Developing Personal Insight & Audience Strategies

The Insider's Guide To Creating Better Radio

As we sail through the summer of 2010, it's time to look at new ways of removing the bumps and smoothing out the ride that radio takes us on and, in the process, creating better radio.

Personal insight is one of the audience strategies that can make a difference if you're a programmer. You also have to become a problem-solver. Problem-solvers need to understand some basics and be prepared to take some risks. One of the basics that needs to be understood is that both Urban formats continue to share the majority of their hit titles with other formats.

One of the risks that Urban programmers don't have to take is waiting for research to confirm their instincts about records they hear and are already moving up on other format-similar stations. Not surprisingly, programmers maintain near unanimous agreement that having other stations occasionally warm up titles is useful, if not wholly beneficial for the format. It's great to have some jams cross formats; the more exposure the better in order to make them familiar to your core.

Here's a strategy to keep in mind: If a song is truly a hit, regardless of which format first exposed it, it will cross over to other formats. One advantage Urban stations have is there are a lot of great songs and artists, which will eventually cross over, that we can and should play first. Regardless of how you may feel about it, you cannot own a hit. In the final analysis, the audience just wants to hear great songs. There was a time when Top 40 was a balanced whirlpool of pop, ballads, dance and Urban tracks. In some markets, especially at night, many Top 40 stations are playing as many as 70% Urban titles -- and playing them early, ahead of the research results.

Understanding how to apply research results can reduce some of the risks, but it can't eliminate all of them. The key is to suffer disappointments gracefully and honestly and share credit for achievements. The really sharp programmers always remember that even in this economy, people are still more important than dollars.

There is a change in thinking of today's generation of listeners. Whether it's character, harmony, sophistication or style, they are evolving. This is where variety meets spontaneity. This is where strong programmers have to develop a willingness to consider risks. They can't be afraid to look at the downside and answer the hard questions.

And you need a back-up plan. Such a plan should address questions like "What if the present programming strategies don't work?" This is where some foresight comes in. Some PDs seem to have an uncanny ability to predict the future. They seem to be able to find the best music, the strongest talent, the right contests ... and they keep winning. Are they just lucky? Maybe, but consistent luck is eventually rewarded. Good PDs should be prepared to create some of their own luck by cultivating their ability to see opportunities others may overlook and then convert those opportunities into ratings.

New Devices

One of those opportunities involves understanding what new devices are attracting listeners and how they extend the reach of various entertainment choices. Let's take Apple's iPad, for example. Here is yet another new entertainment device which can serve as a platform for your brand, as well as a competitor for the listeners' attention. Unlike a laptop, the iPad is designed to be an entertainment device. The screen is large enough to allow you to view real websites instead of stripped-down mobile versions. Now you can view these sites on a smartphone, but due to the small screen, most listeners won't want to do it very often. And because it starts up instantaneously, browsing the web has gotten a lot faster with the iPad.

Then there is the ease of using the apps. One of the reasons that apps took off the way they did is that they provided a way to make the content fit the screen on a smartphone. The iPad extends the idea, with many of the apps now available in an iPad version, optimized to take advantage of the larger screen. Typically, a smartphone radio app is just a way to allow the user to stream content; there are seldom any other features offered through the apps. But iPad apps allow developers to take advantage of the increased real estate and make the app much more of a hybrid between a simple gateway to audio and a website.

Unconnected to the Net, the iPad is no different than an iPod except that it has an external speaker. It's not great sound, but it's acceptable. And no, you're not going to get listeners to strap it on and go to the gym. On the other hand, it can be used around the house without have to use headphones. And when the iPad is connected via Wi-Fi, it can take the place of a table radio with terrestrial and online streaming available through individual apps or the web.

Let's leave the iPad for now and look at some other things that may appear to be the result of amazing foresight that are actually the result of hard work and discipline -- the kind it takes to constantly look forward and build. Foresight is also the ability to hire, develop and keep the right people. It also means realizing where the holes exist, both inside and outside the format.

One of the areas of obvious growth for Urban formats is with Hispanics. Last year Urban stations that were able to attract Arbitron-weighted Hispanics did well in both diary and metered markets. The growth of Hispanic-targeted stations and those stations that were able to develop a strong Hispanic following in many cases came at the expense of English-language Top 40 and Rock stations. A new study shows in some markets these stations posted another straight year of declines. But the decline in share these stations experienced coincided with gains in audience share for Urban-formatted stations among listeners 12-24 and even for adults 24-49. Audience shares in the 18-34 age group, however, have been dropping. Interestingly enough, when the average median age bumped up to 29, some Rock and Top 40's median-age Hispanic listeners remained strong. As they have been for years, in many markets Urban-formatted stations do very in average market share. So it appears Hispanics still really get off on hip-hop and R&B.

Consistent Growth

Whether it's through a period of unemployment or just a reaction to the stress that's part of our daily lives, what we're all trying to do is create better radio. In other words, have a nice run on a well-paved road before our luck or ratings run out.

What can we do to capture and maintain better ratings? The truth is that often we have to force our managers to have patience. Growing an audience takes time -- and then we have to remember "Arbitron lag time" can be as much as six months.

There is something that can help lighten the load and shorten the time it takes for the growth to show up in the ratings sweeps ... that is musical consistency. While we're not trying to discount the value of variety in any station's mix, there has to be a synthesis of the different styles so that it sounds like it all belongs to one radio station. This means both from shift-to-shift as well as song-to-song, weekday and weekend.

Now the question turns to which songs? How do you find them? The answer is gut feeling and research. Right here we can say that neither callout nor auditorium testing, done under the most optimum conditions, is completely accurate.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't attempt to do some testing. It just means that you should understand that music testing is going to be distorted. It is going to be distorted by the artificiality of playing the hooks. (And unfortunately, some consultants and researchers not familiar with Urban radio can't find the song hooks with a road map. Many of these guys can't even clap on the beat.)

What we mean here is that playing a 7- to 12-second segment of a song with minimal airplay and then attempting to get the respondents to project and articulate their response to the song as a whole, resulting in some intellectualizing of an emotional response, is not only an inexact science, it's a pure guessing game. So before you bet the bank based on some flawed research, maybe you'd better think again.

There are still just three basic types of research that most stations do on a regular basis: Auditorium Music Test (AMTs), Focus Groups and Callouts.

AMTs are conducted with a carefully screened group of target listeners who evaluate portions of songs called hooks. Each song is scored according to its familiarity, appeal and passion.

Callout research is an evaluation process wherein target listeners evaluate 30 or more songs weekly, again indicating familiarity, appeal, fatigue and passion.

Focus Groups are smaller, carefully selected groups of target listeners who discuss and identify key issues and set priorities for quantitative research and are designed to enhance the overall value of perceptual research.

Over the years, I get a lot of programmers and even GMs who ask, if you have a limited budget and time, which form of research should you choose? I personally feel that it depends on the station. For example, if yours is an Urban Adult, gold-based station, an auditorium test would be the best choice. If you have a mainstream, current-based station, callout research is the way to go.

It's important that the questionnaires be carefully reviewed so as not to confuse the respondents. And it helps if the moderator looks like those he/she is moderating.

We cannot put absolute faith in a research process without understanding what the limitations are.

The worst thing we can do is base our music decisions on flawed research. This means that the participants have to be screened carefully to ensure that all lie within the station's cume. I strongly recommend using updated ZIP code penetration data to determine where the respondents should be drawn from. I also like to make certain that all the ethnic considerations, including Hispanics, are reflected. In other words, there should be balance. A lot of companies assume, for example, that an Urban station should only have African-American females in the sample. That's wrong. Then, despite any age skewing in the sample, it has to be demographically balanced. And, finally, the sample has to be of sufficient size to give some stability to the results. I like a sample of at least 400 persons. The larger the sample, the more reliable.

Many managers and owners feel that they can save some money by reducing the sample size. After all, if they are paying an average of $35-$40 per person, the fewer people they have to pay, the more they can save, right? Wrong. You need a minimum of over 150 completed calls per week and over 600 per month just to have a chance at some actionable results. The larger the sample, the more reliable.

Perhaps the most actionable information that this research can provide is burnout -- finding out if the songs being tested are overexposed. Then, if your results show you have some titles that are tired, you should retire or "rest" them and go on to the next group of fresh songs in that category.

Creating Better Cume

One of the other things that can achieve better radio is to fully understand how cume building really works. There's an old saying that you can't sell anybody anything until they come into the store. (This saying preceded the Internet, downloading, iPods and iPads, of course.) As it relates to radio, it means you can't generate cume ratings until you get your listeners to wear a meter tuned to your frequency or keep a diary with your call letters written down. Once they do, they become a potential part of your weekly cume. I've said this for years now: The biggest single problem Urban radio stations have, especially in a PPM world, is failure to build and maintain cume. It doesn't matter if you have great Average Quarter-Hours (AQH) or Time Spent Listening (TSL) if you've only got 10 listeners!

It would be impossible in this editorial for us to attempt to sort out all the things you might need to know regarding cume, but we will at least attempt to point you in the right direction. What we can say here is that you should at least analyze your station's cume and compare it with both your competition and the previous sweep or book. If you find that your competition, regardless of who they are (the station or stations that you share the most audience with will work for now), has doubled its cume while you remained the same, you're in trouble and you'd better do some strategic planning to figure out how you can take a piece of their cume and put it on your side. Urban stations should be cuming at least 10%-15% of the total audience in their market.

In short, to build cume we just need to create better radio. Creating better radio is more than just research, musical diversity and recognizing character differences that translate directly into audience growth and swollen cumes. It's all of those things combined with creating a strong brand. Any company or station that has not developed an app is falling behind and may never catch up. Your station brand needs to be everywhere that listeners are. That's part of developing better personal insights and audience strategies.

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