Programming By The Numbers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Country Radio Too Dependent On Music?

NuVooDoo's strategic researchers have been sharing their radio format national perceptual trending on their blog for several years.  Recently, they've been probing the aspects of programming which "delight" the typical format listener.

If you ask what it was that surprised them other than a song, the answers tend to be contest prizes and funny morning show bits.  Well-designed contests hit the mark, as does genuinely humorous comedy.  While listeners rarely cite being pleasantly surprised by station imaging, we’re certain that there are instances of that among the 37% overall who were surprised in a good way by something other than a song in the past week.
   -- Leigh Jacobs

Pop CHR ranks #1 in its ability to please the audience with music and country comes in a close second in that measurement.

However, when they dug into the most pleasing non-music content, country radio ranks next to last when compared to eight other music formats.

Even worse, country's most pleasing non-music surprises come about once a month, compared to the other format listeners who get their surprises daily or at least weekly when compared to our P-1 listeners.

If the passion for country's music softens, as it historically always has about once a decade for every music style, almost all other formats are better positioned in the minds of their core in contest prizes, funny morning show bits and other program elements besides music images.

There's never a better time to measure your station-specific performance in driving usage and loyalty with non-music content than right now.

John Marks Has A Great Press Agent

The entire A&O&B team are big fans of the SiriusXM Nashville-based country programmer and we all personally spend a lot of time with all of the country music channels he programs, not because of his good looks and charm, but because we love his innovative approach to music programming,

The longtime country expert got started at Ohio University's broadcast department and then went from Athens on to WPFB in Middletown, Ohio, and many major markets from Seattle to Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and San Diego to name a few that culminated in his current gig.

His latest coup:  convincing USA Today writer Brian Mansfield that playing three females an hour is newsworthy. 

"We're pulling in a wide swath of female talent to gather up what the listeners will respond to." -- John Marks

The risky part, of course is the promise that they will be little-known records by women with and without record deals and of course that is news for many people.

Not for me.

IMHO:  John has golden ears and I'd bet he opens the door to records and radio one more time for some talented newcomers with great tunes.

Does This Look Like A Format That's About To Fragment?

Since roughly a third of all radio users give all radio stations some 70% of their total hours of listening, it's safe to say that as goes the core, so goes the radio station they use.

That's why A&O&B has been tracking annual "Roadmap" online perceptual studies for many years.

In 2014, 8,874 very local fans in more than 70 markets in the U.S. & Canada gave us their opinions.  Nine of ten were "P-1," since just 9.3% choose country as 2nd or 3rd choice.

As Mike O'Malley blogged that passion for today's country runs very high:  "even among 55-64 year olds, six in ten like new country frommillennial stars 'a lot.'"  

That's driving improving total hours tuned:

It's especially the case with younger demos:

The biggest increase came 18-24, but is across all demos:

Loyalty (likely to switch if something new became available) is also on the upswing:

That's not say that there aren't individual radio stations failing to perform at these benchmarks whose listeners might jump at the chance to try something different and new.  As Radio-Info's Mike Kinosian reported on Friday, one third of the Nielsen rated country stations in his last tracking study failed to join the national up trend for the country format.

I hope you aren't one of them, but it appears that the average country station among A&O&B clients is well-positioned to fend off a niche competitor!

If you aren't among the majority, A&O&B can help,