So, Seriously. Is Going To Do Anything About it?

Probably not.

Only the very courageous among us will want to take the risk of doing things differently in exchange for a potential payoff.  Old habits die hard.  BUT:  here's the payoff.

If we cut repetition complaints in half satisfaction could go even a few percentage points higher, driving better perceived TSL (diary measurement) and actual usage (PPM).

• The trade charts won’t do it.  The chart editors have been concerned about overnight and other “daypart” spins for many years and have certainly talked about ways to remove them from their charts, but there hasn’t been a subscription-supported trade magazine since the deaths of Bill and Janet Gavin.  Ads paid for by the very folks who also pay for the promotional tactics support them.
• Could they create two different charts, one for the higher level of spins that PPM appears to require and the other for diary markets where it's still possible to sustain 14 hours a week average TSL?  I wonder if PPM stations mixed in one monitored chart with diary markets hurts diary market stations that are drawn to increase their spins to dangerous levels given their longer TSL.  Most likely, even the stations wouldn't support this idea.  No one wants to be in the "smaller markets" group.
• Labels and publishers won’t do it. They all support the idea in principle, since it would save them promo expenditures which really don’t do very much to drive sales or familiarity, but they all fear that they’d be the only one to stop and would get beaten by competitors that continue.  This will be true as long as AM/FM radio spins are the #1 driver of music sales and, thank goodness for today’s radio, there appears to be no foreseeable end to that.
• Consolidated radio owners won’t do it.  Their debt drives everything they do and suggesting that giving up a few thousand dollars of their top line in order to fund marketing being paid for now for them by labels and indie promoters could get an exec fired.
• Your competition won’t do it.  They also fear that you’ll get the money they’d leave on the table if they did.
• Going back to “reporting” from a larger panel in place of monitored spins won’t do it.  Before monitored airplay, folks reported songs they didn’t actually play.

YOU will do it only when you’re convinced that carefully testing every recurrent spin to be sure it’s adding value for listeners.

YOU will do it only when you come up with better win/win ways to give value to your partners in the music business than burying songs you really know in your heart will never see the light of day on your playlist.  Commit to the songs and artists you believe in and give them meaningful spins when the majority of your audience is listening so that they you can build familiarity and solid test scores in fewer weeks.

YOU will do it when you see ratings growth by doing what listeners love and that is what I am confident will happen.

YOU will do it precisely because all of the others won't, and that's going to gain "someone" a power advantage.

After all, of the 8,874 folks who participated in A&O&B’s Roadmap 2014 listener survey the majority are very satisfied with the country radio they hear right now.  And, that number is trending up.  Of that total 1,336 say they are dissatisfied as a result of too much repetition.  15% of the total sample.

My proposition:  when your satisfaction levels and cume audience are at all time highs (more than double the level of any other negatives!) there is only one direction to go - down - unless you respond to the folks who aren’t happy in ways that don’t hurt you with current fans.

I think stations which take cutting "core dissatisfied" folks' repetition perception levels in half could see a 5-7% increase in usage.

R Is For Repetition .. And, For Recurrents

The pioneers of Top 40 and country radio back in the 1950's and 1960's felt that after very heavy airplay as currents, recurrents deserved a rest.  For example, Bill Drake dropped all power currents after they completed their run on his radio stations for as long as a year before carefully reintroducing them.

By the early 1970's as research pioneers like Bob Pittman, Todd Wallace, Steve Casey and the country format's Larry Daniels and Ed Salamon, among others, started testing them and learned that this potential category of music was the most familiar and popular, though also often highly burned.

Most of them played two per hour in tiered categories.  Now, many stations play a third (or more!) of their hourly mix from the stay current and recurrent rotations.

If our goal is to keep the song by song hit potential high and competitive while also addressing things that could be driving core country fan's complaints of repetition, I submit that it's crucial to research every song you plan to play more than two times a day so that you know that each tune being exposed 7-8 times a day is more powerful and familiar with lower polarity and negatives than any song being played 3-5 times and those are measurably stronger than the ones you play once or twice a day.

Ideally, that would mean that you should be testing some 70 titles every single week for burn, demo appeal and impact.  But, of course, that would be prohibitively expensive.  So, most of us test the currents and cycle perhaps 25-30% of the recurrents each week, meaning that it can take four to five weeks to track listener responses to all recurrents on the air.

That's the best thing about MScore tracking in my opinion.  You can watch every single song played each week in terms of its ability to drive usage for your PPM panel.

Of course, the minuscule sample size of the PPM panel, let alone just the "switchers" (about half of your total panel) causes tremendous wobbles so it's important to use every other research tool at your disposal so that you can make an educated guess on each play every day - is it a wobble or a real move?

1. Every recurrent should have burn in single digits, positive passion of at least 35% favorite and 70%+ total positives and combined negatives under 15-20%.
2. Don't mix recurrents in current or power gold categories.  Keep a tight rein on each category and make sure your balance is precisely what you plan in your coalition-building music strategy.
3. Make "same hour/next day" rules your new religion.  Spread out categories, artists, song types, genres, et al as widely as possible so every three songs you play proves variety is your goal following only "song power" in importance.

What other ideas do you employ to cut your core listener complaints of repetition at least in half, with the goal of improving your station's average time spent listening at a time when the majority of radio's TSL is trending down in the wake of increased fragmentation and new media competition?

I'd love to hear from you.

Stop Punishing Listeners With Daypart Spins

A few years ago A&O&B consulted a top ten market leader whose competition was owned by one of the major consolidated group owners which at the time also owned the biggest concert promotion company in the world.

As a result, our client got no tickets, meet and greets, pre-show mini-concerts, on-sale remotes, artist interview about the concerts coming to town and all other typical radio-concert promotion opportunities.

Yet, this aggressive broadcaster still managed to own the events by buying everything they needed for cash.

The annual budget for doing so was under $30,000, which makes me wonder why some stations do so many things to do damage to their "repetition" image for such a small amount of promotion support, comparatively speaking.

A CASE AGAINST EXTENDED DAYPARTING

One big reason, as noted here yesterday, a single could conceivably "lose momentum" in the first two months or so is because, frankly, it often never was given a real chance in the first place.

That's what led me to investigate the famed Double-Edged Sword of Early Airplay: the thrill of getting your record added but also the agony of knowing it is going to be heavily restricted to after 7pm or even overnights only for an extended period.

These limitations are often so severe that, using reach-and-frequency models based on the same turnover ratios that radio advertisers rely on, we were able to determine that many new releases don't have the opportunity to become familiar enough to be test-worthy before their lifespan ends.

At CRS 2014, Stone Door Media Lab's Jeff Green identified what he termed the "Sweet 16" rated reporting stations with the lowest turnover, enabling them to establish familiarity on new singles (and advertised products/services) faster than others. Such data give these stations a competitive advantage and also can help their record industry counterparts without punishing late night or overnight listeners.  If you'd like to see his presentation graphics, click here.

What's particularly noteworthy about the perpetuation of the common dayparting practice is that research from M-Score reliably shows very little tune-out to newer Country singles regardless of artist. In short, Country fans like what their favorite stations play them.

And, what is really learned by playing a song overnights only to a tiny audience segment anyway?

Are those really the listeners PDs/MDs should rely on for validating their music decisions? It could be argued that air personalities can make any song familiar simply by talking about it, and many stations' ratings, especially in smaller markets, are so strong they really face virtually no risk in playing new music -- certainly no more than by playing a commercial for a car dealer or mattress store every few hours or long stopsets two-three times per hour.

These days, when consumers are demanding to hear whatever they want whenever they want it via numerous music streaming alternatives, it seems to make less and less sense to daypart newer music for more than a few weeks.

This appears to be especially true for serving Country fans, who are so receptive to it and love their local stations, as documented year after year by A&O&B, as well as by the CMA, Edison and Nielsen.

Admit It. They Are Right

When the most dissatisfied core country radio listeners complain that we seem to play the same songs over and over, they are not wrong.

The conventional wisdom says "if they're not complaining about repetition, you're not playing the hits often enough."  

It's time to question that and look at what's been happening.

Risks of Increased Song Repetition at Country Radio are Real

For the past several years, the Albright & O’Malley & Brenner annual Roadmap reports have identified that song repetition is country radio's heavy users No. 1 “dissatisfaction” issue. In fact, in CMA Insiders panel tests and Edison Research CRS studies also replicate results that seem to show that playing songs too often consistently far outpaces other concerns such as “too many commercials” or “irrelevant or too much DJ talk” for country radio heavy users.

A clear majority has shared this view every year over the last decade, with the proportion of thousands of Country listeners surveyed holding this opinion ranging between 54-62%. The January 2014 client exclusive report shows 58.8% cite song repetition as the top negative impression they have of Country radio.

Despite A&O&B’s clarion call to Country programmers to pull back on playing current singles too often and national research documenting decreases in time spent listening to radio (including Country radio), stations seem to be content to maintain business as usual. Perhaps PDs dismiss the risks, regarding such complaints as shop-worn issues that have always persisted in the minds of listeners and which run contrary to studies that indicate listeners want to hear the hits as much as possible.

How real is this consumer perception? The Stone Door Media Lab offered to examine the issue of repetition at Country radio, comparing spins at different chart milestones from August 2006 and January 2014. The Stone Door study’s results show that Country stations are playing currents far more than ever.

The spin frequency for charting Country singles is rising. Here’s proof:


And, it takes more spins than ever to achieve a No. 1, too – up 24% since mid-2006. The average number of weekly spins for No. 1 singles:
 

2013-2014                  48.32

2012-2013                  48.20

2011-2012                  45.37

2010-2011                  43.38

2009-2010                  42.13

2008-2009                  40.70

2007-2008                  38.87

2006-2007                  38.95

Even though A&O&B’s 2014 Roadmap report shows that nearly 72% of Country listeners are still “very satisfied” with their Country stations, these consumers are demonstrating a steadily growing appetite for alternative music discovery and entertainment options. Nearly a quarter (24.9%) cite a “pure play” online choice as a destination “where they go” when they leave their favorite Country station, instead of another Country station. That’s up from 20.4% in 2013.

As the saying goes, perception is reality. But in this case, reality supports perception.

Bottom line: Country radio needs to seriously consider this No. 1 negative. 

Tomorrow:  why is this happening?  Will cutting back on big current hit spins hurt PPM station ratings?

Now, The Bad News

At a CRS 2014 session Nielsen Audio revealed national country format trend data showing weekly cume among teens rose 8% and was up an impressive 15% among 18-24s helping country’s audience share grow 17% among teens (12-17 year-olds) and 16% with young adults (18-24), allowing the format to leapfrog past CHR in persons 18-24 and move from third to second among teens in diary markets.  At the same time, country’s share of 25-34 year-olds slipped 9% (still holding onto #1 in that demo).

The cume increases came largely as a result of new listenership, driven by population shifts.

We're fortunate that happened.  Here's why, thanks to another CRS prersentation, from Stone Door Media Lab's Jeff Green:

Larry Rosin, Roy H. Williams and Fred Jacobs have all fretted about a potential cause of this trend in recent blog posts and I can't disagree with any of their concerns:  the increasing de-localization of radio and extreme commercial loads.

This is important because normally it's far less expensive to improve time spent listening than it is to grow cume.

Country's core audience complains twice as much about music repetition as their reason for being dissatisfied/listening less than they do about "too many commercials," so country programmers have it in their power to turn our negative TSL trend around at almost no financial cost if we take listeners at their word and don't continue to virtually ignore their complaint.

To do so will mean letting go of some old habits and traditional wisdoms.

All next week, I'll offer my reasoning and proposed strategies. 

Watch this space.

MLK Day Must Have Been A Slow News Day For Radio's Trades

• Radio Ink's top story:  musicFIRST Slams NAB, Radio on Playlist Repetition
• Radio World: MusicFirst: Radio Song Repetition 'Shocking'
• RAIN:  Bill O’Reilly recommends Pandora
• Legendary programmer Bill Hennes wants us to factor in music sales data:  Programmers Take The Easy Way Out

NAB's Dennis Wharton, fortunately, was quick to add some facts to the fury:  “If the charge is that local radio plays popular music that listeners enjoy, we plead guilty."

In about three weeks each and every A&O&B client will know precisely how many of their listeners use Pandora and all other media choices at their fingertips and how satisfied their average listener is with their favorite radio station, thanks to Roadmap 2014.  If you're an A&O&B client, don't miss this free opportunity to get facts and stats to guide you in the coming year!

Weekly callout, online testing, other innovative music tests and mScore tracking are among the many tools that take the guesswork out of programming decision-making you should be using if you have concerns about your potential audience's music preferences.

You can literally ask a large number of your listeners whether they are tired of hearing a song on the radio, whether they'd like to hear it more, less or about the same.   Track this over many weeks, follow their guidance and watch repetition complaints go down and time spent with your radio station increase.

This isn't a new idea.  Radio has proven its effectiveness for more than 30 years.

Music sales numbers mean a lot to you if you're an artist, a publisher or a record company, but I hope my radio competition uses them determine their music rotations.  I'll test them with my target audience and beat them every time!
  
Finally, the only reason I'd be concerned about what Bill O'Reilly makes use of to get his music when he wants it would be if you know that he had previously cumed your radio station.

They Always Say They Want Less Repetition

During the CRS 2013 session "PPM: 5 Strategies for Recall Markets" (an idea and data-packed session well worth buying the CD for if you missed it) both Jeff Garrison and Scott Huskey agreed it's almost impossible to overplay the biggest hits.

This isn't the first time I've written about this, but it's worth revisiting since "too much repetition" remains a consistent complaint from country radio listeners.

Using Pinnacle Media's "Online Tracker" here's how a typical station's ultra core heavy users responded this week as they were asked after hearing a song hook whether they wanted to hear every current the station was playing "more" or "less," when ranked by the highest "play less" scores in the test:

If you hear "too much repetition" from the folks who listen to your station an hour a day or more, I think that what they are really saying is that the don't like some of the songs you play.

High passion + low dislike = songs they want to hear more!

A Different Way To Look At It

I have a number of clients which use Pinnacle Media Worldwide's Online Tracker to test currents and their software permits an interesting analysis of currents that I hadn't seen elsewhere.

Sure, I still recommend tracking crosstabs of "total love (a favorite song)," total hate, total burn, total familiarity, total positive, total target male positive, total target female positive, total younger half of the target positive vs total older half of the target positive as the primary way to rank and control spin on currents and recurrents.

But, since so many perceptual studies over the last several years with country fans have found repetition to be a major complaint, Pinnacle's program now asks listeners if they'd like to hear a specific song "less" or "more" as well.

So, are radio listeners saying that we play currents too much for their taste?  I ranked this report which combines the opinions of more than 300 25-54 country fans (65% female/35% male) using Online Tracker by "play less."

Not a single song of the 32 tested in the last seven days had more folks saying we should be playing it "less" than wanted to hear it more!

Here's how I read it:  "too much repetition" doesn't seem to me that you play songs too much. 

It means you play songs, styles, eras and genres I don't like too much.

Taylor Swift = High Burn

Small wonder; big exposure!