R U Ready 4 The Road?

It's Time To Smooth Out The Ride

On any given weekend, you can find the local shopping mall packed with urbane young dudes in designer sneakers and printed, candy-colored hoodies ... some even sporting the popular '80s-era ventilates sunglasses preferred by rapper Kanye West. The question naturally becomes: Is this the future and if it is, how can Urban radio get ready for it? Then, the follow-up question is: If we play to these young "tweens" and 18-24s, do we lose their parents and other adults? The answer is you have to do both.

One thing we've noticed is the need to remove some of the bumps and smooth out the ride that radio takes us on. There is a change in thinking of today's young generation of listeners. Whether it's generations of character, harmony, sophistication or style, they are evolving. This is where variety meets spontaneity. For some reason, many Urban stations feel a need to keep reminding us of the fact that they claim they're offering variety, but with the same old lines. Liners that just don't have the same meaning they used to. It's kind of like the problem with being famous; if you stop being famous for while, it's as if you never were. It's all part of the system.

Trapped by the system, many programmers and air personalities put down their bosses. Record executives wring their hands in frustration. "How come we can't get these ---hole decision-makers at radio to really listen to music instead of waving their callout research results in our faces, or waiting for some consultant or research guru to tell them what to play?" "How can so-and-so call themselves a Music Director when they can't hear that hit?"

There's a good reason for this paranoia. Most of these radio decision-makers have witnessed some of their buddies get blown out. It's become obvious that their only sin was that in the company's eyes they were making too much money. No wonder they've become reluctant to step out on their own and take a chance. They know all too well that if the Arbitron digits drop, the station will drop them. Unfortunately, for most of us who have been in the business for a while, it's all part of the game.

Musical Consistency

Whether it's through a period of unemployment or just a reaction to the stress that's part of our daily lives, what we're all trying to do is smooth out the ride. In other words, have a nice run on a well-paved road before our luck, sales or ratings run out. We're all trying to lead some kind of normal life. The problem is we're not in a normal business and life keeps taking its toll on us. We're left with scars or "stretch marks." Then we search for some miracle with which to cover them.

A close examination of the trends in the last few years show that what may have been marketed as silk blends is really polyester. While it's true that the fabric of American life shows a surprising resilience born of traditional values, this fabric, regardless of its content, can only cover the scars or blemishes; it can't erase them or the pain that they caused when they appeared.

What can we do to get rid of or reduce the "scars" in our business life? The truth is that often we can't get rid of them. Most of the time, we can't effectively reduce or mask them. So, we may have to learn to live with and endure them for a while.

There is something that can help to eliminate some scars for those of us involved with radio programming, and that is musical consistency. While we're not trying to discount the value of variety in a station's mix, there needs to be a synthesis of the different styles so that it sounds like it all belongs to one radio station -- both from shift-to-shift as well as song-to-song.

Now the question turns to which song? How do you find it? Naturally, the answer is research. Right here we can eliminate some potential problems and maybe some ulcers by saying that neither callout nor auditorium testing done under the most optimum conditions is completely accurate.

Now this doesn't mean that we don't need research or that we don't need to do some testing. Rather, it means that you should understand that music testing is going to be distorted. It is going to be distorted by the artificiality of playing the hooks (and some consultants and testers can't find Urban song hooks with a road map). What we mean here is that playing a 7-12-second segment of a song with minimal airplay and then attempting to get the respondents to project and articulate their response to a song as a whole resulting in some intellectualizing of an emotional response is not only an inexact science, it's a pure guessing game. Yet, stations pay thousands of dollars each year and base their programming decisions on the results of these tests.

There are three basic type of research that most stations do on a regular basis: Auditorium Music Test (AMTs), Focus Groups and Callouts.

Auditorium Music tests are conducted with a carefully screened group of target listeners who evaluate portions of songs called hooks. Each song is scored according to its familiarity, appeal and passion.

Callput research is an evaluation process wherein target listeners evaluate 30 or more songs weekly, again indicating familiarity, appeal, fatigue and passion.

Focus Groups are smaller, carefully-selected groups of target listeners who discuss and identify key issues and set priorities for quantitative research and are designed to enhance the overall value of perceptual research.

Someone asked me recently, "If you have a limited budget and limited time, which form of research should you choose?" I personally feel that it depends on the station. For example, if the station is an Urban adult, gold-based station, an auditorium test would be the best choice. If your station is a mainstream, current-based station, callout research gets the nod. If you can't do either, be prepared to take a hit.

It's important that the questionnaires be carefully reviewed so as not to confuse the respondents. It also helps if the moderator looks like those he/she is moderating.

We cannot put absolute faith in a research process without understanding what the limitations are.

The worst thing you can do is base your music decisions on flawed research. This means that the participants have to be screened carefully to ensure that all lie within the station's cume. I like to use updated Arbitron zip code data to determine where the respondents should be drawn from. I also like to make certain that all the ethnic considerations are reflected. In other words, there should be balance. A lot of companies assume, for example, that an Urban station should only have African-Americans in the sample. That is just plain wrong. It's cheaper and less complicated for the research companies, but invariably in markets with a growing Hispanic population that sample is not representative of the total audience.

Then, despite any age skewing in the sample, it has to be demographically balanced; and finally, the sample has to be of sufficient size to give some stability to the results. I like a sample of at least 400 persons.

Many managers and owners feel that they can save some money by reducing the sample size. After all, if they are paying an average of $35-$40 per person, the fewer people they have to pay, the more they can save, right? Wrong. You need a minimum of over 150 completed calls per week and over 600 per month just to have a chance at some actionable results. The larger the sample, the more reliable.

Perhaps the most actionable information that this research can provide is burnout (finding out if the songs being tested are overexposed). Then, if your results show there are some titles that are tired, you should retire or "rest" them and go on to the next group of fresh songs in that category.

Cume Is Still King

One of the other things that can cause instant bumps and lasting scars is the failure to fully understand how cume building really works. There's an old saying that you can't sell anybody anything until they come into the store (this saying preceded the Internet, downloading and iPods, of course). But as it relates to radio, it means you can't score unless listeners write your call letters down in a diary or are exposed to your encoded signal in a PPM market.

Once they do, they become a potential part of your weekly cume. I've said this for years now: The biggest single problem many crossover and Urban radio stations have is failure to build and maintain cume. It doesn't matter if you have great average quarter-hours (AQH) or time-spent-listening (TSL) if you've only got 10 listeners!

It would be impossible for us to attempt to sort out all the things you might need to know regarding cume, but we will at least attempt to point you in the right direction. What we can say here is that you should at least analyze your station's cume and compare it with both your competition and the previous sweep or monthly. If you find that your competition, regardless of who they are (the station or stations that you share the most audience with, will work for now), has doubled its cume while you remained the same, you're in trouble and you'd better do some strategic planning to figure out how you can take a piece of their cume and put it on your side. Urban stations should be cuming at least 10%-15% of the total audience in their market.

Stretching

Another thing we've discovered that can make a lot of difference when you're stretching (and let's face it, we're all stretching a little) is to have some new state-of-the-art equipment. While the equipment in and of itself may not mean instant ratings success, it does have a direct effect on morale and has been known to inspire creative minds and voices to do their best work. A little thing like engineering maintenance can go a long way. Simply making certain all the equipment is working properly make air personalities feel like putting in some extra effort. There's nothing worse than finishing your liner and hitting the button or screen for the next element only to have it fail to start or misfire to kill your spirit. Unfortunately, it's still happening far too often.

Getting your station "ready for the road" involves not just research, musical diversity and recognizing character differences that translate directly into audience growth and swollen cumes. It's all that combined with the talent of strong hard-working personalities who quickly develop a loyal following. When the format's potential has reached a plateau, a funky, funny fixture or two can help keep those fickle fingers faithful.

Word!