The Secret To Driving Drive Times

Toward the end of last year, we looked at how Urban stations stacked up during mornings and middays. We examined research and why it's so important. This time we want to look at drive times, particularly afternoon drive. What are the really serious program and music director doing to build cume, maintain quarter-hours and recycle audience?

Well, for one thing, most really sharp programmers have learned to use research to give them some answers. Properly interpreted and applied, some research is better than none. And what research is telling us about drive times is a little scary. Lots of Urban and Urban AC stations in all size markets have been having trouble keeping their afternoon numbers strong through the most desired demo patterns. How are afternoons different, and what can we do to improve them?

Create An Imbalance

For one thing, the audience composition changes in the afternoon. A more aggressive, less tolerant audience comes into the afternoon and lasts into the early evening. At that point the number of commercials played in an hour becomes very important. An imbalance is recommended.

If someone runs 10 commercial minutes in the afternoon and 10-12 in morning drive, they've made a serious mistake. Oh, they may get away with it until they're challenged, but they're vulnerable. And the sales and general managers who say, "Well, we've gotten away with in this long, why change?" are in for a rude awakening -- perhaps sooner than they think.

The station that wants to win this year should attempt to create an imbalance for the sake of programming. A reasonable suggestion might be to do 10-12 minutes in morning drive and hold the afternoon to no more than eight commercials per hour. To take those commercials and put them into the morning slot is advantageous because you're not being critiqued the same way in morning drive and they (the commercials) will have a tendency to slip by.

If you play two or three commercials in a row in the afternoon, and lots of us do, particularly in the fourth quarter-hour, it registers like being hit in the head with a hammer. The audience is more tuned in the afternoon. So if you do something they don't like, they will respond faster than if it were in another part of the day.

The above applies to the early nighttime audience too, but there are different characteristics that come into play at night. In the afternoon, we're talking about a great deal of mathematics. As mornings would carry information and middays would carry familiarity, then afternoons would carry image.

Afternoons are when a station can develop an image of being hip, through association with artists such as Ciara, Beyonce, Akon, Ludacris and Chris Brown.

After 3p, image music becomes very important. With the morning audience you can get away with something that is not hip, just relevant. But when you get to afternoons the nature of the audience changes so that you have to build an image to sell those 18-49 demographics. By promoting hip groups and artists and being involved in the hip things happening in the market, the afternoon show becomes very important in establishing an image for the entire radio station.

What is hip? Hip is whatever is going on in the street that is important to the audience at that time. It's a combination of the trends and the language of street. You have to take what's happening in the streets and make that come through the speakers. If the afternoon personality is not tuned into the street of the city, then a huge mistake has been made. It's not so much what is said, it's the feel. It's the awareness. Bottom line is developing an image. The afternoon jock has a power of audience that the station can apply to make things happen.

Audience Recycling

Another one of the basic goals of the afternoon show is to make people listen to the night show, if it's working properly. The afternoon drive jock has the opportunity to build the night show and its host into a star because they usually deal with a pretty similar audience. If they listen to the afternoon show, they will probably listen to the night show and vice-versa.

Both the afternoon and the night jocks must be teamed in their effort to build one another. It's much like professional sports. In the NBA sometimes it's more important to pass off to the open man than to make a slam dunk with no possibility of follow through or rebounding in case the play goes bust.

The basic function of the afternoon show is to create the proper image for the station and deliver recall audience for the night show. So afternoons and nights should be very involved in "recall audience efforts." A contest that requires a listener to tune back in to win the prize employs the recall method.

Can the recall method be used effectively in all dayparts? No, but it can be very effective if you match up the proper dayparts. Before you can tell someone to do something, you have to know if they're susceptible to doing it.

If you spend one minute of your time promoting the overnight show at the wrong time, for example, you've wasted time and words. If you spend one minute of the afternoon show trying to promo the midday and the morning show, you haven't wasted all your time, but most of it. If you use the afternoon show to promote the night show, then you're hitting the susceptible available target audience. If the night jock promos the afternoon show, he's doing the same thing.

We've all heard promos on stations at 11p pushing the morning show. The problem with that is if they're listening that late at night, the odds are really ridiculous that they will listen to the morning show. It is most advantageous for the afternoon and night shows to promo one another and forget about the rest. Whatever you do, do it in a fashion that is most effective, not just somewhat effective. It's really the old story of time. Counting time is not nearly as important as making time count.

Word.