With Arbitron's PPM Cume Is King

Knowing Your Niche Can Help

As more and more stations move from the diary to the meter, there are questions that surface as well as inaccurate conclusions. First of all, under PPM, cume is definitely king. Although occasions are becoming increasingly important in bolstering Time-Spent-Listening (TSL), cume still rules. The audience still listens to their favorite station for the same amount of time. What has changed is the number of occasions of listening. As with the diary, knowing your niche can help tremendously. The Urban "niche' stations that will have success under PPM will do so by breaking out of the niches. But, wait, we just said, knowing your niche is key. Yes, but what we're also saying is Urban stations shouldn't try to choose between upper and lower demos as they did with the diary. The key now is to broaden your appeal so that you can serve both ends of the demographic spectrum.

For example, if you're a mainstream Urban station, play a gold-leaning, but current-imaged mix of harder and softer, traditional and cutting-edge crossover hits. The balance may change from market to market, but the concept has always been true. Relate to the audience lifestyle in 2008. That used to be as simple as going to clubs and concerts, but the stations that can go beyond the music and into the lives of the audience will continue to do better. During the first part of this decade, many Urban stations abandoned these basic concepts. Niche was in. Mass appeal was out. Stations that were adult-appealing Urban AC stations wanted to concentrate on the 25-54 demo. Straightahead Urban stations wanted to concentrate on 12-34s.

Urban formats have always been mass appeal. They just haven't always understood the value of serving a mass-appeal audience. For example, Urban formats have always appealed to listeners between their early teens and late 40s, who don't like country or rock. This simplistic view of Urban's psychographic composition is still true. It may be possible to unify this diverse audience, although two developments have made such a union a little more difficult:

For the first time since the late '80s, a true musical generation gap has opened. Twenty-year-olds care about artists that mean little to 30-year-olds and vice-versa. Nevertheless, many common threads still exist. The older members of the audience no longer have the passion or concern for music they once had. But thanks in part to certain Urban stations, they've found radio can serve needs other than providing music. They now want information -- about the artists, about the artist's lives, concerts, etc. And they want to know the titles of the songs we play.

Tech Talk& Hispanic Cume

It looks like this year will go down in history as another year of forced, accelerated change. Part of what has caused this change is technology. Technology is something we can't control, and it will continue to spawn new gadgets, new research and new competitors. What can we do, since we can't control it? We can only try to understand it and embrace it.

One of the things we have to understand in our quest for new cume is the ever-growing Hispanic audience. It is the fastest growing segment of the population in America. Spanish formats are becoming more sophisticated. They're doing research and offering several musical varieties of the format.

Hispanic listeners are becoming relatively sophisticated consumers who appreciate a quality product. Many of Urban radio's listeners are the same Hispanics who grew up listening to Urban and Urban AC stations and, if we do enough of the right things, they will continue to listen and become new cume.

Within the Urban formats is a lot of diversity from a number of musical blends. That's part of what has changed in 2008. Research now must include Hispanics, some of whom may be bilingual. The key to building cume in the future is to find the songs and the blend that will be welcomed by a broader audience.

It is this broader base that can make a cume difference, but in order to make that difference, you have to tweak the format with higher rotations and rotational patterns that are evolving all the time. With both Urban formats, you not only have to find the right songs, you also have to rotate them higher and give them the impressions they need for the listeners to become familiar and comfortable with them. When you're thinking about your potential new listeners, you don't always want to simply say you're going after the 18-34s or the 25-49s, although those are cells that are extremely important to the formats. Despite that, there's a new, particular audience who likes to stay on the cutting edge. That's an audience who wants to hear some of the familiar songs they grew up with alongside the new songs. It's also a lifestyle thing.

Most Urban outlets build cume by being full-blown, current-based hit music stations. It's a misnomer to think women don't like hip-hop. They do. They just like to hear hit rap songs that are familiar, melodic and tuneful. To build cume with females, there has to be balance.

Most Urban AC stations tend to be much more gold and recurrent-based. They tend to be focused on 25-49, with females as their primary target. Both formats must remember the music freaks and the advantages of a shorter playlist. A listener only gives a certain amount of time to radio. During that time they only want to hear the hits. If you program to the reality of radio listening as measured by Arbitron's new PPM, assume some listeners only listen an hour or two a day when they're going to and from work. You can build cume if you program to that reality.

Many talented people in our format are caught up in the performing aspect of their gigs and often are surprised to find out they are less secure than they might have thought. We probably all know people who were fired for dwindling digits or cascading cumes. We even know some who were terminated because their trends trickled.

Just because with PPM cume is king, we don't want to forget about TSL. TSL is really a factor of two items -- how long someone listens (duration) and how often they listen for that period time or the number of occasions they listen. Additional tune-in patterns translate into more TSL. For a station with huge cume in place, the additional occasions will help drive share.

Now more than ever, we're in a numbers business -- cume numbers -- and when the numbers are not on your side, your bosses better be. How do you make sure you'll at least get the benefit of the doubt from those in charge? In today's cume jungle, you have to find out how you're doing before it's too late. Check your cume regularly. Some don't want to know how they are doing because, deep down, they are afraid they aren't doing very well. You cannot hope to succeed in your career unless you pierce this conspiracy of silence.

Remember for those of you still under the current Arbitron unaided recall process, it's important to note that an Arbitron diary can't really measure Time-Spent-Listening (TSL) accurately. At best, it measures memory. Now those markets that will be measured by the meter will benefit from being able to determine the true impact of cume as well as a more accurate picture of TSL.

Finally the key for Urban stations looking to build cume is to make every break count. Every song, every break, every minute is important under electronic measurement. Mondays are the new Thursdays. Huge money giveaways are no longer what drive ratings. Giving away smaller, more desirable prizes like $50 gas cards can be very effective. Under PPM it's now about listener retention and minute-to-minute content. If you're not filling it wisely, your competition will.

Tomorrow's PPM cume goal is not to get one person to listen for an hour; it is to get four people to listen for 15 minutes.

Word!