Delivering To A Different Decade

Transparent Strategies And Tactics Are No Longer Enough

Identify your target audience, solidify your position and win the demo. While these are proven tactics that apply to any station in any format, urban broadcasters in 2006 can suddenly find themselves attempting to serve a diverse population segment with distinctly different tastes, trends and lifestyles.

We've been saying for some time that urban stations are missing out on a opportunity to cash in on the growing Hispanic audience who love urban and hip-hop music. They're part of the different decade. Despite the burgeoning Hispanic, heavily Arbitron-weighted population, urban radio has not taken full advantage of this audience segment.

Just as with mainstream programming, creating niche formats which can include Hispanics provides a way to grow and super-serve a specific population. Saturating a market with too many micro-targeted formats -- even those that theoretically have little listener overlap -- can lead to audiences that are too miniscule to generate ratings numbers or ad dollars. If you go too far with niche programming, you will fail. If you're going after too small a niche, you won't have sufficient audience to make a difference. So what's the answer? How do you effectively deliver to a different decade -- one in which Hispanics figure prominently into the equation? A well-designed research effort is the first move to make.

Next, you want to examine all the facts. Then, if it is determined that there is a sufficient Hispanic audience, you've got to remember that well-programmed urban stations have the potential to grab a huge chunk of audience that includes Hispanics. This is because an English language urban or urban AC station is really attractive to an Hispanic audience. In some cities, such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston or San Antonio, 35-40% of Hispanic listeners are English speaking, and they really enjoy urban music and relate to the urban lifestyle.

Better Scheduling Means More Listeners

Once the decision has been made to expand your audience to include Hispanics, the next step is to adjust and schedule your music properly. And then you have to ask the right questions. Are you playing the right songs at the right times? The right strategy and the wrong songs will not allow you to score.

You begin by reviewing each song in rotation and determining how it contributes to your new strategy. The you have to recode the library and then run the analysis tools to check again what you have determined you need to attract the new listener blend.

Turnover ratios are very important. They're critical to the right scheduling. Naturally, the wrong turnovers will make it impossible to create the right mix of songs.

Additionally, you have to build clocks that will allow you to communicate what's really important for your station. To satisfy these potential new listeners, you need to create clocks that make sure you're never far away from the songs that are most important. If you're playing special songs that your research tells you Hispanics want to hear, and if they fall into the category of new or unfamiliar music, even though they may be highly popular with the Hispanic audience, you must play them between your truly strong songs. That means next to your important songs such as your power currents or power re-currents.

Finally, balance along with vertical and horizontal separation are extremely important. Poor balance can make your station sound inconsistent. Five type A songs in hour one and none in the next hour can communicate two different types of messages. An even, balanced playlist is the way to go.

You have to make sure you're exposing the right songs. Poorly designed categories and clocks will result in some songs in a category receiving a lot of play, while others in the same category receive very little. Some stations we've observed make an effort to use rules to keep titles well separated. The problem there is that if a particular category is out of balance and the rules are too strict, you will wind up scheduling the same songs at the same time day after day or every second or third day.

Today's radio listeners have many choices that were not available only a few years ago. They can go to another station, satellite radio, their own iPods, or any one of a number of alternatives.

Only vision and passion limit success. As for filling that big hole, the answer is to find the ones that do exist and fill them. And when you do that, you may suddenly find yourself scoring and delivering to a different decade.

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