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The Great Hit Hunt OR The New Blame Game
March 24, 2009
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What Happens When The Hot Hits Cool Down?
A quick look at the rotation pattern of records on Urban radio stations today shows that in many markets they're only getting about half the airplay they received just a few years ago. Does this mean that the hot hits are cooling down faster? No, not really. But that brings up the cause and effect as well as the blame questions. What caused this problem? What can be done about it? And who is really to blame?
There are many reasons for the diminishing spin totals on Urban radio today. One of the first reasons, of course, is that eventually even the hottest hits are going to cool down. Some of the blame for decreased rotations has been caused by syndication. Most Urban and Urban Adult stations today simply have little or no control over the syndicated shows airing on their stations. We've seen numerous instances where a syndicated show was playing a record the station airing the show never officially added. It's no secret that the number of stations carrying syndicated shows has increased substantially. What has also increased is the number of dayparts that are now syndicated. It is not unusual for stations to have two or three dayparts originating outside their studios. Added to the syndication problem is that in addition to drive times, increasingly nights and weekends are either syndicated or voicetracked. All of this is being done in an effort to control operating costs for the station. With sales off as much as 30% in some markets, stations have been forced to cut back just to stay in business. Syndication allows stations to save the cost of an air personality. Board ops can watch more than one station and are cheaper than air personalities.
PDs Have Time Challenges
Even though the reasons and assumptions are valid, the result and one of the consequences of these changing rotation patterns, obviously, is declining record sales. The other obvious problem is that program directors today often have to oversee two or three stations ... and do an air shift. That means they have less time to concentrate and do what they once did when they only had one station to worry about -- And they are still held fully responsible for ratings on each of the stations they have been assigned.
Programmers across the country complain that they simply can't handle the large volume of calls from their friends at labels. One very successful, medium-market OM, who has to watch three stations, put it this way. "To keep my sanity I have to make sure the reps stick to my call times; otherwise I'll never get anything done. Managing the time for music calls is rough, even when you have established call times. Sometimes there are other things that must take priority and for those times, we have an answering machine to take messages."
Still another PD/MD who is responsible for two stations and a daily air shift said, "We hear people say we aren't answering the phone or returning calls as much as we used to. People call me outside my call times because some of the reps think we're blowing them off. But if we miss people, we will call them back. Every once in a while someone gets to a record before we do; that's the nature of the business. You can't be first all the time. I just keep my ears open and talk to people."
Programmers are almost forced to take the shortest path to compliance -- the path of least resistance. That means they will invariably be late adding new records, moving old records out or down and waiting for research to kick in. Lots of Urban stations have had their research either reduced or, in some cases, eliminated. Many group-owned stations have been forced to share research, which now only comes in once or twice a month, instead of every week.
Research, or the lack thereof, may be the reason some stations' rotations are so strange. But regardless of the reason, listeners perceive that they're not getting as much new music from their favorite stations. Today, more and more people listen to radio less than they used to, but they still use it as a source to tell them what music to order, download or consider. The key word here is perception. As far as the radio audience is concerned, there are only eight or nine hits at a time. The rest are either on their way up or on their way down. Even with expanded rotations, listeners will often complain that your station is still playing the same songs over and over, if the structure and interval of your rotations aren't right.
Scheduling Secrets
One of the secrets we want to share with you this time has to do with recurrents. Recurrents are songs that were once powers. Many programmers are not using recurrents correctly. These are songs that listeners, who have a much different time frame for references for songs than we do, are just beginning to like. Many busy PDs are just putting them on the shelf, waiting to test them or putting them in a lunar rotation to give them a rest. They often do this at a time when the listeners' awareness may actually be at its peak -- and they want to hear those jams more.
Have programmers become too sensitive to a burn factor, which may actually only represent a small section of the audience? Possibly. There are also a lot of songs that sound so similar that neither the song nor the artist has distinctive identities. This is a major reason why consumers don't seem to recognize individual songs and artists the way they used to.
Finally, the most effective use of recurrents has to do with the amount of good product available from a wider variety of artists than ever before. There are very few surprises. Listeners expect a new jam every few months from major artists. Listeners are going to like it because of who it is -- and you're going to play it because you know they like those artists. After 10-12 weeks, usually they tire of them and then it becomes a recurrent. It's the old story of perception vs. reality. If perception is reality, then the reality must match the perception.
The critical question becomes what is the effect of this limited rotation and misuse of recurrents having on radio in terms of both cume and Time Spent Listening (TSL)?
A very successful Urban AC programmer in the Southeast said, "Right now powers come up every 3 1/2 to 4 hours outside of morning drive, which is syndicated. The mediums play every six to eight hours and lights get 3-5 plays a day. Recurrents are also getting played twice a day." His theory is that programming an Urban Adult format, he doesn't believe high repetition is as important as it is in mainstream Urban formats. Adults don't use the radio the same way the18-24s do, so they're not scanning the dial as much looking for their favorite songs. Fatigue is also an important factor with adult stations.
Another programmer from the Midwest said he believes rotations might be lengthening because stations are misinterpreting their research - particularly focus group responses. What do people really mean when they say they want more variety? Some take that to mean they want a longer playlist or a longer time between plays on a hit song. But what does variety really mean and how many ways are there to provide your audience with a variety? When a listener says they're hearing the same song over and over, they may well be hearing the same song repeated, but not necessarily on your station. With such a high degree of cross-sampling today, there's a good chance they heard the song on two or three different stations, but the last place they heard it gets the blame. It's all part of the new "blame game."
Regardless of who or what is to blame, the answer still lies in proper music scheduling. Scheduling music can be a nightmare. Balancing currents, recurrents and gold, up-tempo, mid-tempo and ballads, sound coding and dayparting are all part of a very complex game. Computer scheduling systems have eased the burden, but it's vital to know which features to use and when to use them. We've come up with a few scheduling secrets that we'd like to share with you.
Experienced PDs and MDs can strike an effective balance between art and science when scheduling music. While mastering the computer elements is vital you shouldn't underestimate the human element. You best bet is learning and applying fundamental scheduling concepts instead of blindly hand-tweaking software settings. Even though most systems provide a number of features to tweak the operation and performance, none of these will help if the basics aren't in place.
One of the most common difficult problems is managing song rotations within a category. We all know each category contains songs that are equally important and should receive roughly equal play. But there's an unavoidable trade-off between schedule rules and precise rotations of songs. A song that's dayparted, for example, is only eligible for play at certain times. We know that song will play less often than non-dayparted songs in the same category. But any song that is harder to schedule because of scheduling rules will rotate less often that the other songs in its category.
The more aggressive a category's scheduling rules are, the less evenly its individual songs will play. You can't enforce every scheduling rule and get precise rotations. One of a programmer's most important scheduling tasks is striking a balance between rule restrictions and rotations. A good place to begin is in the high exposure categories. Apply just a few rules to these categories, then lay in songs from larger categories, progressively using tighter rules.
Sitting in front of a computer filled with unscheduled positions is time-consuming, painful, frustrating and unnecessary. Perhaps the greatest roadblock to good scheduling is a reluctance to make decisions. Some PDs think that all their scheduling rules are unbreakable, then go through the agonizing process of manually filling in the unscheduled positions.
The best way is to think about your programming goals first, then set the system priorities accordingly. Yes, your "must have" rules should be unbreakable. But decide which of your rules are breakable and decide their relative priorities, so the software can intelligently ignore your breakable rules when it must.
The most common mistake some programmers make is using two or more rules to control a single aspect of the scheduling process. For example, the system's sound code, energy or tempo rule could be used to control the overall pulse of your music. However, each rule operates in a different way. Using all of them to achieve say an upbeat music mix would be ineffective at best and could be a disaster. Take some time to understand the way each rule operates and apply only the best ones for your competitive situation and scheduling objectives.
Sometimes you have to experiment. I recommend setting aside a day or two to work
offline. Create a copy of your database and lift all current rules. Then pick only those needed to achieve your most important programming objectives. Artist separation, daypart rotation, tempo and era flow are common programming goals and great starting points.
Make careful decisions about each setting and how you set your priorities for these rules. Then implement them and schedule a day or more. Check the results, make any needed adjustments, reschedule and re-check and keep the experiment going until you're satisfied. After you're content with the basics, add another rule. Work with only one at a time, in order of most important to least important. Re-schedule and re-check after each addition and don't move on until you're pleased with the results.
This methodical approach will allow you to build elegance and complexity into your
scheduling in easily managed steps. It will also force you to examine your goals, rules and priorities so you can make sound decisions.
You may discover the rules or settings you're currently using don't match your programming goals. There's absolutely no risk in working with an experimental scheduling scheme because it won't be used on the air unless it's superior to what you're currently using. It all comes down to doing the basic math of getting the music rotations correct. Of course, you still have to pick the right songs to put in.
Beware Of Genre Burnout
Finally, this time we want to take a look at genre burnout. Genre burnout is a rather common condition that affects how the hottest hits are rotated. It's a condition which occurs because of, and along with, format blurring. For example, the soft, so-called UrbanAadult station sound is being duplicated by other formats, including Smooth Jazz. Some tempo-based or Hot AC stations are also playing more of our music.
Just by adding a few more Urban jams to their mix, these stations could become quite listenable to some fickle folks whose funky fingers can find their frequency. After all, if their sweeps have nine songs from your playlist in various categories, including both short-term and long-term recurrents, the average passive listener won't know the difference. And if they get a diary or happen to be carrying a meter, you could go from a P1 to a P2 instantly.
Many of these stations run dangerously close to Urban music patterns, especially in the evenings and on weekends. The result is that with their superior signals, processing and budgets, they often wind up taking a slice of audience away from us.
How do you combat genre burnout? Expand your testing. Do it more often and play close attention to the resulting trends. Don't just buy your research, put it on the shelf or in a drawer and continue to do what you've been doing until you discover you're in trouble. Even if you're an Adult station, don't be afraid to play some new jams, including some soft, familiar rap in a test rotation. Now you have to be very careful of the songs on either side of this record in the adjacent positions. But you can't just keeping testing songs you know will test well over and over again. Get away from myopic music testing and look for not only new music, but new ways of presenting and identifying it. Don't forget listeners get irritated if they hear a new song they like and your station doesn't identify the artist and title.
If you've made meeting or exceeding the expectations of your audience a priority, you can survive a formatic attack, a down book or trend or even the loss of a key player or two to syndication. Keep in mind that in the new "blame game," even though the fragments and pieces of broken formats can be cemented together, the cracks eventually show. And if enough of the cracks show and the ratings are low, you go.
Word.
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