Format Care & Maintenance

Avoid Self-Imposed Traps

Some of today's most knowledgeable and skilled Urban programmers have been experiencing ratings dips lately. Naturally, nerves are frayed and questions are being asked by their managers. They want to know why has this happened and what are we going to do about it?

It's ironic. Many of these ratings dips were caused by the managers themselves, who tightened the purse strings and increased the burdens placed on their programmers -- who have little time to devote to any more than just basics. Some of these programmers have been forced to do an air shift. A few even have to run the board for a syndicated show. As if that weren't enough, now these busy-bodies are additionally burdened with having to solidify their positions by appealing to an older, but more musically aware, demographically saleable audience. As a result there is an even greater need for time management, format care and maintenance.

The New Rules Of Engagement

What can mitigate these greater needs and solve these problems? Let's begin with the newest rules of engagement. These are new rules with which we can engage our audience, which take into consideration what happens when new music gets played. Conventional wisdom dictates that when Urban stations play new songs, particularly those from new artists, they risk tune-out from listeners more interested in jams and artists they already know and love. Recent nationwide studies reveal this is not always the case. In fact, if done right, audience levels can actually build during the airing of new jams.

But there are some secrets. How do we engage our audience with new music? First we have to recognize that not all music is created equal when it comes to how it affects audience listening levels. It's a fact that established artists perform better than new artists. Uptempo jams perform better than ballads ... and songs from male artists tend to out-perform those from female artists. These same studies also show that collaborations from one or more artists definitely perform better.

Urban radio's new rules of engagement are also causing us to re-examine the way we interpret research. There are definite gender differences. For example, if you ask the opinion of females regarding their musical tastes, you will find that they tend to favor hits that are soft and romantic. Male programmers often overlook this. We tend to want our stations to be exciting.

How do you build excitement with a lot of slow jams? There is a way to do this very effectively -- but before we reveal that secret we want to tell you what not to do. As busy as you are, you can't pass this problem along to Selector. You can't just tell the music scheduling system to maintain the tempo at a certain level and force the songs played out of stopsets and at certain times in the clock hour to be high-energy. One of the other dangers is that if you leave it up to your music scheduling system, daypart control will become damaged and the rotations can be thrown even further out of balance.

Format Filtering

One of the key elements that attracts listeners to our formats is new music. In no age cell is that more important than 18-24 demos. It's this younger end that drives the demand for new music. But the hunger for new music doesn't stop at age 24, however. What great programmers have learned is that as much as the audience wants new music, they also want you to do some filtering. For example, during the day when the audience is little older, the current-to-gold and recurrent ratio should be lower. The new music that airs during the day has to be the cream of the crop ... established artists and the stuff that has the best potential of making it into the library. Many of the daytime power currents probably started at night with the younger audience, making that initial "playground" very important to the overall sound of your station.

Our radio stations have to take on the role of screener - acting as a filter for listeners by going through all of the new music and helping the listener discern what is best. This makes the programmer's job that much more important. You build trust with your audience based on your filtering ability. If you consistently get behind new music that eventually makes it into your library, your audience will trust you to be their filter. If you keep striking out on new stuff or simply stick with gold and recurrents, you could lose them.

Some Urban stations have given up on the younger demos because, in their mind, people in that age group are too fickle in their musical tastes and are not loyal listeners. But that loyalty needs to be earned by filtering and finding the right new music.

Having a music director with a great set of ears is important. Research (when it's available) isn't going to help you when a song is brand new and no one knows it. You have to know in your gut if it's going to work. Also, while ignoring the younger audience and becoming predominantly gold-based may increase your older audience numbers, that tactic has a limited shelf life.

Classic Urban

Our audience's music taste shifts as they get older and you may eventually find your station becoming a "classic Urban." It will no longer be an important place for people to go to hear new music. And with all the media choices available today, that's the kiss of death. If there are members of your core audience who love the good songs they grew up with, even after the age of 25, they don't give up on new music. The Urban audience stays younger longer.

Today's music freaks are faced with an unlimited number of choices when it comes to what to listen to and where to get it. We are living in an era of information overload and our brains have had to become filtering mechanisms that zero in on stuff that matters to us.

Nowhere is this more true than with 18-24-year-olds, who have grown up in a time when all these choices exist. They are used to filtering, but the job gets overwhelming and tiring after a while. That's where you come in. Believe it or not, in 2010 radio is still the number-one place people go to hear new music. In study after study, the results are the same. Radio dominates every other medium when it comes to exposing new music.

More people use the Internet to get music now than ever before. When they hear something they like on the radio, they find it on the Internet and either have it delivered electronically or use the information to go out and buy it on CD. Some will share or swap songs with their friends. Still others will steal it.

What works in our favor is that the choices on the Internet are so vast that unless you know exactly what you are looking for, finding good music is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's where radio comes in. Radio does the work of finding the good stuff.

Keep in mind that it's not unusual these days for someone to be working on their computer, text messaging on their cell phone, watching television and listening to the radio all at the same time. That's why Time Spent Listening to radio has declined, but not to the extent you would think with all of this multi-tasking going on. Radio is simply competing for the audience's attention with all of these other players. It is still winning the race, but to stay out in front, it must supply compelling content that has been carefully filtered.

It's true that radio supremacy has diminished somewhat over the years because of all the new music delivery sources, but it is still far ahead of all other media. The only thing that comes close to radio in exposing new music is word-of-mouth. And even that is fueled by what people hear on the radio.

It's important that you meet or exceed listener expectations. Urban programmers have to still use their ear and gut on records they don't have time or support to research. And then don't bury it in overnights. Use your research tool and Mscores to validate your gut premonition on songs.

When will owners and managers understand the necessity of supporting the programming and marketing needs of their stations? Sadly, maybe never. It's not that they're not capable of understanding these needs, it's that they are simply too consumed with their sales revenues being off as much as 30%. So, as programmers we are forced to work with our talent, fine-tune our music scheduling and develop our entertainment value and promotions to their fullest.

We have to recognize and then avoid self-imposed traps like procrastination and seek opportunities. It is my prediction that format care and maintenance is going to become increasingly important for Urban stations in the future. While no one can accurately predict exactly what the future may hold, our view is that the future will be shaped by the prepared. There is no truth in the saying that opportunity knocks at our door but once in a lifetime. The fact is, opportunity seldom seeks us. We must seek it.

Life furnishes us the opportunity to improve and excuses are simply poor substitutes for action. For the record, I believe we may have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape our craft as we strive to create a format worth inheriting.

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