Less Is Not More In 2010

Unless You're Talking About Time

Less is really not more when it comes to the way the radio game is being played today. The new key word is fewer. Today we have fewer personalities, fewer minutes of news and public service, fewer promotions, fewer local tie-ins, fewer new artists broken and fewer listeners. Today's game is being played with fewer players. Program directors actually control fewer dayparts on their stations.

For all of us, less is taking its toll. You have less time to accomplish all you've been assigned. The sooner you fall behind, the more time it will take you to catch up. Sometimes it's easier to get older than it is to get wiser.

We're living in some crazy times. We are part of an industry that is ignited by motivation and change. We have to avoid the traps in the game and recognize that for most of us the promised safety net is a cruel deception. A job is just that ... a job. You understand that when you lose your income, often you also lose your dignity and self-esteem. You have to start all over again at the bottom -- or, if you're lucky, in the middle.

The marketplace of ideas is still the catalyst for change. That change includes unpredictability, constant overwhelming advances in technology, information overload, intense and multiplying competition that demands research and risk reduction. Programmers have to achieve ratings victories with fewer resources.

Ratings, spins and detections still determine who works and who doesn't. We owe the reasons for the increasing importance for all these issues to one word -- greed. Before we had greed we had the time and tools to succeed. But now that we've been forced to overcome obstacles and avoid failure with less, the pressure to succeed is constant. Sometimes, let's face it, you could get lucky. You could wind up with an Arbitron sample that is right in the center of your hottest zip codes. If those listeners get diaries or meters, regardless of how great a programmer you are, the fact is you got lucky. But your GM or market manager not only doesn't want to reward you with a bonus, he wants you to continue to get more done with less. The problem is just like you got lucky, you could get unlucky. It could be your competitors' turn.

Whethering The Changes

Whether we're talking about music scheduling or dayparting and music testing, it's obvious there have been changes in our industry. Whether these changes have been out-distanced by increased complexity or triggered by consolidation and group ownership, they are part of our new reality. In fact, it appears likely that the current transactional turbulence will go on as companies continue to attempt to satisfy their investment strategies and complete their portfolios.

The companies that own and manage our stations made a huge mistake when they gave salespeople the power to oversee programming. These "bean counters" with tunnel vision can only see to the end of the quarter. They just want to know how many 1-800 commercials we can sell in the shortest amount of time. When it turned out the answer was not what they expected, they modified that statement to read: How many shorter 1-800 commercials can be sold in the shortest amount of time?

In every other business, creativity and sales are separated within the confines of the structure. It's time for radio to get real. The lowest common denominator doesn't factor in our business. But it's become the point which most managers seem to strive to achieve.

They no longer play to win. They play not to lose. The problem here is there isn't a prevent defense in radio. The same management team that agreed just a few years ago that research was an essential part of winning, now say it isn't that important -- if they have to pay for it. And I'm sorry, online callout research is not the answer.

Innovation isn't a part of today's radio thinking. There is no room for a new concept because anything new scares the "bean counters" who occupy the corporate offices of most radio companies.

The same mentality is helping to destroy radio just as much as the Internet, satellite radio, online radio, pre-recorded voicetracking and syndication. We live in an era of fewer openings and lower pay.

Given today's high costs of developing talent and the lower costs of distribution, it's easy to see why radio executives have turned to syndication and voicetracking to stretch their on-air talent. The problem is it's like pizza. Once you take away the cheese, sauce and toppings, you're left with nothing but a piece of dough. Today's Urban radio just isn't as compelling a listen without the live talent locals can identify with. That's what separates terrestrial radio from iPods.

Now we're not saying that you can't win with syndication, because you can. We're just saying that you're at risk. And the risk is that the first station or group of stations that decides to bite the bullet and bring back local talent is going to have a huge ratings advantage.

Is Radio Using Research As A Cop-Out?

There are those in the record industry who still feel that when radio says they have to wait until they receive the results of their callout research before they can add or spike a record, that it's merely an excuse or cop-out. But is it a cop-out when a PD or MD doesn't want to add your record and delays the decision until the research comes back?

Sometimes it is, but it may not be a cop-out. Maybe the PD is just tired after overseeing three stations, voicetracking one and is just not motivated enough to check and see if a new record he doesn't hear at first listen has the potential to build audience. You see, we have raised a whole new generation of radio decision-makers who have forgotten how to listen -- who were trained to depend entirely on research. The other problem is the amount of time it can take to gather and accurately process the results of this research. Since so much of today's research is centered on music, the demands are often huge.

Music, which is the product for most Urban stations, is basically a non-intellectual function. The average person can tell you if they like or dislike a song, but they often have no idea why. These same people often, given time, may come to really dig a song they rejected when they first heard it. That's what is wrong with callout.

Callout is measuring what one-time listening produces, based on a seven-second hook. To date, I have checked and none of the national research companies still left that are doing hooks has one African-American employee participating in the process. They're not training, nor looking for any. That brings about some key questions. Suppose they miss the hook? That's possible, because some of these aliens from another format can't even clap on the beat. That too is part of the game -- a dangerous music game in which we're getting played.

Left Brain ... Right Brain

We're getting played too because so few of us really understand the left-brain, right-brain theory, even though it's been widely discussed in recent years. The left brain is concerned with matters emotional, among other things. Music is handled differently by males and females, but in all cases, it is an emotional process even though, strangely enough, it is handled the same way as mathematics.

We continuously run up against the dark, mysterious right brain area of likes and dislikes. In order to shed some light on this, let's rationalize and evoke some comment from the experts. One such expert, Normal Dolph, teaches a course on the subject of hit songs and how to write them. He is a Yale graduate who has worked for several labels. He himself has written several hit songs for artists whose music we play. Dolph feels (and we agree) that the big misunderstanding among writers is that record companies make records for totally different reasons than radio plays them. It used to be that the motive of the record company (to sell a lot of CDs) and the motive of radio (to draw a lot of new listeners) had their differences. But they also understood each other's needs.

Most hit songs, especially rap songs, don't usually have plots or tell stories any more. They have a premise that is stated early and then repeated over and over. The reason is that with radio listening, the song will usually already be playing when a listener first really hears it, so the middle has to make as much sense as the beginning. When this type of song makes it, it makes it big ... regardless of category.

Another important ingredient of a hit is being "noise immune." This is a communication theory term for being readily perceivable in a noisy environment. That's why really well-constructed hit songs usually have what's known as a redundancy factor. The hook in a single is destined to make certain that no matter how noisy the environment is, the receiver clearly understand the message. Finally, noise (or anything perceived as noise) is unwanted information.

One man's noise, though, is another man's information. If you're talking to an advertiser, the music is noise. He wants to make his commercial in such a way that they stand up against today's hit songs. You talk to the artists and they'll tell you the commercials are noise and they try to make a record that will stand up against McDonald's or Geico.

It's a tough game out there and it's getting tougher all the time. Those among us who would survive and win have to pay attention to some of the new research methods that are turning up every day. Research and technology can't continue to be things we don't understand and simply complain about. The same systems that make us feel trapped are the same ones that can set us free and motivate us to make "second effort" common and even fun.

Let's switch back to the record industry for a minute and their questions about radio's love affair with research. How do labels reach the decision-makers and convince them that their music is worth a second listen, regardless of what callout research may say? By learning more about radio's callout research process themselves.

Today more than ever, there are a great many more trapdoors to failure than there are shortcuts to success. One thing we know for sure, there will be some lessons taught by the winner and some layoffs coming to the loser. Being #2 in a market could still mean huge profits for stations with a creative sales department that's plugged into its passions.

The main obstacle continues to be capital. That's no surprise. Fewer banks or investors want to loan money to companies involved in music or media. Even profitable companies are having a difficult time raising cash or keeping stock prices at acceptable levels. The effect this will have is enormous. Even if the economy rebounds tomorrow, the long-term effects will still be felt for years.

Many programmers are not just missing a few steps, they're stuck in a phase of awkward pretense -- making moves and then questioning them or waiting desperately for the environment to somehow change. Unfortunately many of the big radio players are simply confronting the oddities of change, defined by station standards, cost controls and a deceptive consumer market.

Why is this important? It is important because less is not more. It's important because the music and the artists, just like our radio stations, will keep moving and continue changing ... and we will succeed or fail, based on how we adjust. We have to stop scheduling our lives to fit abstract time rather than natural time. Companies have to stop trying to "save their way to success." This results in forfeiting opportunities and more of the "let's run it cheap" mentality -- which reduces us to being prisoners of the laws of economics.

Word.