There Are No Make-Up Classes

Signing Up Is Easy - Winning Another Story

As we move deeper into this year's spring Arbitron sweeps, it's time to reflect on the biggest challenges facing us. 2006 will be a pivotal year to building the future of "traditional local radio" as we know it. That said, many of us missed a few classes and really need to sign-up for make-up courses

Urban radio faces many challenges, but the format has an opportunity to score by refining its music, air talent, promotion and production. Urban programmers whose stations target 18-34 females are successful because they know the expectations of their stations and the needs of that part of the audience and they reflect it on the air. Doing this consistently will allow our stations to continue to deliver on the expectations of the format -- playing the hits females favor and representing a variety of music styles within the genre.

Callout & Spin Maintenance Issues

One problem that refuses to go away is our inability to obtain reliable samples and more passionate listeners with traditional callout. Because of changes in society, callout results are often extremely slow and this pace may only get worse, causing results to be less reliable.

This spring we find many programmers are looking more and more at national charts to determine the hits. As a result, they are projecting songs into power rotations based on those charts instead of real, valid research. Many top ten tracks are just "turntable hits" based simply on the amount of spins they get. Because urban callout is so slow these days, and because many labels are releasing records too quickly for most stations to absorb, the problem is exacerbated.

Labels are playing the chart game and jamming stations for spins. As a result, spin maintenance is now the name of the new game. It's often just as important as getting the add. With programmers jumping on songs based on national ranks, we run the risk of the national charts deluding us into believing songs are huge hits that are really not.

If you're a programmer or music-director who plays that game and moves songs up in rotation for any reasons other than feeling that it will build or maintain audience, you're taking a huge risk. That's not only hurting your station, it's hurting the format and urban radio overall.

If we want to remain leaders in this creative industry, it's important that programmers are given the freedom to program their stations and part of that responsibility is our interpretation of what jams to play and how to balance our playlists.

Demographic Challenges

This balance is becoming even more important as terrestrial radio becomes an aging medium. With the agency focus over the last two decades being towards the 25-54 year old listeners, there has come a concurrent decline in younger age tuning. This has led to a change in how radio is perceived by younger listeners.

No longer is radio the top source for new music choice. With the explosion of satellite radio, downloading, MP3's and the availability of iPod for both Mac and PC users, it has become relatively easy for consumers to build their own radio stations on their personal listening devices. This fundamental change in technology will continue to erode radio's natural ability to lure new listeners.

There is some hope, however, that agencies may be beginning to see the need to expand their reach of advertising into younger demos. This may lead many radio clusters to consider a younger end option among their choices of radio offerings. These younger-based formats will have to be less rigid and more adventurous to be successful, as today's young people have so many choices on where they spend their entertainment time.

In short, youth-based radio will have to become compelling again. This leads to still another problem, which is overcoming the 18-34 male sample problem. Arbitron has had the problem for years. Arbitron's 18-34 ethnic samples invariably fall short of their proportion of the population. The solutions vary from weighting the numbers (meaning they assign greater value to them) to resigning the packaging of the diary, increased compensation, and the placing of additional diaries in a given household. Since so many of these solutions for increasing the samples have had little effect, until the diary is replaced by the meter, Arbitron has been forced to continue to weight the diaries so they equal the proportion of the population. As a result, the lower sample in the 18-34 males demographics has resulted in a dip in reliability and huge wobbles with a few isolated heavy listening diaries.

Banning Boredom

One of the biggest complains we hear from listeners in today's format-tight world is our inability to keep the entertainment momentum moving forward. The day of boring "ten in a row" jukebox radio should be over. Listeners are hip to the fact that the price they pay for ten in a row is often fifteen in a row (as in fifteen commercials in a row). They simply won't go for that any more, so we should put a ban on boring radio and seek more compelling strategies.

We may be surprised, but we shouldn't be. Every situation hits critical mass sooner or later. For us that moment has now become sooner rather than later. The small percentage declines in time spent listening over the last decade will increase and become greater until an effective remedy is put in place.

It is time for urban stations to become more adventurous and to put the emphasis on personality and creativity. It is time to stop talking about all the things we shouldn't do and to begin focusing on things that we can and should try.

The policy of restricting our air-personalities (the few true, local ones that are still left) to back sells and liners has led to a less than compelling product overall. We risk continuing to lose our place as a primary medium unless we take the boredom out and replace it with something our listeners really want to hear.

Those urban stations that invest in and cultivate personality and creativity will score in years ahead. They will also be the ones that are then able to attract and keep the most creative personalities in the business. We have to realize that we missed some classes and ask ourselves are we prepared to attend the make-up classes necessary in order to make the grade we want? And for some, there are no make up classes.

Word.