcasting association, whereas Clear Channel reportedly spends $700,000 annually on their four lobbying firms.

Did the NAB really need to provide stats from Clear Channel as part of their filing?

Certainly, the big guys exert powerful influence on NAB, but hopefully the thousands of small business local owners across America the organization also speaks for got a chance to share their views on further consolidation as well.

I am not necessarily against revisiting the ownership caps, especially when it comes to newspaper crossownership - since many local newspapers have been great stewards of their radio licenses over the entire history of our medium, often providing better local news and public affairs than anyone else in town - but I do wish the NAB's filing had included supportive comments from many of them, instead of CBS and Clear Channel.

Awards Are Nice, But Great Results Are Nicer

Canada's Astral Radio learned last week that two campaigns broadcast on its stations have been awarded at the Media Innovation Awards gala in Toronto.

McDonald's Restaurants claimed the Gold in the Best in Radio category for its "McTraffic" campaign, while Michelin won the Silver in the same category for its "Le bon pneu peut tout changer" campaign.

It's great to win these prizes, of course, but it's even more gratifying to begin to understand how to measure proof of success of the campaign and its related contest.

Astral stations recorded more than 10,868 clicks on the different web formats of their campaign and, even more impressively, received a record number of contest entries in a very short 11-hour period: 11,450 entries across the two networks.

Let's all commit to sharing our success stories with one another, not just for bragging rights but to make everything that goes between the songs as entertaining and effective as possible.

High Tech Firms Use Radio Advertising

"Radio is a congenial home for many advertisers in the hardware business, whether the hardware is lawn mowers or e-mail archivers. All that remains to be added are regular holiday sales for the I.T. products. Maybe the Labor Day weekend will bring a Sale-A-Bration — for load balancers."

- Randall Stross, Silicon Valley-based author and professor of business at San Jose State University in the New York Times

Thanks to Randall Bloomquist for reinforcing the key reasons why:

Affordability – “’We discovered radio was unnaturally inexpensive,’ says Michael Perone, Barracuda’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Targeting – Radio is an efficient way to reach the handful of decision-makers and “influencers” who are responsible for buying IT gear for their organizations.

“[Barracuda] also sells to medium-sized businesses, defined as those with 300 to 2,000 employees. It can be too expensive to send sales representatives to make the multiple visits necessary to close a relatively modest sale to these customers. But it turns out that radio offers an economical alternative way of reaching the three or four people who might work in the I.T. department of a 300-employee company.”

Endorsements – Citrix has found that endorsement spots provide effective “third-party validation” and “can create a brief sense of personal connection with each listener, in a way newer media can’t really match.”

Radio Remains On Arbitron "Radar" Bigtime

Radio Broadcasters Add More Than 1.9 Million Weekly Listeners in the Past Year According to RADAR® 109

Radio Attracts More Listeners aged 18 to 34 than a Year Ago

It's truly amazing how stable radio's reach has been for many years, and in spite of all the new media and mobile choices out there, audience behaviors continue to prove how radio usage is a habit driven by regularity, consistency and loyalty.

Those big gains among 18-34's and teens bodes well for the future.

Of course, we can't take this growth in diversity for granted and will also need to keeping working on the quality of our content and levels of engagement of all kinds.

However, it's a solid validation to see that what radio does every minute of every day keeps growing regular usage.

Promising Predictions

Beth Knobel:

• The future of audio reporting is all about the content. Radio not only provides great reporting, but it's also a valuable editorial voice that helps listeners makes sense of the barrage of information that is raining down on us all these days.
• Radio stations will continue to exist, but they will distribute their programming digitally, and use the money they now spend on over-the-air broadcasting on content creation instead.
• The stodgy image of radio is changing, as radio stations use social media and other communication technologies to engage their audiences.
• Radio stations are already moving aggressively into social media. Part of that effort includes obvious things like Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. But that's all going to expand even more, as stations benefit from new, innovative ways to send and receive information.
  

Imagine that you're on the bus going to work. As you pass a particular building, your phone asks you if you'd like to hear a radio story about an event that happened there.

Then you get a text on your phone from a different station asking you to write back if you're stuck in traffic. The station uses the information to create a real-time traffic map on its website.

Then a Twitter message asks, since it's the 8th day of the month, for you to vote on which of three composers' 8th symphonies you'd like to hear at lunchtime on the local classical music station.

This is the future of radio.

This Country Station Leads The Way

Among the consistently best of all the E-Zine newsletters you could possibly subscribe to one of my fav's is "Radio 3-D" from McVay Online Media's Daniel Anstandig.

It's terrific to see that he discovered Delmarva/Wilmington's info websites for folks who are thinking about buying radio to promote their business. (click to get inspired and learn a few things too)

When I asked Jaime Solis if other broadcasters or newspapers in the market are providing information online similar to WXCY, he told me, “The short answer is no. Most traditional media properties in our area have an online presence, but only a few go beyond posting the phone number of the Sales Manager, or a one sheet with very general advertising information. It’s funny; some of the inspiration to build WXCYMedia.com came from my frustration with not being able to find any radio stations’ coverage map on their own web site.”

Anyone who sells radio will benefit from clicking on their case studies.

Now, Maybe We Know Why

Arbitron VP of Programming Services Gary Marince told the Jacobs Media Summer School at the Conclave in Minneapolis that the average radio listening occasion lasts ten minutes and the most frequently occurring duration is only two minutes.

Which reminded me of a presentation more than 15 years ago to A&O’s annual client seminar just before CRS in Nashville by Pierre Bouvard on what was back then a revolutionary new concept he and sales trainer Steve Marx had innovated called OES. They even wrote a book about it.

Today, Pierre is Executive Vice President, Cross-Platform Services and he previously was ARB’s Executive Vice President, Sales.

In the early 90's, he was Vice President/General Manager, Coleman Research and told us:

"Generally, Optimum Efficient Schedules are 40 to 60 spots per week. The goal of OES is to hit half your cume three or more times with ONE piece of copy. OES gets results. The reason it works: it applies programming theory to scheduling advertising on your station. In effect, it is placing a commercial into a "power current" rotation for a week. OES doesn't mean running two spots per hour from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. Instead, it requires separating that one piece of copy by approximately two to three hours and blitzing the radio station with it six times in the 18 hours between 6:00 am to midnight. When scheduled properly, with good vertical and horizontal protections, there is no burnout. OES gets results for advertisers by convincing them to collapse what might otherwise be a three week budget and running it ALL in one week. Yet, when properly scheduled, it has no negative impact on programming or time spent listening. I do research among country listeners. The ONLY time I've heard them complain about commercials is one specific client - Nutri Systems - and it wasn't that they were running it too much, it was the creative hurt the image of some of the air personalities who were associating themselves with it. We hear listeners say 'why is it that only fat people work in radio?' Nutri Systems appears to realize that they hit that creative too hard and they now are changing their creative direction to compensate. Believe it or not, there is NO BURNOUT on this type of 60 to 70 spot per week schedule unless you have irritating copy. As a researcher who talks to listeners all the time, I can tell you that OES doesn't impact TSL. What it DOES impact is RESULTS. If you can convince an advertiser to try it once, they will come back to it again and again. And, they will end up spending more of the budget in radio. Because OES proves that radio works better."

Finally, I’d postulate that PPM also now shows why that math worked (and still works) so well and also why running the same spot two or three times in one hour only irritates listeners without improving results.

It increases frequency without building reach, creating burnout among that half of the audience who listens ten minutes per occasion on average rather than hitting more and more two minute drive-by listeners.

.. at least that's how it calculates on my "back of an envelope research."

Eggs & Baskets

Do country stations have too many eggs in one basket?

Eye-balling the latest ad-tracking data from both Mediaguide and Media Monitors concerns me that our format does, but we are not alone. As radio formats become more targeted and PPM's small sample sizes make rankers more compressed after you get beyond the top three or four high cume stations, advertisers naturally appear to seek out those formats most likely to reach their prospective customers making more decisions on listener qualitative.

The result: some format's advertisers are more consolidated among certain types of advertisers than others. For example, country stations get most of our total ad revenues from three categories -- entertainment and amusement, automotive and food/beverages. If you add department/discount stores plus travel in the station I just looked at, you're seeing more than three of four dollars being billed by country radio's monitored stations in the largest markets.

It's important to note that they don't reflect very much small and medium market radio, where (hopefully!) more local direct means that perhaps those stations are more wide-ranging in their account lists.

Tip to management: It might be worth looking at next year's account goals as you budget for 2011 with an extra bonus for diversification, just in case there's still another post-mid-term-election economic downturn that affects one or more of the "big five" categories of business for your format!

PS: while I was browsing the ad monitoring data, I tripped across these fast factoids:

1. Media Monitors found that with the latest week, they see increases in units for Radio and TV, but a slight decrease in Cable for BP oil company ads.

2. Mediaguide shows an uptick last week for auto ads, theme parks and beer. (Ya have to love the widget on their website which offers this constantly-updated and fascinating stat....)

In the last minute:

• 152 Ads played
• 398 Songs played

My New Favorite (Online) TV Show

It stars Alicia Olson-Keating and Mike Mohammed.

Whether your “book” is good or bad, it’s always the best strategy to be the one your local buying community, let alone national and regional buyers, know that they can count on for trustworthy analysis and perspective as ratings come out.

Canada’s largest radio company’s research arm, Astral RadioPlus, shows that they understand this as they have been presenting monthly live webinars on PPM data results for Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal.

Here are some takeaways Mike O'Malley and I got out of the latest one (click to read the doc).
1. For example, in Toronto, there appears to be a targeting “hole” right in the “middle,” as the crowd seems to be skewing extremely young and female or male. Is there an opportunity in that bullseye? Or, does the super-serving of each of the four quadrants mean that no one station can possibly cover all the bases?

2. This is a good way for sales to lay out the market for a possible client in a pitch, to help them understand why psychographics and qualitative is important in addition to simple quantative rankers.

3. You can also "station-map" on your "listening to the competition" days, plotting your station and your sharers according to how they sound. Review the map for opportunities as well as “performance vs. intent.” Subjective, but it’s a visually effective self-diagnostic.

Can They Really Make Radio Say “Sex” And “Rape”?

...I hope not, since not only are broadcasters responsible to community needs, good programmers work hard to build a large audience so that advertisers trust us to get them more results than what they expected.

It would be nice to think that in Pennsylvania a very good cause is using the request for a change in their copy to get more publicity than the actual ads would get and you sure can’t blame them for that as long as once everything dies down more reasonable heads prevail and ultimately make everyone involved, including B-101 listeners, "feel good."

Meanwhile, ironically, ad wizard Roy Williams has also recently been on a tear about buyers and agencies having the right to super-saturate radio with annoying ads.

I’ll permit Williams a bit of slack since I am a longtime "beagle" of the wiz, but it is possible that he’s been hearing from PPM market stations he'd like to buy, informing him that running the same piece of copy, intentionally written to irk, several times per hour is damaging both his and the stations' interests.

He wants to buy radio and control the creative in the same very successful way he has used to get clients outstanding results for many years, and you can’t blame him for that.

Metered behavior, however, is now giving us information that would be foolish for a competitive programmer to ignore. Some commercials, for example, lose as much as 40% of the audience within the first seconds. And, when the average listener leaves for another station, it typically takes more than 45 minutes for them to come back.

The tension between sales and programming goals has never been greater since it’s now possible to know exactly how many commercials per hour listeners can accept as well as which ones, right down to the minute, drive listeners away.

Hopefully, media buyers and clients - let alone our own radio company executives - know as they incent air personalities and programmers to build audience, we work in their best interest to improve the reach and impact of their messages as we police what listener actions show is “clutter.”

Once this PR tempest dies down, in addition to the words “sex” and “rape,” I’d like to nominate some other phrases radio has a right to insist be removed from the air: “open every Friday night ‘til nine,” “check our website for more details,” “for all your (fill in the blank) needs,” "we'll do whatever it takes to get your business," “your big volume dealer,” "if you're $10,000 or more in debt, you need...,” "best selection", "bigger variety", "no one has better service," “save, save, save,” “going out of business,” and a plethora of long-hackneyed phrases and words that have gone far past being irritating and entered into the lexicon of things listeners simply avoid or ignore, which is a fate even worse than tune-out.

Hopefully, both charities and advertisers will pay attention to the recommendations of the people who know the medium and the target best, so that we can work together to build and hold audience, making fully-engaged listeners respond with the actions we all want and need.

Radio must be fully accountable as the business listens to clients .. and our community.

We have always had two sets of customers, but now - thanks to PPM - the one which used to silently change stations when we offended them now have a loud, clear, statistically-trackable voice it would be foolish to ignore.

Portland, OR Radio Gets Proactive, Puts Business First

My Business First (MBF) is a first of it’s kind marketing campaign created exclusively by The Portland Area Radio Council that includes an impact video, webinar, on-air commercials, and website. The primary goal is to show radio’s pivotal influence to consumers especially emphasizing using the internet PLUS Radio together. The on-air portion of the campaign drives the listener to the MBF website. This is the most compelling part of the campaign since it teaches the listener and the prospect by example how combining radio and Internet creates strong synergy for media planning and allocation.

MBF also uses state of the art statistics retrieval and captures real data from online prospects hoping to prime the market, open doors, and create new opportunities as the economy improves. This is the first campaign of its kind anywhere in the nation.

This integrative campaign is the brainchild of Melissa Kunde, executive director of PARC. Melissa is also the host of the free MBF Webinar called “Getting to First,” where business owners and marketers can ask direct questions, learn how to utilize Radio, and get first hand info about integrative radio marketing technology.

“Contrary to media industry myth, radio listening has been positively affected by new technology,” said Ms. Kunde. “Studies show that Radio is an influential companion medium in the media mix. This means people listen to radio simultaneously while on the internet or tuning in with their iphone. MBF not only educates business owners about the value of Radio, it proves by example that when you combine internet with Radio you have one of the most powerful marketing combinations in history.”

Dawn Montefusco, Assistant to the Executive Director, told me that it is "A first of it’s kind radio marketing campaign that includes an impact video, webinar, on-air commercials, and website. If you go to the site, you can check out the impact movie which highlights the new power, and value, of Radio."

Kunde hopes to break-through misunderstandings about Radio in the market. The target audience for MBF is decision makers, CEO’s, marketing directors, business owners and advertising agencies. The tracking capability used for all three components is state-of-the- art using video, flash, embedded web coding, and survey questions to grab the prospects attention and lead them down the marketing funnel. All information that is captured is then sent directly to PARC’s computer system for retrieval.

The council's mission is to promote the power of Radio to create fiscal health for both local businesses and the communities that Radio serves. PARC is also the host of the Radio Summit 2010.

2010 Ad Trends (A Radio Adaptation)

Verizon Wireless' current commercial, in which the carrier touts its 3G cellular coverage as better than rival AT&T's

Suzanne Vranica’s Wall Street Journal short list:

1. Rough-and-tumble sales pitches taking direct aim at competitors
2. Other companies will show their softer sides. In the bleak aftermath of the recession, many marketers think consumers will respond to brands they perceive as giving back to the community
3. Fewer actors and more animated characters (cheaper to produce)
4. Social-network personalities make their way to mass-media stardom
5. TV viewers see more split screens that give them a glimpse of what is going on behind the scenes of a show while a commercial runs on the other side of the split (hoping to avoid TIVO ad skipping)
6. Mobile advertising (maybe for real this year?)
7. Fewer big-name celebrities and athletes pitching for brands, thanks to Tiger Woods
8. Consumers volunteer their personal information in return for getting the ads they want to see

Radio, fortunately, has faced "ad skipping" for decades, so we "should" be the experts at maintaining audiences through our commercials, which are in the spotlight on center stage, giving listeners only three choices: listen through them, change stations or turn the radio off.

Better, more creative commercials build higher listening levels, get measurably better results and make it possible to charge higher rates.

There is a radio resolution for 2010!