Filling My Space

Accessing The Accidental Listener

Before we leave 2009, we wanted to take one last look at space. Not just any space, but the space on the dial that you want listeners to fill with your frequency. One of the best ways to do that, especially in the PPM world, is to find a way to access the accidental listeners.

Exactly what are accidental listeners and why are they important? Accidental listeners are listeners who could be hanging around a store, a barber shop or a beauty shop and wearing a PPM. They can generate cume and even some quarter-hours just by being there. Whereas listeners rarely would remember or write down accidental listening under Arbitron's diary methodology, with the meter all they have to do is be exposed to an encoded signal.

Because Arbitron's meter is passive, it naturally detects accidental listening. That's one of the reasons cume is larger in PPM than it was with diaries. However, even if a listener likes what they hear, there's no guarantee they'll return. So the challenge becomes getting this accidental listener to come back later. To do this we have to figure out what stations they're listening to and how to get to come back to our station. Forget keeping them. They're going to leave when we play a song they don't like or they've heard too much. Or, they're going to leave when we have a commercial stopset. How are we going to get them to return? That's where a strong website, coupled with outside promotion and marketing, come in.

There has been a noteworthy societal shift that has occurred recently that affects us all. Wireless Internet and cell phone phenomena have caused our listeners to ask, "What happened to my space?" The intimacy once shared through computer screens and cell phones is at a new height. Our audience is using their new feature-filled cell phones as a means of "cellular defense." They're using them to protect themselves from even the most casual interactions. So the question becomes: In such a polarized world, do we really need less interaction? Or, do we just need to find a new a way to capture the hearts, minds and cume of our audience?

As we face the fading moments of the Fall Arbitron sweeps, we now have to prepare for the upcoming holiday season and winter of 2009. It's a winter of discontent, one that is going to be very different and a little scary because of the job losses, the economy, new competition and declining persons-using-radio (PUR) levels. Listeners in all formats are being driven away by too much repetition and huge commercial loads. They've started listening to other forms or devices.

For many of us, it's a new game. There's a reason for the new game. With the new competition, every company is looking for a way to grab and keep more listeners. With the advent of cheaper downloaded CDs and all the online radio stations that allow you to hear exactly what you want, the real problem is that to be successful, Urban radio has got to find a way to attract young, middle-aged and even some older listeners. Eventually research will drive its discovery. What do Urban and Urban AC stations need to do? The smart ones are going to learn some new influence tricks and reduce the number and type of commercials. Design the presentation and arrange the music and other elements so that your heavy users will love your station and not be tempted to stay with any other format.

How Much Can Research Help?

Before we dump all our stock in research and buy bonds in gut feels, we need to consider how we use reach in accessing accidental listeners. A few years back, Urban programmers were warned not to factor out emotion in the creative process. Today, however, programmers know more about their computers than they do their audiences. Concern of research and numbers has suppressed everything else. When the bankers took over radio, they assimilated it to their world of numbers. While they like research because it attached numbers to everything, they are now reluctant to pay for it in a weak economy.

The fact is most Urban programmers are going to have to get used to functioning without it altogether, or less of it. Our take is that while we believe strongly in research, it can't create programming. It can only tell us what a group of people think about something previously created. We have to go beyond research when creating new shows, promotions, productions and introducing new songs.

It still takes a balance of research and gut to create a successful station. Like balancing your personal and business lives, your diet and your financial portfolio, you must balance science and emotion in your programming. In other words, look at what the numbers are really saying before reacting with your creative gut.

Format Wake-Up Call

Many stations need a format wake-up call. Important decisions need to be made regarding whether to follow the growing audience into their 40s or deal with a new generation of 18-34s. These decisions have long and short-term effects and must be made in each market individually. We also must make sure the format doesn't get caught up in temporary transitions or fads.

Not everybody understands that what separates and distinguishes a station and sheds some light in the dark is being in a position to provide some musical identity. Some music fits very well and reinforces the station's core identity. Other music expands the variety of music. Unfortunately, music test mean scores often do a poor job of telling which songs play well with the other songs.

Urban programmers have to know more than the mean score. Power songs are not just songs with a high test score. They should be the songs that influence and reward the people who believe in who you are. They should say "thank you" for sitting through a six-minute stopset. They should say "yes, you are rollin' with the right station." They should buffer weaker, non-centered and unfamiliar songs.

Another very effective "trick" is to closely monitor format penetration. If your station is really on target, its format fans should choose your station more often than those listeners who are not the pure core Urban format fans. It is a very compelling analysis when those listeners are your own.

Your station should be a club that listeners want to join. It will be if its music is on target, and if its jocks and imaging are hip. Listeners will want to join your "club" if between the hit jams, the jocks can consistently make the audience think, laugh or chuckle. The really great jocks can do all three, over an intro and across the quarter-hours.

Urban stations are going to have to take a serious look at their vulnerabilities, particularly on Sunday morning when many still run paid religion and gospel. If you're in a market with a full-time FM Gospel station, that may not be the way to go. Saying, "But we've always done it that way" is no longer valid. In fact, it's downright dangerous. Radio must still be a dependable source of predictable entertainment.

More Growing-Shedding Theory

Urban radio, unlike Rock or Hot AC, may have time on its side, but it's still affected by the "growing-shedding theory." What that really means is that we have to grow more audience than we shed. We've no time to waste. The fact is that as our audience ages, it will also become more affluent and more mainstream. Those kids who go off to college may wind up in a town with no Urban station. They may be forced to listen to satellite radio or the Internet when they're in the dorm and a Top 40 or Rhythmic station when they're in the car with their friends. When they return home, their matrix and listening habits will have changed.

Generally speaking, our continuing research shows that even those in their teens and early 20s seem to be more open to accepting other forms of music. Imagine a format that moves from Hoobastank to Gwen Stefani to Beyonce to Hinder. Then does it again with Outkast, Nickelback, Justin Timberlake, Prince, Chris Brown, Miley Cyrus, Earth, Wind & Fire; Sean Paul; Lil Wayne and Ne-Yo.

Given time, other formats can create a respectable mix of old and new, of pop and reggae, of grunge and synth-pop. Another trick of the new influence game involves increasing Urban radio's Time Spent Listening. What are the new influence tricks to this old game?

First, we have to determine who are the heavy listeners or users of the station. Most average quarter-hours (AQH) still come from the heavy users, not from our casual listeners. So to fight off other formats and improve our TSL, we must concentrate on the heavy users. We should design our presentation and arrange our music and other elements so that our heavy users, as well as the Urban "music freaks," will love the station.

Make certain the music is properly dayparted and balanced. Are the rotations set up properly? Does the format offer the variety, tempo and texture that research shows the audience prefers? The TSL could suffer if we're sidetracked by industry trends, weak research, no research or a program or music director who pays no attention to the research. I've seen situations in which a lot of program and music directors who didn't grow up on research, even though their stations pay for it, ignore it or don't use it to its fullest.

Revising Stopsets

One of the often-overlooked "tricks" that can make a difference is improving and limiting the stopsets. Everybody has commercials, yet some stations seem to keep their audiences right through the stopsets. What's the real trick here?

For one thing, listeners will find it a lot tougher, more irritating and frustrating to sit through stopsets that include a series of local commercials that sound bad because they were poorly produced and written. Fortunately, most agency-generated commercials are not the problem. If the production is sharp, well written and well produced, about useful products and services, you have a chance to hold your audience through the stopset. And before they know it, they are back to music, the jocks and the fun.

An overwhelming majority of stations have a problem with length. Many salespeople who write their own copy tend to write lengthy copy that they believe will help their client. The reality is that if the audience tunes out because the commercial is both long and boring, nobody benefits. Many salespeople are not trained writers, and they tend to think that newspaper or print copy will work on radio -- and it simply won't. Bad copy or poorly written and produced commercials can ruin TSL, even if the music and other elements are right.

Your time spent listening is the byproduct of keeping your valued guests happy. Understanding this is one of the new tricks of the game. Some of you may remember when Hot AC was born. It was born out of a need. There was a need to keep their young adult listeners happy. There was a need for a format that Hot AC eventually became. Hot AC really took advantage of the hole when Top 40 over-rapped and over-danced. Now, in 2009, there are other formats that promise to save its audience from the blight of too many interruptions, too much repetition and too many alternatives.

What Urban radio needs to do is influence its audience with the right dayparted and researched music mix and something other, similar formats can't offer yet -- a strong personality approach, filled with local content that its audience can identify with.

Musically, Urban radio needs to create new stars for the format. An iPod can't create a new star. And recent studies have shown that people still have to come to our stations to find out what to download or put on their iPods.

All of these things we've mentioned will affect how well our stations do this winter. And for those who see the big picture, the other trick is to continue to market effectively and use your influence well. We have to learn to really listen to each other, feel each other and respect each other. We have to understand we can live together without living alike. We can talk without saying the same thing. We can fill "my space" with their space and become the "shot-caller" in the new game.

Word.