RIF or RIP?

Applying the term "reductions in force" to the firing of people and reordering of financial priorities from content creation, street presence, local middle management and customer/listener service to debt reduction can be a misnomer, sending the wrong message to anyone hoping to gain market share as companies like Clear Channel and Cumulus decide what to keep and what to discard.

Asian martial arts proves that it's quite possible to quickly prevail against a stronger, bigger adversary if you understand what true force is and how to leverage it.

My first lesson in this fact came in the late 1970's when I left local radio in San Jose to join consultant-syndication company Drake-Chenault.

One of my first client station visits was to North Carolina Summit Broadcasting General Manager Roger Stockton, who I was trying to convince that his radio station should move from one of our 24/7 syndicated formats, "Great American Country" which was voiced by the legendary Bob Kingsley to adding a live morning show and other "live and local" dayparts.

"Don't people wonder if Bob ever sleeps?" I queried Stockton.

He replied, "they don't seem to, since we have an 18 share in those time periods."

Consistent music rotations, a familiar voice front and also back announcing all of the current music and tight formatics compared to what other choices Triad country listeners had was sufficient force to win big at the time.

That station was WTQR and fortunately Stockton and his company had the foresight to add budget for some great personalities over the next few years, thus maintaining a ratings juggernaut that has endured for decades.

Now, of course, it's a Clear Channel station and is both in the crosshairs of its present ownership's "RIF" and its Entercom direct country competition which is working to make it an "RIP" instead.

Jay Meyers, CEO of Adelante Media Group and a former Clear Channel executive told Inside Radio yesterday that where a personality is located doesn’t matter.

“Local and relevant are important but live and location are not,” he says. “What matters is whether the content keeps the listener in touch with their community and gives them the same bond they used to get when there were jocks around the clock.”

Meyers is talking about a force that matters most right now if you're across the street as Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman shakes things up in the programming ranks at radio’s largest company, relevance.

IR also quoted Pittman from Facebook’s f8 Developer Conference in San Francisco last month: “We’ve got to get our program directors to rethink. We’ve got creative talent and great programmers but we have to figure out a way to unleash them so ideas come flooding in.”

Automating radio's programming is nothing new and neither is this tested and proven theorem:

• Great beats local.
• Great local beats unengaged execution, no matter where it comes from or how famous the voice.
• Fun, originality, creativity, passion, interactivity, proper targeting, position, excellent formatics dominate as long as it makes the listener feel something more than anything else on the radio right now.

May THAT force be with you, radio people, as you navigate your career in these turbulent times for us all.

News And Comment

News: A bit of poetic justice and extreme irony as CBS Radio resigns from the Country Music Association just as the organization started Country Music Month, after CMA signs a ten year deal for TV broadcast rights with ABC. They told CBS Radio/Phoenix OM and KMLE PD Jeff Garrison to resign his longtime position on the CMA Board Of Directors. Now, he gets a new assignment, as he explained to Country Aircheck “helping our Country stations and our digital platforms to work more closely with artists to extend the brands of our stations while promoting new artists, album releases, concerts and other projects" as VP/Country Artist Relations, in addition to his role in Phoenix.

Comment: Every country radio station in the world needs to join the CMA. Now, more than ever. As a board member, I promise to work with the other radio representatives on the board to make it more worth your while than ever in the coming year!

CBS may have a lot of reporting and monitored station muscle, but no one in the industry is as well positioned to aggressively assist “Country radio stations and our digital platforms to work more closely with artists to extend the brands of our stations while promoting new artists, album releases, concerts and other projects." Join. Then, let's join hands with CMA to do what CBS hopes to do without CMA within it and even better for all radio stations in every market size and ownership affiliation. That's what CMA was founded to do.

News: Cumulus/Atlanta has decided that the future for their new acquisition WKHX is to offer a choice rather than battle head-on anymore with Clear Channel's WUBL KIX has just gone from 220 tunes in its Gold catalog the week prior to 381 last week. If every song is a marketing message, KIX is saying "hellooo, 45-54." They now play only 37% current and recurrents and have added early Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, the Judds, Patty Loveless, Diamond Rio and many others from the 80's and 90's. CC's The Bull is 68% current/recurrent. It's "best country hits" vs "today's new country."

Comment: A&O's 2011 "Roadmap" national perceptual study certainly has shown that there's a large upper demo appetite for more variety and less repetition and Coleman's CRS 2011 research project replicates that it's also quite possible to build a very viable and unique music coalition centered on the highly familiar music of the class of '89 boom.

However, are there enough meters in the Atlanta country sample for two stations to create a "difference" that only half the audience will love?

Both Cumulus and Clear Channel managements are savy and smart, so you can be sure they looked hard at it before making this decision.

It's a first for PPM measured markets, though Cox's classic country KTHT/Houston, has proven that an even older narrow country target can perform consistently in a PPM market with a large enough country cume.

Keep an eye on Atlanta and be prepared to learn something about country's narrow demos and metered sampling.

The pressure is on ARB to deliver consistent samples in 18-44, men, women, and 40-54, men and women.

If they don't, the ratings for 'KHX and 'UBL will be more of an indication of ongoing panel sample issues than with the differentiation strategy Cumulus unveiled last Friday.

Making Show Prep Routine (from "The Trachman Files")

Everyone's prep time is different and how you spend it depends on the kind of material that's appropriate for your station and your listeners. But there's a pretty bare-bones minimum daily requirement of at least an hour's prep for a morning show. Among the things you should be doing in that time...

1. Read the local paper (yesterday's, if it's an afternoon paper). Check the local TV station web sites (and other web sites carrying local information).
2. Inform yourself about what's going on in the town. Look for "little" items that interest you. If you find yourself responding emotionally to an article, it's potentially something you'll want to Share with a listener.
3. Scan your news sources for major national stories. Also, look over the features and show business news. Be on the lookout for silliness, absurdity, irony, and what I call "throat-lumpers" (things that make you want to say "Awwwww"). Watch for anything that relates to current artists you're playing.
4. Look out the window. Better yet, go outside for a few minutes; look at the sky, smell the air; "experience" the day. Familiarize yourself with both the official forecast, and the "look and feel" of the day.
5. Look over new copy for promotions -- so you'll understand how a game works before the first time you have to do it. Read any new ad copy, if possible, and rehearse it out loud.
6. Glance through publicity releases or any other material you may have on current artists. Some stations keep a "book" on all artists who will be appearing locally over the coming weeks.
7. Set up any raps you want to do with your news person. You don't have to script them, but the other person should at least have a broad idea of what to expect, and where the bit will end.

There is no substitute for prepping your show. There is no way you can be your best without doing the work. You expect it of your jocks; how can you expect less of yourself? - Jay Trachman

Compose your raps. Be they Life Content -- which you should be gathering 16 hours every day -- or Local Content -- the best kind is that which you experience personally, rather than what you read about -- they should be pre-thought-out. My personal preference is to script my raps, word for word.

Some prefer to make notes. Depending on format, you should have about two prepared raps for each hour of your show. And you should have on paper, if not the entire rap, at least a topic sentence (what it's about) and your closing line, or "kicker."

Should everything you do on the air be prepared in advance? Of course not! But by entering the studio with a sheaf of papers in hand that will provide you with more material, of various kinds, than you can possibly use that day, you free yourself to be creative as the impulse arises. It's very hard to create when you "have to."

When you don't have to, you can relax and enjoy whatever creative sparks fly.

JA adds: you may win by not doing all of these things routinely... until someone across the street from you does so.

Show Prep -- How And Why

Jay Trachman, as anyone who has read my blog for very long knows, was an immense inspiration and a lifelong personal friend to me. As I tour Turkey and Greece on vacation right now, I am going to open some old Trachman tidbits in hopes it keeps his memory alive for you as well.

There's no way you can do a successful morning show "on the cheap." And I'm not talking about money.

I work with PD-morning hosts with the vague hope that they can learn how to do a better show just by talking with me.

As though all they lacked was a little knowledge;

"Trachman will tell me what's wrong and how to fix it, and that'll make everything great!"

Well, it ain't so.

90% of the time, one of the things I'm going to tell you is, you need to do more work. You need to do research; to prep your show.

The unprepped show is easy to spot, even when done by a very talented jock.

The give-away is that he or she will talk mainly about the weather, the music, and one or two bits pre-packaged from a service. He may chat amiably with a colleague on the air, but the raps are always too long, and often seem to go nowhere. Typically, the show lacks "substance," meaning relating to anything besides what's going on at that moment in the jock's little world, or what's been spoon-fed to him or her.

Here are just a few of the elements that should go into a morning show: Life Content, Local Content, Music Content, listener phone-ins, banter with colleagues, calendars, games and contests, and informational raps.

They all require time and effort to set up.

"But," says my typical student, "I work a 12-hour day already, between these two jobs! When am I supposed to find the time to prep my show?"

That's not a question I can answer in specifics.

Look for chores you can delegate as PD; look for times you can combine one job with another.

The fact that you're already over-burdened does not relieve you of the responsibility of a) keeping your listener entertained and informed and b) setting the pace for the rest of your air staff.

Be Like Taylor

As the size of the generational cohorts comprising the age group which has already started hitting retirement now won't peak and start downward in proportion of the population until the 4.3 million babies born in 1957 during the baby boom have fast forwarded 65 years to 2022, it's inevitable that many country stations which once prided themselves on having a mean age right in the middle of 25-54, now find themselves with an audience whose average age is moving up into the mid-to-high 40's.

Last week's New Yorker offers a wonderfully-flattering in-depth profile of the woman who may have changed that course for us, Taylor Swift. Writer Lizzie Widdicombe makes it clear that Taylor wasn't trying to do anything so calculated as target the nation's next very, very large emerging generation of country fans - today's teen age girls and 18-28 females - in the article titled "You Belong With Me: How Taylor Swift made teen angst into a business empire." She's just being herself.

For those of us who hope to remain relevant from a perspective of several decades older, clearly we have some learning to do and even the descriptive phrases Widdicombe uses provide a list of traits not normal to an X'er or Boomer that we need to incorporate as we work to hold not only the Swift generation, as their values impact the entire culture.

• Radiates unjaded sincerity no matter how contrived the situation
• Writes her own material
• Like Dolly Parton, writes autobiographical story songs that relate to her target audience
• In the Internet era, (that) is also a clever marketing device
• Doesn’t drink or go to clubs. More "wholesome" than her parents' generation was at her age
  
• Emotional and personal in universal ways
  
• Her mother and father remain a big part of her life
• Spends most of her off time with band members, friends, and family
• Approaches her career with the seriousness of a C.E.O

Anyone who opens a microphone on a country radio station would do well to run through that checklist each time they prep and deliver.

N. O. E. S. L. W. S. T. M. S.

"Using 'commercial-free' verbiage is equal to saying 10-12 minutes of every hour of your station's product is worthless," says Jim Kirkland in Radio-Info.com.

Jim should look at our product from a listener and not just a media buyer perspective.

No doubt that our commercial time is worth a lot more than we normally manage to get paid for it, but there’s a reason why online streaming ads have to be :20 seconds or less and extremely engaging.

The future of media is moving to end user control and those buttons on their radio have always given them the power to avoid anything they don’t feel is worth the time.

Meanwhile, even the AAA confirms that the best bet is not to change stations while driving since even that, they infer, occasionally contributes to distracted driving.

OK, I'll stop now, after one final "No One Ever Said Life Was Supposed to Make Sense."

Making Sense Of The Senseless

I understand why record labels play both sides in major markets where all competitive stations are monitored reporters.

Makes sense. Support the station which supports your music and artists. If you don't add it, I'll try to get your competition to do so in hopes that forces you to add it.

What doesn’t make sense to me is in medium and small markets where there’s only one reporting station and as a result labels make sure they get everything and the non-reporter next to nothing.

Those stations may be on top for the required three books in a row and reporting status may change then. Or, the non-reporting programmers and music directors will be at reporting stations some day and they will remember.

Hopefully, the label executives who lobbied for the smaller number of reporters in hopes it would save money have now figured out that didn't work quite that way and some day they'll start to lobby for more stations in more markets to report too.

More reporters means fewer people with too much power and a more representative, credible chart.

Even less sensible: small markets where no one is a reporter and yet artist managers still try to enforce a standard rider in their contracts which says only reporting stations can welcome the show or appear on stage.

Often the only station in town which has partnered with the county fair or local casino for years finds that they are told the artist’s road manager wants it to be a “neutral show” with no welcoming station in spite of the fact that they are the only game in town.

A Continuing Series: Stuff I Don't Understand

• Radio takes 15.6% of a consumer’s media day but, even under the rosiest analysis, its share of advertising dollars is just 11%.
  
  
• Only 3.17% of RBR readers say “in the new digital environment, the main competition for local Television is newspaper and just 5.13% think radio’s main competition is newspaper. If so, how come we still let them bill a third of all media ad dollars in many markets?

I'll repeat it: No One Ever Said Life Was Supposed to Make Sense

(More) No One Ever Said Life Was Supposed to Make Sense

It's SO great to see nice guy WWYZ PD Lance Tidwell, morning personality Corey Meyers and the Clear Channel/Hartford team leverage Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley concerts to the highest country station 6+ share in the history of PPM measurement anywhere, 12.3 6+.

Meanwhile, country's PPM-measured share of the radio listening in Atlanta is 6.8. In Houston, it's a 10.1. In Dallas (where A&O hears that 40% of 25-54 panelists are Spanish-language-only households) it's a 7.8.

Can it really be that country music is hotter right now in Hartford than it is in Houston?

Bigger in Connecticut than Georgia?

It's "Hankless Monday" #2

The first thing about the whole brouhaha which makes much sense to me in any other way than just a whole bunch of folks going for publicity is this morning's RBR-TVBR observation:

"We got a lot of comments on the original story as to why ESPN decided to take a stance on this, either way, considering it was not even said on their network. But who knows what sort of comments (and from whom) they had been receiving on their end. Most likely most of them were in favor of pulling the song. Perhaps if Williams had issued a true apology, it could have been different."

The dust up seems to me like a huge coup for Hank, since he hasn’t gotten this much media coverage (he's on The View and Hannity tomorrow) in many years and will probably help ESPN too when after awhile they kiss and make up, getting even more publicity when they do.

Meanwhile, it brought up once again the old canard that “Clear Channel banned the Dixie Chicks from radio.”

Not true and Ed Schultz and Holland Cooke of all people should remember that Cox and Cumulus wouldn’t use the word “banned” of course, but they were the only two companies I know of to decide at the corporate level not to play the Chicks anymore, citing persuasive listener research. Clear Channel left it up to individual stations, yet they keep getting blamed, proving that myths often resonate longer and louder than truths.

No one ever said life was always supposed to make sense.

Guest Blogger: WYRK's Clay Moden

The management of Townsquare Media Buffalo has motivated Clay to become a very creative and prolific blogger. Most days, his listeners benefit, but now and then he gets inspired to write something he considered "too inside radio" to share on his station blog. Lucky you and me, we benefit. Here's his latest one:

I was speaking with a radio friend of mine recently about being a "fill in" for a certain air shift and I couldn't help but think that his dilemma is something that most jocks who have been on the air can relate to.

If you have ever been a part timer or even someone that wants a certain time slot, you can understand his story.

When the PD calls on you to fill in for someone, your first thought is..."here is my chance to show them I should be in that slot!" The next thing you do is go out of your way to prep for the show and try to make it sound like a nationally syndicated radio success!

What usually happens?

You FAIL!

Happens every time. You get caught up in trying to be something/someone you think will grab the attention of the PD/GM and have a perfectly polished show.

It may actually have all of the key ingredients and come out "sounding" the way YOU want it to, but here is the problem, the audience is not made of PD and GM's.

It is everyday people, most of which are casual listeners that are waiting to hear their favorite song or get a piece of information they need or a contest they are trying to win.

If you have ever listened to the Rush Limbaugh show, you will note that he has people fill in from time to time. Although they keep the format of the show, they are not trying to "replace" Rush. They are all very different than Rush and all have their own traits and styles. They clearly don't go out of their way to try to be someone.

It may sound cliche but it is true, being yourself is the best option.

After all, it is you being yourself that most likely caught the PD's attention in the first place.

Here is what I suggest. When you go to fill in for another air shift or even if you are doing a bonafide on-air audition, you PLAN what you intend to do, you PERSONALIZE it according to how YOU normally are when you do a show and you PERFORM according to your own style and ability.

Don't overdo it or you will sound PHONY!

Oh, and one more thing, try not to PREDICT what the PD/GM is thinking.

It has been my experience that they often times are not listening as closely as you think. They are just glad they found someone to cover a shift.

You'll find more from Clay on this blog, I am proud to say.

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Great timing and a perfect tribute on the part of today's Sydney Morning Herald (click to read it).

Seth Godin has the consummate eulogy:

It's one thing to miss someone, to feel a void when they're gone. It's another to do something with their legacy, to honor them through your actions.

Steve devoted his professional life to giving us (you, me and a billion other people) the most powerful device ever available to an ordinary person. Everything in our world is different because of the device you're reading this on.

What are we going to do with it?

Three Things About Radio Commercials We Can Agree On

• Commercial free hours beat hours which contain irritating commercials hands down.
• Radio programmers make bad grocery store managers/media buyers, and the reverse is true too.
• Radio can always use more entertaining, creative commercials. (click to hear a bunch of them, presented their trophies and cash just last evening), including the big winner.
  

Take Aspirin Before Reading

There's a strong possibility that this is going to hurt your head.

Back in the Diary Days our fight was for bigger Average Quarter Hours. Now, on Planet PPM, technology has completely changed how BBM and ARB measure tuning.

Thanks to the always inquisitive PD of JRfm-The Peak/Vancouver Gord Eno, A&O recently was conveyed an excellent explanation from BBM on the technology of the PPM device:

"We now measure everything in fifteen second segments. Yes, seconds. It takes keeping a listener fifteen seconds for us to be in the game. If we win three out of the four fifteen second segments we win that minute. If we get two out of four, the station that wins the first fifteen seconds wins the minute."

Yikes, talk about micromanaging our content!

If you've read much that I have blogged here, I bet you've already learned you have to grab them in the first seven seconds.

Now, add to that. You must also hold onto them for at least three 15 second periods inside every minute.

Technically, you need the last best "code" in the 15 seconds to be ascribed the first 15 seconds.

That last best code could come in the first second or the 15th second. If you're not familiar with code qualities and what this does to the assignment of the 15 seconds to the last best code, contact your BBM or ARB rep who can lessen your need for aspirin as you contemplate these technical realities.

First, of course, if we donʼt keep them for the first fifteen seconds weʼre not even in the game.

Really, you only need to have the last best code in each 15 seconds, they don’t have to have stayed for the full 30.

But, it takes three 15 minute assignments of the last best code to outright “win” the full 60 seconds – and those three 15 second assignments don’t have to be consecutive, for example: first 15, station CAAA has last best code, Second 15, station CBBB has last best code, Third 15, station CAAA has last best code, and Fourth 15, station CAAA has last best code – minute goes to station CAAA.

Plus, we need them to stay for thirty seconds just to be in a tie. But it takes forty five seconds to win that minute. Then the battle begins all over again for the next minute.

Most minutes wins.

Eno joked with the BBM representative who offered the insights that the battlefield has moved from quarter hours to quarter minutes.

The BBM rep's response was that things hadn’t really changed, and the focus as always should be on making better radio, because better radio gets better numbers.

Agreed, but knowing the mechanics of PPM helps us understand the ʻscienceʼ and how/when the radio consumerʼs impatience affects measurement.

Another revelation: the PPM code is not a constant stream.

Because the code likes to hide in the content the code stream is variable. When there is music, the code flows along nicely. When there are gaps, such as spoken word, the code will embed itself behind any audio whatsoever, music, talk, random ambient noise will even encode.

Now, hereʼs the biggie. If there is four seconds of dead air there is no code.

The solution? Donʼt allow dead air.

Dead air (provided your dead air lasts for more than 15 seconds) means no code.

No code. No measurement. No measurement means weʼre kicked off the fifteen second battlefield and weʼre not even in the fight.

To be totally factual, it only takes the last best code of the 15 second period.

It’s possible for there to be 4 different “last best codes” in each 15 seconds. Your code could come in as the ‘last best code’ on the 5th, 9th, 12th or even the 15th second with audio.

Take two panelists and call me in the morning.

Updating Your Personal Prep And Content "Algorithms"

If you did a great bit one time yesterday morning, would all of your listeners have heard it?

Of course not. Social networking on Facebook works the same way. Just because you post something, doesn't mean that your fans or friends will see it.

Apply these variables as you choose what to talk about on the radio, what to post online:

• How's your relationship with your listener? Does he/she trust, respect and like you enough to pay attention when you open your mouth?
• How important to your listener is what you have to say right now? Is it clear right from the start why it's relevant?
  
• Is it fresh or new? Or, warmed over re-purposed prep content that every other talent on the radio is also using today? (or even worse, last night or yesterday)
• Are you a true, authentic, genuine "friend?" Or, are you heard/read as just "an interesting stranger?" Is what you say engaging enough to enhance the former, move toward it, away from the latter?
  

On Facebook now, subscribers can actually do their own filtering.

Your listener has been doing that all along. It's called "seek" and "scan," the reason push buttons are the most popular feature on their radio.

Work on your personal affinity, content weight, decay and "Edge Rank" as you prep and deliver everything across all platforms available to you.

Turkey And Greece, Here I Come

Always a worker bee, even when on vacation, of course I will have my (206-498-6261) international cell phone and laptop with me and will welcome calls and emails even as I fly to Istanbul on October 13 and enjoy the lovely climate and historical sites for almost four weeks.

If you'd like to dream about doing the same thing, click here to see the folks in Turkey we are counting on to show us their part of the world.

The catch is, of course, that Istanbul is ten hours ahead of Seattle, so the best time to call me while I am there will be first thing in the morning your time (or you'll get voice mail while I am sawing logs).

Longtime clients know that I have been doing vacations like this for many years and not only is it not really all that different to call or email me there than it is most workdays, since I travel on business and client meetings most of the time, anyway.

However, it's also a good opportunity to test the mettle of the rest of the A&O team. If you do, I am confident that you'll find that a call or email to them will solve problems for you as well.

If you get my voice mail when you call 206-498-6261 and don't want to wait until tomorrow morning to hear back from me due to that ten hour time difference, contact:

• Mike O'Malley (working twice as hard as usual, but loves every minute of it): 732-937-5757
• Mark Patric (all things music): 604-866-8519
• Mike Oakes (analysis of all ARB and BBM stats as books come out): 314-910-2030
• Dan Vanlandingham (serving prep fresh daily): 513-265-4422
• Ray Massie (social media/programming specialist will guest edit A&O's daily Wake Up Call E-Zines): 406-850-4659

And, next time you - or they - are on an extended vacation, I promise to play backup in return!

Çok teşekkür ederim and Ευχαριστώ πολύ.