Why Consumers Enjoy Radio In LA

Nielsen Harris Poll, October 15-23, 2014, wordcloud presented to SCBA:

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:

• Listen critically at all hours and every day of the week and ask yourself how well your station lives up to these listener expectations.
• Finally, does your radio station do so in unique ways and all your analog and digital media channels  that belong exclusively to your brand and not to every radio station in your area?

The secret is that there is no secret. 

We all know what the audience wants and expects. 

The key is executing it better and more consistently than our proliferating competition.

You Go First

Sean Ross (Why The Audience Now Wants Shorter Breaks) initiated not just a great conversation last week but the savvy and experienced folks adding comments since that time simply can't be ignored!

However, I'm not yet convinced.

Back when John Hayes ran Corus and Canada was just starting with PPM, with the help of the brilliant Bob Michaels (I STILL miss him so much - a smart researcher and a wonderful communicator!), all Corus stations were mandated to do six two minute breaks and promote that they go back to the music faster than anyone else.

Finally, after more than a year of disappointing ratings all of the Corus music stations went to two six minute breaks per hour and the ratings improved almost immediately across the board.

In Canada, BBM doesn't use "five minutes equals a quarter hour" as Nielsen Audio does, so it's absolutely a "most minutes" wins game and all of the Canadian country stations we work with are doing exceedingly well right now sticking with the "hour glass" or "bow tie" approach, so I'm welcoming anyone else who wants to take the Edison Researcher's advice and "go first."

My sense is that this is a case of perception vs actual habits.

TV commercials are all run at the same times so that viewers then are forced to choose their favorite shows based on the content not the commercial load and I believe that the same is true with radio when the measurement is PPM.

The major consolidated US group owners have shown me by their actions in PPM that it's possible for one station to play at least one minute more commercial time than a direct competitor and still win by carefully placing their clusters to maximize the time measured by the PPM, which like your cell phone "knows what time it is," so a few seconds can be the same as a minute depending where a tune-in or tune-out happens.  Thanks to Nielsen Audio's editing rules, that minute in the right place can be credited as a full quarter hour (or also cost you one if it's improperly placed).

Perception still drives expectations, which does make listeners go to one station "first" over another, but when at that station "time matters" much more than perceptions, I maintain.  Great content drives usage in the moment much more than the image that if I am patient I'll hear more of what I want in the long term.

Each "stop" causes a huge loss in the "switcher" audience and the more times per hour that happens the stronger that image of "it's worth waiting for something terrific" must be, my current experience still indicates.

How about you?  Ready to go first?

Becoming More Memorable

Increasing top-of-mindness:

1.  Find out which of your personalities your listeners know on an unaided basis.
2.  Test your programming features and stress the "benchmarks" among them.  Which ones can listeners name as a reason they listen to you?
3.  Find out of the core artists you play most bring your brand to mind for target listeners more than any other radio station.
4.  Proudly stand for values and attitudes your audience relates to.

Be certain that these 'benefits' can be described (as Lovemarks) on an unaided basis by as many members of your potential coalition as possible when compared to other radio stations they also use.

If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Change It

If your goal is to lower your levels of phantom cume and you're not a PPM market, how do you find out how much lost listening you have now?

1.  Conduct a phone survey that includes an open-ended question asking "what's your favorite radio station?"

2.  Then, later in the same survey, ask all of the target listeners to choose their favorite radio station from an aided-recall list of all the stations you compete with.

3.  The difference between the percentage of the sample to name your radio station on an unaided basis and the ones who choose you from the aided list is a good indication of your phantom cume.

Once you have that number you can test various ways to improve your "top of mind memorability" and redo the same survey several times annually to see what works.

Improve your unaided recall and you will increase your ratings.

Low Hanging Fruit

Phantom cume is real.  PPM proves it.

As noted here last week, the average radio station's cume almost doubles under PPM measurement.

If your radio station is measured by diaries, it seems that roughly half your audience simply forgets (or doesn't care enough about what they hear) to write down listening they actually did to you.

Ponder this:

If you could help them remember all of the usage they actually do, you could double your cume audience without spending a dime in marketing!

It's The Panel

After more than a half century of radio ratings diary measurement, we have all become accustomed to certain metrics.  The arrival of PPM over the last decade has changed the math completely.

For the average country station still being rated by diaries this ratio remains quite constant:  a little more than one third of diarykeepers account for almost three quarters of average quarter hour audience. 

For that reason, radio's research companies have learned that a random probability sample composed of about 60% of a station's "core" (P1/heaviest users) and some 40% of that station's cume as found at random in a metro population provides a reliable indication of how that broadcaster is going to do in the next diary survey.

When PPM started to roll out in the top 50 U.S. and Canada's major markets over the last decade that formula no longer "worked."  Many radio stations back when their first PPM ratings were released were unpleasantly surprised to find out that performing extremely well in a traditional perceptual research project fielded with the time-honored sample parameters was no predictor of PPM scores!

Six years ago at the annual December programming "fly-in," Nielsen Audio's clever research crunchers revealed new insights into emerging major market panel samples that still help explain why that may have been happening:

 

• Unlike in diary measurement where lighter users often fail to report their usage, PPM captures it all, so instead of the vast majority of AQH audience coming from heavy users, it's more of a 50/50 proposition.  
• Roughly half of all radio average quarter hour ratings now reflect extremely light, "drive by," perhaps even unintentional use.  Those people listen an average of under three minutes per occasion, bringing average "time spent exposed" when down when compared to diary driven data.
• Heavy users (P-1's) are still in the sample, accounting for about half the usage of the average radio station's shares.  Their average occasion is ten+ times as long as the other half of the sample, typically something like 35 minutes.
• PPM also shows that those heavy users listen to about twice as many radio stations in an average week that they would have written down, on average, when they filled out a listening diary.
• Savvy programmers and researchers have now had more than six years to fully understand these new dynamics and our ability to project results has been improving, but there is still much to learn, but it's important to keep in mind that actual listening has not changed.  
• You can get the about the same number of quarter hours by targeting either group or many more than you did in diaries if you can find a way to bridge the gaps and constantly satisfy both of them.
• 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.

Do Perceptions Drive Usage?

The company now known as Nielsen Audio has been using diaries to measure radio and television audiences for 55 years now and it's unquestionable that the memorability, partisanship and top-of-mindness which make a person remember a listening occasion long enough to write down when it started and when it stopped as well as the station's "call letters, dial setting or name" can be predicted accurately by measuring listener perceptions.  However, this is prone to mistakes and forgetfulness, as well as subjectivity.

So, along came PPM, with its promise of more granular actual usage data of a panel that remains fairly consistent for several years.

A compelling case for moving to PPM has been driven by many factors - beyond the mere fact that today's audiences are increasingly unwilling to take time to fill out and send back printed diaries - not the least of which is that almost every single radio station's weekly cume audience almost doubles when actual usage is the measure rather than just the ability to be remembered.

PPM proves a long-held belief that Phantom Cume exists.  Roughly half of radio usage is simply not measured by diaries because either the sample doesn't think that their usage was significant enough to take time to report or because they just didn't recall doing it.

Diary success is driven by something one major radio researcher terms "The Image Pyramid."  The stronger the most important images, the better you do.

PPM panel success requires an even higher stakes game.  Not only must you strongly hold all of the key brand images compared to the other radio stations and media choices available to your potential audience, you also have to execute in a granular level down to the minute. 

You may be a person's favorite radio station, personality or program, but if at this very minute you tune them out and another station starts doing something they love, you lose.

Everything that was important yesterday is still crucial, but now minute-by-minute usage has increased the stakes.

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.

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. 

1 + 1 = 2

1.  For the last two summers, Alan Burns shared topline results of his detailed study of CHR and AC female listeners.  There's a TON of actionable info in the studies (click on Alan's name to download them), but one factoid screamed at me from his results on morning usage and priorities.

There's a direct co-relation between folks to start their day very early in the morning with radio and heavy usage of radio throughout the day.

2.  Now, Fred Jacobs and his team are sharing data from their 8th Annual "Tech Survey," (click to read MediaPost's recap of some highlights) and 57% of core radio listeners start their day with another medium or gadget rather than turn on a radio at home or in the car!

Television is a close second to turning on a radio at home. The 18-34s are more likely to engage with email or Facebook for this “First Occasion” of the day and country radio's core is actually more likely to start their media day with television than with their favorite radio station.

Fred says, in the MediaPost article “... the data from the study suggest that focusing on connecting emotionally and meaningfully with listeners is radio’s best avenue toward remaining relevant and vibrant in the face of new digital competition...”

The emotion I am feeling as I add those two reports together in the Spring 0f 2012:  fear.  I hope you are too!

Your morning team spends their morning talking on the radio so most likely they will be the last to notice this trend.

Managers and programmers:  watch your own family and friends as they start their day.  Add 1 + 1 for your morning show before it's too late.

EARLY morning radio isn't being interactive, topical, informative or social as other media options are for our heaviest-users.

Local TV stations showcase their morning shows in their marketing, looking a lot like the marketing for radio "used" to be.  When have you marketed the benefits of your morning package as the best way to start early morning?  I'm betting that it has been a long while.

Albright's axiom:  "We used to do that" is the epitaph on the tombstone of dead radio stations.

A big thank you to Jacobs and Burns for pointing to the handwriting on our wall.

ARB: "Country Continues as America’s Favorite Format"

Radio Today, 2011 edition (click to download your copy) is hot off the press and it contains great news for booming country music radio.

The No. 1 format overall, in both Diary and non-Metro areas, Country reached more than 65 million listeners each week on more than 1,700 stations—the most outlets of any music format, not including 300 Classic Country stations. It also was the top format among most age groups (including a big lead with adults 25-54) and in most dayparts. Country enjoyed some of the longest time spent listening of all formats, and its listeners set a new high in college degree attainment in Fall 2010.

Other fascinating mega-trends in radio's overall usage:

Radio Is Increasingly Mobile…
Away-from-home listening has been growing in proportion to all listening in every weekday hour in recent years except between 5 AM and 9 AM; at-home’s share of radio in the 6AM-10 AM daypart was actually up in Fall 2010 compared to Fall 2008.

…Especially in Evenings
The major shift in recent years has been between 8 PM and 9PM, when in Fall 2010, the majority of tune-in occurred away from home; the reverse had been true in Fall 2008 and in earlier years. The 9 PM to 10 PM hour also has been steadily gravitating toward out-of-home. And combined with out-of-home gaining by proportion in earlier evening hours, for the first time the overall 7 PM to Midnight daypart in Fall 2010 saw the majority of radio listening occurring away from home.

…And on Weekends, Too…
Despite the smaller audiences compared to weekdays, radio’s average quarter-hour ratings away from home increased on weekends from 2 PM and 11 PM and again from 4 AM to 5 AM between Fall 2008 and Fall 2010. The majority of listening in the 10 AM hour shifted to away from home in Fall 2010 for the first time. As it is during weekdays, the 9PM hour is headed that way, as well.

…And Notably Among Teen Boys
Tune-in among teen boys is steadily shifting toward away-from-home listening, which could gain the lion’s share of tune-in by teen boys by the 2012 report.

Weekday Evening Listening Is Rising
Radio increased its listenership, particularly significantly during weekday evenings, when the medium scored higher Cume Ratings among men aged 18-64 and women 25-64. Radio also posted higher ratings in midday reach among men aged 25-64 and women 45-54, as well as on weekends with men 35-64 and women 45-54.

The New Challenge For Personalities

Learn to stand out from the noise in everyone's life in positive and engaging ways which drive more regular usage.

Radio, on average, continues to satisfy listeners by meeting their expectations as we always have. Perceptual research proves this over and over, and the fact that above average usage isn't being driven doesn't matter to the listener, whose favorite stations have always been "seek" and "scan."

Once upon a time, a great marketing tactic was to find 'em, fool 'em and forget 'em. PPM actually makes radio better for the listener as we all pursue more usage by watching how they behave as they listen to us.

Radio Ink's Ed Ryan: What is your advice to programmers on how to maximize ratings for the PPM?

1. Look at a graph of your station's average minute audience over multiple weeks.
2. Look at the "down" time periods, which perform lower than your average.
3. Study what you and your shared cume competition do at those times.
4. Smooth out the valleys in your listening and grow the size of your down average minutes to the level of the highest ones.

"Research IQ"

The best time of year to field perceptual studies, callout, focus groups, music tests? In the constant change that is today's radio universe, the answer is usually "yesterday."

And, as a result, most research companies are working non-stop, year round where once upon a time they centered their activities in the first and third quarters - when many stations get set for fall and spring surveys.

Consolidation cut back on the amount of marketing research done by radio at first back in the late 90's and early 2000's, but now thanks to internet survey and social networking tools there's no reason why any radio manager can't do as much, or even more, listener research and data crunching as was done forty years ago -- when only a few very innovative companies began to recognize that it was possible to learn more about a competitor than even they knew about themselves.

Ultimately, perceptual studies, focus groups and music testing became ubiquitous, until it became obvious that if three stations in the same format all targeted the same demographic, they'd all end up positioning themselves as "less talk, more music" and playing the same 250-300 songs.

Today, it takes a much more sophisticated approach to digging deeper into tastes and lifestyles to fully understand what coalitions drive loyalty and usage, understanding when you can "do-it-yourself" and when the findings you get from online tactics require greater expertise from one of the excellent radio research companies, who - given the complexity of our multi-platform world - are busier than ever.

Stay in close touch with your consultant as you execute research strategies.

We work with all of the vendors and can help you decide what to trend and track in-house and when it's more cost and time-efficient (today's margin for error is smaller than ever and the price of errors is larger than ever!!) to bring in a pro.

To start with, if you have the choice and your market is stable enough to permit you the luxury of not having to panic-schedule research in reaction to competitive surprises, A&O likes:

1. Full market strategic or (if you only own one station and do not plan a format switch under ANY circumstances) competitive face off perceptual study. Field this when the weather is as its worst and respondents will be home - January or February are NOT the months to do focus groups or an auditorium music test unless you live in Florida, Hawaii or a place with residents are so hardy (can you spell Alaska? Wisconsin? Minnesota?) that bad weather won't stop them from going out. Insist on having the responses to this 15-20 minute questionnaire six to eight weeks prior to the start of the spring book. Get all major decision-makers together, including your consultant, for a day away from the station to create an immediate action plan based upon it. A&O does an annual "Roadmap" online study for all of our clients, so that we can track key metrics nationally and benchmark locally. For many of our clients, this is enough to stay competitive as judged by your core, but when you see something you don't understand or know what to do about, that's a great time to talk to a researcher you trust to target a random sample, replicating the ratings methodology. It's not cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than taking action on bad data.

2. Music testing. Ideal: four 400-700 song tests annually, in the month prior to the start of each survey so that you freshen your entire library each book. And, if that is what your competition does, you better as well. Many stations do one annually and, in that case, I'd schedule it exactly six months away from the perceptual study (July-August), include written mini-perceptual questions during the breaks and invite participants to stay after for an informal focus group discussion on promotion and programming issues. A&O tracks a total of almost a thousand gold and recurrent titles annually in four quarterly online music tests which clients are encouraged to participate in. However, as helpful as this info is to trend evolving tastes of core listeners, there's only one way to find out about the music preferences of non-core listeners and that involves more than just using your loyal listener database to test music.

3. Focus groups/listener advisory panels can be used to probe issues that you may want to test more formally in the perceptual study. Or, as a qualitative followup when the data tells you that listeners are behaving in a way you do not fully understand. The key point with focus groups: know three to five action-based questions that you want answered. I would plan them in October-November and/or April-May to learn if listeners are aware of your marketing efforts and how your product is being perceived. Best: Tue-Wed-Thu (be done by 10 pm). Or, Saturday midday. Again, with today's online tools, there's no excuse for not doing this modern day equivalent of hanging out in a bar where your listeners go and asking questions, listening critically. However, again, it's crucial to understand the limitations of this and to know when to ask for a second opinion from someone who does this for a living and can take a more objective view on your behalf.

4. Weekly/biweekly online/callout/listener advisory panels. I also like a monthly 400 person in-house 'mini-rating' that trends station preference and cume, as well as tracking key strategic issues defined in the perceptual study and testing current/recurrent music two to four times per month. Don't waste your time doing it, however, if you are going to ignore the results or call for help when your results don't track with ratings. Draw your music test sample from a mix of core and cumers to your station, balanced based on the needs of your strategy.

5. Marketing/management by wandering around. Monthly or at least quarterly, invite two groups of 15 people chosen at random from the callout/online testing panel to meet at 6 and 8 pm with a member of station management who isn't known publicly - or your consultant - to discuss what they're hearing and reacting to. Mail out/email/place on your website weekly current music rating sheets that encourages at least 100 request line callers/contest players/at work database members to 'listen and rate the music." The larger this sample, the better. Balance it to be sure that males and younger demos are represented proportionally. It's not statistically valid, of course, and there's always a response bias to groups like this to beware of. However, it's amazing how candid even the folks who love your station the most can be.

6. Diary reviews/mechanical diary analysis. Every radio station should have a postal code map in the promotions office with: color-coded ARB/BBM returns by zip plus four and when available even QR code for both your station and meaningful competition. Collect zip code data in callout and database marketing as well. Correlate your loyalty marketing efforts on the geographical areas where you gain the highest AQH contributions and your conversion tactics in your competition's strongest locales.

Note: ARB mailed the 2011 Spring Diary Review brochures to all subscribers in early June and the first choices dates were allocated on June 23. A&O advises you to return the form, requesting a diary review EACH book. You can always cancel the request if you decide when the results come out that you won't need to do a diary review. BBM returns ballots to their regional offices a few weeks after each diary survey is published and now both ARB and BBM have terrific online and desktop software tools that enable you to see much of what you once could only get from a diary review from your own office.

As with everything else mentioned above, A&O will be happy to share our perspective as the next book comes out, show you how much you can still learn from a diary review you can't get anywhere else and can refer you to reasonably-priced experts who tab the data and create strategies from it every day.

There are too many low-cost/no-cost ways to stay in touch with your listeners today, there's simply no excuse for not knowing what your heaviest users think about your programming efforts and also your competition's as well.

We're All Statisticians Now

Doing an online, mail-in or telephone survey?

Thanks to the convenience and low cost of the many online tools now available to radio programmers, the task that once was the exclusive territory of people who specialized in research is now being performed week in and week out as we send out surveys to samples which may or may not be representative of the group of people we want to listen more.

Statisticians say that one response in 2,000 "WILL" be wacko, no matter how perfect the sample is!

That's where a very arcane calculation - standard deviation from the mean - comes in. It can't tell you if your entire sample was not the one you wanted to target, but if you know that the vast majority of your data comes from folks in the right age group, the correct geographical locations, a good balance of gender and qualitative profiles, it can help you find the outliers who can greatly skew your results.

Hand check each of your survey responses before tabulating them by computer. All it takes is one such form to throw otherwise very good data WAY OFF.

You actually may get more actionable and reliable research from a smaller, more consistent, cleaner sample.

Nielsen: Radio's Reach Is Up

Cell phone only homes and 18-34's use of radio, both in terms of cume and time spent with the medium have grown in the last year, according to Nielsen estimates of national radio rating trends.

All Products Are Experiments

ARB's Gary Marince's sensible advice on yesterday's monthly Arbitron PPM call: “When you’re explaining, you’re losing...” no doubt stood some programmers' hair on end.

Produce programming for vacation periods? Constantly conduct experiments in real time?

“The metric that’s most important to me, at first glance, is daily occasions" of listening. He says occasions drive TSL, or Time Spent Listening. “PPM is a wonderful laboratory", because of its rich depth of detail and fast turnaround. But he suggests making just one change at a time, instead of two or more things that might cancel each other out.

In the PPM future, knowledge, innovation and swiftness will be requisites. Are you up for it?

As Tom Peters says "Crazy times call for crazy organizations."

Research tends to make companies too slow to act: 'ready, ready, ready, ready, aim, aim, aim, aim...' The only way to find oil is to drill wells.

Now, you can watch listeners as they consume your product.

Merging two dinosaurs doesn't make a gazelle. In today's world of business, you must be fast, smart and creative. Latent needs + deep insights = tomorrow's opportunities.

Satisfied customers aren't enough today. Satisfaction is simply the difference between feeling P-O'd and feeling nothing. Today, you must WOW your customers.

U1/U2 = success. (U1 = understanding. U2 = urgency)

Asking The Right Question

I have been seeing this movie a lot in the last year: station is disappointed in its initial PPM rank, so they commission a major radio research company to do a perceptual to see what's wrong.

The research comes back that the station is very healthy and pronounces that the station's brand is strong but the problem is "execution."

Could this be because the researcher is asking the same questions in the same ways which were so predictive of success in diaries, weekly cume and favorite station + importance of parameters + key image ownership?

Shouldn't we be asking in the major markets where PPM is going to be currency in 2010 about daily cume? Daily occasions? Key personalities and programming elements which drive listeners to use a station more days per week and more times per day?

In the U.S., Arbitron is planning a first quarter update of PD Advantage web and promises new reports to be added. Hopefully, one of them will be a day by day report of how many panelists use each competitive station each day of the week and how many times per day for each daypart as well as how long the exposure is for each of them.

Sadly, from my perspective, Canada's BBM is another story completely.

Their InfoSys software (a report from it is pictured) was developed in Spain (for TV, not radio). I have as yet to encounter a Canadian programmer who even fully understands how it works, let alone how to begin to extract info like ARB's current Vital Signs report, which has been available to both diary and PPM stations in PD Advantage software for years now, let alone anything more sophisticated to assist programmers in understanding what they need to do to grow their shares.

Hopefully, BBM includes a New Years resolution to look very hard at the Programmer's Package ARB provides online each month and come up with something as helpful.

Also, would it be wise to reconsider the decision to show only "average minute audience," rather than "average quarter hour," the standard for comparison we've all used since radio audience measurement was created? Not only is BBM comparing apples to oranges in its diary reports vs PPM studies, but audience sizes appear to go down. Who thought that would be a good idea?

We all have a lot to gain if radio programmers can quickly understand the differences between ratings driven by memorablity and behavioral research.

I wish ARB and BBM would both step up their efforts to help stations figure out what's going on and what they need to do about it.

So far, I'd say that ARB is running faster in the right direction than either BBM or radio's longtime perceptual researchers across North America, but we all have plenty of catching up to do if we expect advertisers to see us as "programming experts," let alone our ratings as credible and useful.

Which List - "A" or "B" - Reflects You?

"A" = Top Five A&O AccuTest currents, ranked by total “like a lot” score (your local mileage may vary, of course)
1. Alan Jackson
2. Jason Aldean
3. Carrie Underwood
4. Sugarland
5. Brad Paisley

OR "B" = Top Five Big Champagne Digital Singles (who knows what radio station these folks use?)
1. Miley Cyrus
2. Taylor Swift
3. Carrie Underwood
4. Kellie Pickler
5. Rascal Flatts

Tip: local country radio listeners, a 60/40 mix of men and women, balanced 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54, half heavy users and secondary users, say that they are "A."

It's nice to look at the newly unveiled "Twitter chart" too, of course, but now, more than ever: you need to be asking a carefully-balanced local sample of your listeners what they’d like to hear. Then, the final step: make sure your airplay reflects those tastes.

Good News From Canada For All Of Us In Radio

2009 Foundation Research: Radio connects anytime, anywhere: According to the annual Foundation Research study of 1,012 Canadians, radio reaches 90% of adults 18+ every week. Lifestyle plays a big role in radio’s performance - the more active you are the more radio you listen to; working Canadians, parents and the affluent are all above average in terms of radio tuning with weekly reach of 94% or better.

“Radio plays an integral part in everyday life; it accompanies every activity, from driving and working to surfing online. No other single media can match radio for its versatility, audience characteristics and its unique ability to reach consumers anytime, anywhere.” -- Chris Bandak of Foundation Research.

Highlights of the study include:

· 81% of adults listen to radio daily, second only to TV in reach potential. The percentage listening increases to 84% or more for working adults, wealthy Canadians and women with children.
· For 83% of adults, radio use in 2008 increased or stayed the same as the previous year; that percentage is equal to the internet and higher than newspapers (79%) and TV (76%). The main reasons for increased tuning are more time spent in car, longer commutes and the ability to listen at work.
· Adults spend more time with radio than any other media during a typical work day. They listen to traditional radio an average of 125 minutes and online radio for 34 minutes. Radio’s total of 159 minutes is 23% more than TV and approximately double that of the Internet.

· Radio accompanies Canadians throughout their busy day.
- 70% of Canadians listen to radio on the drive to work, school or shopping
- Radio ranks highest of all media reaching consumers prior to a shopping occasion
- 36% listen to radio while surfing the internet