Improving Your Odds

Laying Out The Liners

Whether it's "Blazing Hip-Hop and R&B," "Jammin' 96 The Best Mix," "My Magic 102.3," or some other slogan or positioning statement, it's time to look at how the audience really perceives these liners .Right now so many stations are using so many variations of them. When it comes to attracting new audience, liners and slogans can be very effective. It's hard for listeners to lock an exclusive position in their mind for any one of them ... but it can be done. And when you can do it consistently, it can help you to "improve your odds."

I have long believed that with focused vision you produce meaningful change. As measuring changes, so must the vision. Since stations, especially with the advent of the PPM, are depending on a single commodity, it's hard to build brand loyalty because it's often so undistinguishable from the competition. What is happening in 2010 is that both the station's liners and much of what the air personalities say is viewed or heard as not really worth hearing by most listeners. They're perceived as not being part of the entertainment; they're an interruption.

So the question then becomes how can we position ourselves more effectively against the competition? And the answer is by making sure that what we have to say is entertaining and by selling against the sameness and lack of originality in our liners and positioning statement as well as what the jocks say between songs. Unfortunately, today many Urban stations have little or no control over their syndicated shows and voicetracked segments. That makes those dayparts that we do have control over even more important.

For air talent, the best place to start is by asking yourself before you open the mike, "Is what I'm about to say going to affect my listeners in some way? Am I going to make them feel something? Am I prepared to say it in a unique way, a way that helps create the illusion of companionship and make my listeners want to know me better and keep listening to me?" Then you must ask, "Will my words be brief and meaningful, so my listeners can grasp them and relate to them in the 10 or 15 seconds he or she has to pay attention?"

Beyond that, if you have a seven-minute stopset, you have to put some stationality into it. If you're not segueing two records in a row anymore, you're play seven spots in a row without identifying the station. The old thinking was: Don't put your calls next to the commercials. The new thinking says make listening appointments and identify the station as much as possible -- especially with PPM.

In some cases you can hook on the left side of the stopset and then run big produced promos after the stopset that kind of says, "Hey, wake up, we're back." That big production going back to the music is what you want your audience to remember. Some stations run little quirky promos that get the message out, tease a contest or are contest enticers that play between the jams. These are not 40-second promos, which can be tune-outs, but rather five to seven-second sweepers that get the message across.

You also have to watch the number of commercials that you allow your talent to do, because you know who's going to get tagged even worse for "too much talk." Listeners don't always realize that those are commercials. They think that it's just your talent talking. You should especially limit these spots during middays. If you have to do them, put them on the back end of the stopset with a music bed under them.

Programmers are a lot like skilled pilots who need to constantly improve their odds of landing safely through enhanced situational awareness. The most important step a pilot can take to reduce the risk of an accident is to learn how to land well, especially in gusty crosswinds. Programmers have to do the same thing. It all comes down to strategic thinking and practice in setting boundaries.

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