Mc Vay Media Rocks

Facebook Radio Report Card 1/29/12

2012-01-31T17:15:00.001-05:00

Here are some observations and data from monitoring the Facebook posts of 14 selected stations.

This week the News Feed for the stations came up with:

157 posts dating back 60 hours that's up from the 85 posts we had last week.
Types of Posts

Station Liners - Plugs for contests, music features, etc - 16 or 10%
Questions - "Are you watching American Idol" etc -48 or 30%
News/Info - Links to Videos, funny Pictures or News facts - 74 or 47%
Personality Posts - 'On my 2nd cup of Coffee need more' - 14 or 9%
Music News - Posts on upcoming releases, artist news -- 4 or 3%

Top 5 Posts with most Likes

652 - A pic of Limp Biscuit - Pillsbury Dough can breaks - also 139 comments and 141 shares
285 - Paterno dies - news in Pittsburgh
262 - Penguins win #500 in Pittsburgh
258 - Go Pats in Boston
229 - German gets 110,000 tax refund in error.

Top 5 Posts with most Comments

196 - Stars you've seen or movies filmed in our city
163 - Pick superbowl in Pittsburgh
139 - Pic of Limp Biscuit
125 - Taco Bell for Breakfast
94- What did you do this weekend

Sports really picks up a lot more content this past week with the Superbowl teams all set. There wasn't much on the Oscar nominations and no posts on political issues. Remember we have Rock, AC, Country and CHR stations in this mix. Rock stations had the most active and highest number of posts this week. By the way the pic of the Limp Biscuit just in case you wanted to know:

Facebook Radio Report Card 1/18/12

2012-01-18T13:18:00.001-05:00

So what does Radio's overall Facebook Presence look like?

How are we using the social network?

What are we posting and what is working?

All of these are questions I'm sure everyone is asking as they decide how much effort and time Facebook is worth. To get a picture I built a Facebook Page that only I can access and it is tracking 14 stations in Rock, CHR, Country, and AC formats to get a picture of what is posted each week and what the audience reaction in Likes and Comments is.

Let's take a look at Wednesday 1/18/12 with an analysis taken around 10a Eastern. The tracking on my Newsfeed here goes back to Sunday posts - so around 60 hours. Here are some tracking facts:

There were 85 posts in the News Feed - that's an average of 6 posts per station in the roughly 2 day period - so maybe 3-4 posts a day on the average.

Here is a rundown of the type of posts in the News Feed:

Station Liners - Plugs for contests, music features, etc - 27 or 32%
Questions - "Are you watching American Idol" etc - 12 or 14%
News/Info - Links to Videos, funny Pictures or News facts - 30 or 35%
Personality Posts - 'On my 2nd cup of Coffee need more' - 8 or 9%
Music News - Posts on upcoming releases, artist news -- 8 or 9%

Top 5 reaction posts:

Station Contest - Trip to Hawaii in LA - 152 Likes
News - Justin Bieber goes Brunette 155 Likes and 80 comments
News - Kholhe K's ex gets cheers at Lakers Game in LA - 436 Like
News - Pop bands logos in Heavy/Death Metal Fonts - 184 Like, 61 Comment, 38 Shares
Question - State wants to ban PJs in Public - 70 Likes and 185 Comments

I tried to pick stations that did a fair amount of postings and had big Like numbers. The big markets like LA, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Boston, and Philly are there but there are some smaller markets like Madison and Grand Rapids. I plan on adding to the panel now that we have a trial run out there and track more of the content. Of course I can't track all the metrics that are available to the Admin users at the stations, but we can at least see the Likes, Comments and Shares to get a basic picture. If you have any suggestions on stations to add or other types of posts to track let me know via email- dlange210@att.net or with comments below. Thanks.

Overall when you just look at a News Feed of Radio Brands it's a strange mix of posts. The biggest reactions here are mostly for News and Questions. The Station Liners really didn't do much in likes or comments unless they were contests that forced the audience to Facebook to win. The most reactions came from the active evening personalities and their posts with Questions and News/web bits. Is there a real strategy here to focus on the types of posts that get reaction or are we just throwing posts out there?

The other fact here was the lack of interaction from the Personalities in their posts. Once they put it up there they rarely came back in to keep the conversation going or react to the audience.

Social Networks - Too Much Activity?

2012-01-04T13:45:00.002-05:00

The reality of interacting with your audience on Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook is that you can go un-noticed pretty quickly.

Right now Facebook claims over 800 million active users with around 50% of them logging on in any given day. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and in an average day more than 250 million photos are uploaded everyday.

In the Twitter world there are over a billion tweets posted every week. Twitter users welcomed in 2012 with over 16,000 tweets per second on New Years Eve last weekend!!

While some grumbled at the changes from the Facebook F8 conference last fall to the News Feed - face it something had to be done. We are all drowning in the posts from our friends and also from the many celebrities, movies, TV shows, Radio stations, products, stores, and political pages and Twitter accounts we follow.

When I look at my news feed with around 500 friends and maybe 30 brands/personality pages I'm linked to I end up with around 20 posts an hour during the day. My full news feed page maybe covers 2-3 hours. In Twitter it can move even faster. Of course every week I add new friends and followers so in a year these numbers will climb a lot.

Also keep in mind that Facebook IS filtering what hits my news feed. They are looking at my past interaction (reading, linking, sharing, or commenting) with each of my friends and brand likes and deciding who is important. They are also looking at what is posted by each of my friends/brands and deciding if it might be interesting to me on a long list of priorities. Just as Google looks at my search history and sorts out what might be the best sites for me Facebook is also doing that for what appears on my News Feed.

So now you are getting set to do some posts on your station's Facebook page or hit the Twitter button. Is your message going to breakthrough? Or are you just wasting your time?

To get better at interacting with the audience on Social Media you need some feedback. Yes some metrics or statistics or ratings that tell you what the audience is doing with your interaction. And you need to develop a strategy behind the data to make sure what you post or tweet has a chance. The other challenge is that the listener's News Feed is filling up every minute with more stuff and even with good content you can fall off the feed before they even see it.

Some have taken to posting all the time to stay on the news feed, but remember that you don't want to become the 'evil' spam-master of Facebook. Yes, the News Feed filter also looks for 'spam' and filters it out. We also have the ultimate goal of getting the audience to interact with the ultimate source here - the broadcast signal. Perhaps down the road we'll be important enough in the Social Media Web to make all our dollars from the digital side, but for now (and probably forever) we need to get them to tune in or stream in.

The key is getting good feedback. Know how many people saw your post, how many hit any links, looked at the pic, rolled the video, commented, shared and also who they are. You can get most of this info if you have a Facebook analytic program, although many programs can be hard to read or navigate. Even bigger than just having the data you need to keep track of what worked and what didn't. Once you have this data - now you have a chance to build a strategy to become more effective. But, we have to hurry - next New Year there will probably be 50,000 tweets a second and we'll have 500 Facebook friends to keep up with and 5 times the posts we have today.

2012 Trends

2011-12-28T14:36:00.000-05:00

As we head into 2012 there are a number of 'trends' developing that are worth noting. I don't want to call these predictions - just some areas that affect our audience that are emerging and worth watching:

Social Networks - They continue to grow and occupy the lion's share of most people's on-line time which seems to grow even more as more smart phones and mobile apps allow you to be on-line all the time. The big trend in 2011 was the evolution of the networks to complete mass acceptance. There are nearly a billion FB accounts and the marketing/branding world is out in full force and with FB going public in 2012 they will dominate the news. Those who don't master social networks for building their brands and realize how to integrate the potential of radio's huge reach into a social network strategy will be ones that hold back our industry. Right now it's a 2 team world - the rest of the networks are small niche players at best - to play you have to look at these 2:

Facebook - Will continue to grow and evolve but it's not the new kid on the block and every change will be widely challenged. Marketers and brands are also taking up lots of content space here and could hurt FB if they are not careful. The minute FB seems more like corporate hype and one big un-creative banner ad it could be replaced.
Twitter - It's the service with momentum right now with 400 million users in sight soon. Marketing in a 140 character world is a challenge. This will be the opportunity in 2012 much as Facebook became a force for radio brands in 2010 and 2011.

The Election - We have SO MUCH media space to fill that this election will be a pretty tiring event for the audience. Look at the developments as they relate to radio content here:

Super PAC and PAC money - The high court ruling that PACs can spend as much as they want has set the stage for a nuke explosion of dollars to be spent.
More Talk FMs - While we haven't seen them pull shares yet - they will pull in lots of dollars and we can also expect to hear a lot about this election in the commercials. Just look at Iowa where the airwaves are flooded and it's only a Republican Caucus.
All over the Net - On the social networks, on your phone, all over your searches and dominating any web site you visit with targeted political content. Your computer and your TV will look like this for 6 to 7 months:

Content - We have tons of political web sites, news services, networks, TV stations, cable news services, network news, bloggers, on-line news sites, newspapers, magazines and PAC sites disguised as news sites all searching for the big story to draw all eyes their way. And they have to do it over and over again with the onset of each news cycle. Is it any wonder that any Washington story can suddenly become a crisis? Is some of the grid lock in congress coming from too many sides to any issue and a media so fixed on everything that everyone is afraid to move?
Overload - This all sets up radio for a complete overload of our airwaves.

PPM - As we gather more data and see more of the PPM listening trends expect to see more programming ideas and rules change. Bow Tie clocks, quick fire entertainment/personality, tighter show prep, an evolution in imaging tactics, and lots of concern over sample size.
Research - The industry needs a full overhaul. We have so much data from the web, PPM, On-line surveys, Facebook Metrics, and web searches that the old music test or perceptual seems like super slow motion in a hypersonic world.
Being Local - Even as we see more trends to syndicated and voice tracked dayparts remember that just because we don't have someone local behind the mic doesn't mean that a brand or station cannot be a HUGE force and have a BIG local presence. Take an honest look at what the 'local personalities' did to really be local on the air and off - there are more people who are just voices on the transmitter here than real people in the community.
Being Authentic - The real key to marketing our clients products/services and building our brands is CONTENT. Having creative content that is authentic and draws the attention of the audience is the only way to build any momentum in today's marketing universe. We have so many delivery options from broadcast, the web, social networks, going viral, You Tube, billboards, print, product placement, sports tie ins and who knows what else that the audience is drowning in hype. The only way to rise above the hype is to have some authentic entertaining content. If we'd start to focus on building this into the campaigns we sell (both on the air and in the digital world) we will become a huge force in marketing again.
New Web Gadget/Gimmicks - Last year we saw the rise of Pandora and the lure of Groupon. In the end we can see how both are fairing in the stock world. Pandora went public and while it held it's ground it's not likely to light the world on fire in a business sense. Trying to mount a local sales force for Pandora in every market and living in a royalty world that will limit their income as they grow is not a model that will sell on Wall Street. Groupon is too easily copied and really ends up being just another hyped up marketing model. Really radio answered these threats pretty well - the advance of the CBS and Clear Channel into the streaming world is a good answer. Groupon is being hit a lot by local stations that have built their own answers for clients. There will be new gadgets next year - maybe one of them will be RADIO!!! We do have lots of advantages that are being ignored.
Music - A big transition year. Rap/Hip Hop is getting pretty extreme in the language and topics. The pop world has been living for a long time on the young world of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Ga Ga and their LPs from 2 years ago. What will evolve? Indie Rock with unique instruments, lyrics, and presence? A new breed of rocker that isn't a copy of Nickleback? An authentic country voice that isn't really a pop singer in boots? A singer songwriter that impacts the Hot AC and AC world - or is that Adele? Watch for new music on your desk this year -- the audience is ready for the Next Thing not a rehash of the last thing.

The real note here is that we have a restless audience. They are ready to 'occupy anything' because they are ready for something different and perhaps new. But, in the end they are looking to be entertained and being a part of a community. The other challenge is a world where there are new product distribution options all the time - staying on top of them and investing quickly and wisely will keep our brands in front of the audience. If we can keep those areas as our top priorities making money, building EBITA, hitting budgets and keeping Radio a strong player in the mix will happen automatically. Happy 2012!!!!

The Personalization Bubble

2011-12-14T15:56:00.001-05:00

As we work in our Broadcasting world and the ever increasing Social Media and Web world that we interact and build our audience's with there are some important lessons here in this presentation by Eli Pariser at a recent TED conference.

His thought here is that in our web and digital world we are living in such a personalized bubble that is filtered constantly analyzing everything we read, share, click on, and interact with that we can end up living in our own world. Very interesting thought - and the more you think about it - very true.

We come from Broadcasting where the only filter is - changing the channel to another station. It does give the audience a community. Eli's view here is that in the Personalized web world we could be turning into individualists.

The other thought to take away is 'how to work and interact in the individualistic world the audience is building - with the help of the Social Media sites and Search Engines.

Times Are A Changing As Always

2011-12-05T12:08:00.001-05:00

Perhaps it's the holiday season or the excitement of a new year approaching, but I've been thinking about the some broad stroke perspectives.

As we enter 2012 we are in the middle of celebrating some anniversaries. We will soon have around 20 years of the web under our belts -- the first Nexus browser came out in 1990 and the Mosaic browser (far easier to use and the template for what we have today) in 1993. It was around 10 years ago in 2002 when High Speed Internet access was only in 10% of the homes - now it's well over 70%. And when you really look back to around 30 years ago we saw personal computers move from being a hobby to a full fledged industry with Apple- IBM squaring off and Microsoft starting to brew software. It was also around 20 years ago that we saw the first portable cell phones that could actually be carried around without a bag or a being the size of a brick - those 1980s lug-able phones are nearly 30 years old now.

These evolutionary anniversaries signal some big changes in all of lives here on Planet Earth. Look at some of the random examples that seem to stand out when you step back :

Christmas Cards - Notice that you are getting fewer and fewer every year? Sending off a few Email cards, dropping everyone a tweet or a Facebook greeting, or perhaps a text will do.
Paper - We seemed to be drowning in paper 30 years ago. So much of what we did in transacting our lives and creating content came from using paper. While we still use a lot of the stuff - we can see a day when paper will be rare - sort of like stone tablets.
Physical Presence: In the 80s and 90s we began to see the potential of a world where we were able to have a nearly full communication experience without needing a physical exchange.
Telephones - It's clearly the all purpose tool of the future. If you go back to the big inventions of 100 or so years ago it would have to be the mass acceptance of - Autos, Electricity, Airplanes, Phones and Radio/TV. While all of these has evolved to some degree the biggest growth has clearly come in phones over the last 30 years. It's been able to evolve and morph with so many other innovations.
World Communication - The planet has never seemed closer in a connected way, yet we also seem to be showing more division in beliefs and struggling to find common ground in many ways. It's great that we can all communicate so freely but it also requires that we have open minds and be curious and tolerant of a planet that will pass 7 billion people early in 2012.
Demographics and Generations - We are moving faster in communication and information with every generation to a point where the gaps between various age groups is sometimes dramatic. Look at all that has evolved and changed to a person who is in their 70s or 80s today. We are moving at an ever increasing rate of speed that requires that you keep up or fall way behind.
Elections - It will be a big year for big talk. The influence of the evolution of our communication abilities is having a huge impact on elections. With all the discussion of issues and drama, that is so open and interactive, elections, and our expectations of the leaders that evolve from them, is something we will have to learn and adjust to. Maybe we will realize that Superman was fiction - none of us on this planet is that good. Maybe the people will regain their voices in a world that seems to be more and more influenced by commerce over community.

I'm sure you have lots of examples to add here, but as we get set for 2012 the big point that there is a lot to reflect on. It should be an exciting year as we start to see economies recover, perhaps some hopes for a more peaceful planet as a number of countries/cultures are evolving and changing, and the ability to communicate so quickly and freely continues to speed up our evolution.

It will also be a year when we will no doubt hear a lot about the Mayan Calendar which seems to end on December 21st by all of the calculations and speculation we can piece together. While some have predicted the end of the world and cosmic events - perhaps we have been working towards a big moment in our evolution and that is what they foresaw.

How Sample Changes the Game

2011-11-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

The recent news that an analysis of Facebook friends has shrunk the old 6 Degrees of Separation theory down to 4.74 world wide and 4.37 in the U.S. You can read all about it here. This is a significant finding to all of us in radio programming on a couple of levels:

The Audience is woven tighter than we imagined. The real power to spread your reach and to gain more P1s really lies in the audience you already have. If you can start a 'spark' in that group it can spread quickly. The key is starting the spark.
Social Networks are playing a huge role. The ability to interact with the audience and grow it's size has never been easier.
Sample Size does matter. We've always lived on random sample world of the normal curve and standard deviations to predict the size of our audience, the music they like, the images they carry on our products. The original study in the 60s that produced the 6 Degree theory was based on 296 volunteers who sent postcards to friends. The Facebook 4.7 Degree theory was based on breaking down the 'friends' data of millions of users. They had ample data from everyone on Facebook to see who they were connected to. This is a 25% difference in the numbers here. That is a pretty big swing from one study to the other. Consider if you downloaded your next book and found the numbers swinging 25% up or down for no obvious reason. The bigger sample size did show a significant difference in the result.

The real lesson for us here are points 1 and 2. If you start to visualize your audience as an interlinked group of people and start to interact with them on their level you have the potential to develop a huge reach. Working from the 'bottom up' - one listener to another - is the path to building your reach.

No Time For Social Media??

2011-11-11T10:06:00.001-05:00

Just what the programming team needed, another task to accomplish. Chances are your brand is trying to keep up with the audience and the community while you seem to have fewer players on the team than you ever imagined a few years ago.

Now you've made the dive into Social Media in addition to your web site and of course keeping the content hot out of the speakers. The Facebook Page and the Twitter worlds need attention if you are going to build and interact with your listeners. Having just 2,000 likes when your on-air cume is 100,000 doesn't make Facebook very effective. Just posting some pics on the page and pushing the air staff to 'post some stuff' won't help you develop a conversation with the audience or build the size of your fans in either Twitter or Facebook. It has to be topical, entertaining, unique and clever if it's going to have an impact on the audience. Obvious self promotion can be a big problem in building you brand - this audience is pretty marketing savvy and doesn't enjoy boring tricks.

The key to making Facebook and Twitter work is having an organization or a system so you can start to get a view of what is working and what is not. Just like we have Selector to help us play the HITS more often and control the music you need to have some kind of system to manage the posts on Facebook and Twitter. Having a system that also makes it easy to create in is also a big plus. Being able to post videos, pics, audio, flash, links, and with a system that is simple for everyone to grasp. You can't spend hours messing around with training or complex computer systems.

We also need to know what is working and what is being ignored or damages our brand. Just as we used charts, sales, call out, research and requests to get a picture of the music we play we need data here on how the audience interacts with the posts.

Then there is monitoring the pages. Keeping the language under control, making sure no one is spamming you and your audience and also being able to follow up on any questions or complaints from the fans. You can't spend your life with Facebook on your screen 24/7 to be the site police.

Lastly you have to use all the features of the page. Making up contests, building tab pages, linking the stream, promoting events, directing them to the website, adding them to your database, and biggest of all getting them to listen to the station more. You also have to do all of this within Facebook's rules. Forgetting to use their contest rules and follow their regulations can cost you your page and all of it's fans.

Opps almost forgot you also have to keep up with the Facebook and even Twitter news feed scoring systems. Appearing on your fan's news feeds with the new system of top stories is even harder than it was. You have to have relevant, vibrant and topical content to get in their club today. The only way to improve is to keep an eye on your progress and measure what is working and not working. You need constant feedback to keep up.

To get all of this you'll need a lot of sources. There are publishers and some include some analytics. Facebook also tells you some facts about how the fans are using your pages in their metrics. You can go to your graphic/web team to try and get help designing Tab pages for contests etc. Facebook does some monitoring for you, but it may not keep your team from needing to watch the page. Lots of jumping around for the facts here.

Then, of course, you have to manage the team. Teach them how to use all these tools and how to entertain the audience in a medium that nearly everyone is still learning about. It's also a world where Facebook or Twitter can change the rules at anytime or one where new tactics can pop up and change the game quickly.

The big brands are hiring whole teams to manage their Social Media presence. Look at the Gatorade Social Media HQ!!!

There are programs to help you get it all organized. There are system developing here, if you want to know more contact me. dlange210@att.net

RIF = Reinventing Radio

2011-10-27T16:44:00.000-04:00

The recent lay offs in Radio now known as a Reduction In Force is sad especially for those with a pink slip. The news stories and comments all over the web/social media lament the loss of our brothers/sisters in radio and much of the content is pretty negative on the bigger broadcasters and also on the state of radio.

Many wonder how radio will become a strong local force with fewer bodies in the building. How will they create local content when much of it comes from programmers or computers or air talent in far away places? Isn't 'Local' radio's ace in the hole with internet radio?

Radio is re-inventing itself and the priorities are different than the model we built in the 80s, and earlier that we all seem to cling to. Some of it comes from consolidation, some from computers being able to do the work as well as network, there is new competition, new ratings systems, and new opportunities to distribute on new media.

We have woken up on a different planet. The gravity is different allowing us to move quicker and the communication has evolved. Yet we still seem to move in an organization that lives on the old planet.

Radio has had opportunities to evolve in the past and in many cases we've made valiant attempts, but in the end the foundations of the industry seem to struggle. The pressure has built and now we are at a point where the structure within the stations will be clearly different ahead.

While it may be very hard to find good news here - there is!! Just as radio became a desperate media in the 50s as TV hijacked the audience we took on a whole new structure. Radio re-invented self on a new planet. That time has clearly come again - in fact it's way over due. Really we should have been evolving a lot more over the last 10 years as the internet and new media world has evolved.

If you are on the hunt to get back into radio, build your career, or hang on to your job there are new worlds to conquer and explore:

Social Media - A lot of our interaction and promotion within the audience will come from Social Media. It doesn't matter if we can make money on it or not - we have to use social media to keep and build our relationship with the audience. The good news is it doesn't cost much - but we do need more than just a bunch of random posts that the audience doesn't care about. You need organization and a well orchestrated strategy. 'Commin up the new Blink 182 on The Rock' isn't 'interacting' with the social network.
Have a REAL Presence in the community - The days of the jock showing up at an event and hanging out in some back office doing cut in breaks - avoiding the audience - are way over. You got to work the crowd and make lots of friends where ever you can. You can see that Clear Channel took out a lot of air staff members that were not top 3 in their daypart or of a huge value to the station. If you're just a nice voice on the radio that hides in the sound proof control room it's real hard to hold your value. Work the room and build your fans. Yes it may be harder with fewer staffers to build community presence but take a long look at the effort we put out now and even in the days of big staffs. Really it was mostly a few events and some client remotes. Even if you are down to the last DJ you can do better.
Understand the data - Just as Money Ball changed the baseball world with data in the 90s PPM is changing our world. Even if you don't have PPM understand the new world of watching the real reaction of the audience to what we do on the air. Also keep up on web metrics, Facebook interaction analysis, and how the audience is using apps. We've never had so much data on the audience before and it's a lot to digest - but we'd better learn it or......
See the Future - It's a whole new world and everyone needs to learn how to build their team in it.We have to be 'geeks' on technology - falling behind can be costly.
Improve Management Skills - If you are a manager do your best to be organized and have a strategy. Sending everyone out for a pass is usually a bad play and too often we just dive in. It does take time but if you get organized and get your priorities set for every day you can lead everyone to accomplish a lot of the skills noted above.

Yes, seeing the industry that we've all worked hard in and had lots of fun creating go through all these changes can be a struggle. Is everything the bigger groups are doing in our industry right? Maybe not - surely they will have some lemons. But remember - the minute we stop changing and evolving is likely to be one of our last minutes.

Sports Mania Season and Radio

2011-10-14T09:49:00.000-04:00

It happens every Fall when we have 'sports mania' just dominating the viewing and listening habits of many a male. It's so easy to fall into all the excitement as College Football builds in October with so many teams in the hunt and great rivalries nearly every weekend. Baseball heading into the World Series with intense match ups of the best teams. NFL Football in the middle of the season and the race to the playoffs in December building. Then you also have Tiger Woods returning to Golf (and failing again), the start of Hockey, the NASCAR season racing to it's championship moment and if we had NBA they would be opening up their season also.

You can see the impact by just looking at the network ratings from last Saturday night where the Ohio State/Nebraska game and the baseball games combined for 13 million and the rest of the network line up just cracking 6 million.

On Monday (10/10) you could wear out the remote moving from the Lions/Bears game to the Brewers/Cards and the Tigers/Rangers games.

It's also prime time for Sports Radio as they cover and discuss all the games and the ongoing NBA disputes. Even if your team is out of it the discussion can be even stronger that the play by play - just look at Boston or Philly right now. Boston is blowing up the Red Sox after wiping out in the playoffs. Philly doesn't know what to do with the Phillies dream team - pick to win it all in April out of the action. Or should they worry about the Eagles and all their problems?

Is it any wonder that male leaning music formats like Classic Rock, Active Rock, and Alternative have a tough time keeping the audience engaged. We often see the shares for the Rock formats drop in the Fall and Sports is a big part of it. But, do we focus on how we could stand out in this season? Some stations have gone to teaming up with the teams like WDVE in Pittsburgh. Others just take their medicine. Take a close look at the situation in your market. Are their opportunities? Could you create more excitement on your own and help pull the audience your way? Can you join in the sports mania and suck in some of the impact?

Whatever opportunities there are you have to have a plan and that takes time to develop. Now is your opportunity to take a close look at the environment in your market and look at your options.

Budget Goals for 2012

2011-10-04T14:59:00.002-04:00

It's budget time for many as we get set for 2012. Years ago it seemed like budget season was the time to draw up the wish list. Asking for funds for more research, raises for the air staff, a bigger (or any) promotion budget and maybe a few new toys for the team is probably not an options for any of the Programmers or Brand Builders. The goal that most have is likely to be - what can I cut out without bleeding too much?

While you many not be thinking of goals for your 2012 programming budgets there is one that every station should have.

GET CLOSER TO YOUR AUDIENCE

This goal doesn't have to be fed with lots of budget lines. It doesn't cost a lot to keep a healthy Twitter and Facebook presence. It doesn't cost a lot to build and keep a strong presence in the community. Yes there is staff-power needed for both efforts but I bet if you take the time to lay out a solid strategy and plan as part of your budget season you can reach this goal.

And with all the competition from so much media hitting the audience building and executing a plan to interact and stay in front of your audience has to be at the top of your list.

2010 Census - The End of 25-54?

2011-10-04T14:57:00.002-04:00

A lot of the data from the 2010 U.S. Census is out and there are some surprises when you step back and look at the big demographic picture of the country. I have built a comparison spread sheet of the 5 year demos from 2010 (on the left) and 2000 (on the right). Also broken out are 18 year breakouts that roughly correspond to the 'generations' (Y - X - Boomer-Etc). You can see that we really have 3 nearly equal segments here. The under 19s are around 27%, the 20-39s are also close to 27% and the 40-59s are just over 27%. The under 60 population is nearly equally split.

The Generations are roughly broken out below. Since we are dealing with 5 year splits on the data some of the definitions fall in the middle and were 'rounded' from the usually defined eras for each generation.

Still the picture is pretty clear here. The Younger Generation X, Y and the new under 19s that really have yet to be defined are taking up nearly 69% of the pie here. While the boomers are still strong their percentage is shrinking. You can see the boomer ages in the boxes for both 2000 and 2010.

So where will marketers target their campaigns and where should we be aiming our demo targets? It's an interesting question. The importance of 25-54s started in the 80s. In 1980 the oldest boomers where 32 and the youngest were 18. By the end of the decade they were all in their 30s and driving the 25-54 demo. That's why it became 'the standard' for targeting in advertising. Well we've all had a few too many birthdays over the years and now that boomer demo is between 62 and 48 years old.

On top of that we can see a the X and Y generations at roughly the same percentages of the population.

It still seems like winning 25-54 is still the gold standard - and it still represents 41% of the total population in 2010 vs. 39% in 2000. It's still a very important demo, but today it is NOT defined by one generation. There are Gen Y, the Mellennials with there digital world, Gen X with a strong 80s orientation and the Boomers with their 70s era history all in the same demo. Targeting something that wide in today's highly fragmented world is starting to look like no strategy at all. We'll have to see what the marketing minds (today's Mad Men) cook up here. But, we would be wise to take a closer look as we target and lay our programming strategies with the realities of the population.

Imagine if the Big 3 Worked Together

2011-08-23T14:28:00.002-04:00

Ford and Toyota just announced a joint project to build Hybrid Truck technology where the 2 auto forces will come together to help develop the technology, lower the costs for consumers and bring it to market faster. You can read about it here.

It all happened with the 2 CEOs ran into each other in an airport and started chatting. For those of us in the cut throat and highly competitive radio world this seems sort of weird. The auto world is very competitive and with something like 700 different car models out there it's a pretty cut throat world. But somehow 2 of the biggest are getting set to build a pretty big project together.

Can you imagine CBS and Clear Channel or Cumulus or Cox or Townsquare all sitting down to work on potential answers to all the challenges we face in Radio? It might be hard to imagine, but what if they did? What could they work on?

Our National Image - How about a full cooperative program to work on the image of our media. Too often Radio is viewed as 'yesterday's technology' and even though we see strong Cume and national listening averages we still get stuck with - 'isn't everyone listening to Satellite Radio" or hasn't the I Pod killed you yet?
Spreading our Distribution - While many are streaming and there are pure play streaming systems built into the Clear Channel and CBS national streaming products are there more opportunities here? Could we develop apps that zero in on Broadcast Streamers? How about making up our own territory here and making it easy to navigate and use. The new world of streaming with so many options will be tough to navigate at 70mph on the 405 or the Dan Ryan or Mass Turnpike - if we can get our world organized and localized as you drive around it could be a big help to us and the drivers.
Working with Social Networks and New Media - Are there money making opportunities if we all banded together here? Instead of letting Google or someone else develop a system of working with local business' on developing Social Network strategies why can't we use the collective reach of radio to develop a real sell-able opportunity for us and a program to help merchants and service providers get closer to their audience's through ours?
New Car Radio Ideas: Wouldn't it be great if we had an easy way to reprogram your car radio push buttons as you drove from market to market? Instead of searching for the Rock or CHR or Country stations in Syracuse you could press a button and your car radio would lock them in. This is one advantage of satellite radio and it will be a web/streaming wifi advantage that we should work on.

I'm sure these ideas are just the tip of the iceberg - (if you have any more hit the comments and chime in).

The opportunities to set radio up to be a much stronger media down the road are there. Yes, we have the NAB and state broadcasting organizations and even the FCC to unite us - but are these organizations really getting to the 'big issues' and challenges that we need to face? Maybe it would help if the CEOs would end up meeting in the Delta Lounge somewhere someday and decided to build a real actionable plan.

Appointment Listening - The New Obsession!?

2011-08-17T14:02:00.004-04:00

Programmers and the air staff have been adding new 'tricks' or 'techniques' for years to try and improve the performance in delivering audience (ratings). Recycling the audience to other dayparts with cross promos, billboards to tempt listening through the stop set, big events to build huge tune in, daily features to build certain hours in the day (the Request Lunch), listening locations (at work) and also special programming days (All Music Mondays - 2 Fer Tues).

Over the last 5 years the new big tool has been Appointment Listening. Making a specific appointment with the listener to come back. While it may be similar to the 'billboard just before the stop set' it really serves a different purpose. Really this technique stems from the 'Arbitron Listening Fact' that you have an 'average time spent listening' for the station for every time they tune in. Say the average TSL with the station per tune in is 8 minutes - so they are in the process or already have spent 8 minutes - if you can get them back in 15 minutes you will probably get another 8 minutes. So your total here is 15-16 minutes. At the end of the 2nd tune in maybe you can hook them for another 8 minutes and end up with 20+ minutes in a 90 minute period.

Instead of begging them to stick around through the stop set and hope they will hang for another 8 minutes now we give in to the 'law of averages' and shoot for them to come back later in the hour or maybe later in the daypart (at 12:30 catch the big Concern Announcement for U2).

It's an effective tool and it has been shown in lots of data analysis to work. Of course the best way to see it is in tracking the PPM meters where we can see real behavior in real time. Who knows if any of these techniques is really accurately recorded in a diary? Hence we now see the Appointment Billboard being the new big standout technique in the jock breaks in PPM markets and also making it's way to diary markets. It's even bleeding into TV - just watch SportsCenter.

The key here is to make sure you have real actionable appointments. Just mentioning that 3 Doors Down's recurrent from last year is coming up in 15 minutes will probably not do much. Make sure to make it big and newsworthy or entertaining enough to catch the attention of the audience.

Today's 'Individual' Person

2011-08-10T14:59:00.001-04:00

Before the end of 2011, or very early in 2012, we will surpass 7 Billion people on the planet!!! Right now this seems like we have so many people here, and no doubt more to come with birth rates not really slowing down and the lifespan growing for many countries. While it would seem logical that with more and more of us around that we would be growing more unified but if you took a look from the outside at us through our interaction on the internet you would probably conclude that the human populations in this world are really becoming a lot more individualistic.

The web offers tons of tools to become more of an individual - or to at least make you feel that you are a special individual - even on a planet of 7,000,000,000 people. It's easy to make lots of stuff in your world unique to you. We can all think of examples from your music collection to the color of your screen saver. Every product works to make it as 'personal and individual' of an experience as possible.

No one wants wants to be 'wearing the same outfit' in today's world and overall it's pretty easy to become so individualistic in your virtual/web world that even with 7 Billion you are an individual.

As we go beyond 7 billion next year remember that the audience will be looking for more and more ways to preserve their individuality -- even in the face of the 1 in 7 billion odds. Something to keep in mind as you program your station and hang with the local audience in your market.

The Air Aces

2011-07-22T12:16:00.000-04:00

The recent passing of an old friend Allison Harte from Grand Rapids brought up a lot of memories of working with her and an amazingly talented team at WLAV.

At WLAV the on-air team were (and still are) named 'Air Aces.' It was sort of a tradition that reflected back on the 60s tradition of naming the air staff. You had 'The Good Guys' - 'The Boss Jocks' and a number of other names. I guess the thought was to brand the air staff and build them as a team. I bet Air Aces started as a sarcastic response to this Top 40 marketing ploy by a station that prided itself in not being anything close to the top 40s of the day. We'll top their Boss Jock hype - we'll be Air Aces - way cooler.

But, the reality was that being an Air Ace at WLAV was a true honor and much like being a skilled fighter pilot it also required that you be very talented and serious about your craft. Over the years the Air Aces became way more than just voices between the songs. They cut through and bonded with the audience in endless ways. Some of them like Kevin Matthews and Rick Rumble cut through with amazing comedic moments. Others like Aris Hampers brought an amazing wealth of music knowledge and understanding. Aces like Tony Gates dug into the community and the music and built a loyal following.

Allison was was sort of the 'sister' to the whole team of Air Aces. A daring and bold Air Ace herself that always put the listener first, brimming with energy, a genuine love of the music and a big heart for the community. She was also authentic and honest with the audience. Her real name was Prudence - not a great radio name so of course it was changed to Allison Harte. But, she didn't hide her real name or the fact that Allison was made up. She was active on the phones, always looking to jump out of the studio into the streets, and not scared to stand out or take chances behind the mic.

Being an Air Ace went beyond just a branding gimmick. The real key was that many of the Air Aces understood this more as a goal of bonding with the listener, the audience and the community. They honed their talents and built their on air presence to ace the task of building a bond with the people on the other side of the mic.

While many reading this never heard Allison on the air, but you can still learn a lot from her work. Next time you look at your show think of the qualities that made her an Air Ace and work on mastering the craft and art of entertaining an audience with just your voice and words. Yes these are pretty obvious qualities, but how often to we really find them in today's billboard/liner/positioning phrase break? The true Air Ace took their opportunity to bond to entertaining heights way beyond.

Thanks Allison - RIP.

Rock Is NOT Dying

2011-07-13T23:03:00.000-04:00

The news that Randy Michaels' new Merlin Media is likely moving Alternative stations in NYC and Chicago to News Talk has promoted a bit of a debate on the health of the Rock formats and especially the ones that lean on Newer Rock in their mix.

The first reaction came when John Gehron had the following quote in a Chicago Tribune article:

"In many of the major markets, rock is struggling," said Chicago radio veteran John Gehron, who is serving as a consultant for Merlin Media. "It's not the dominant sound that it was in the '60s and '70s, when rock really was the sound of a generation."

This prompted an old friend and pretty much the founder of Rock Radio Lee Abrams to publish a piece in Radio Ink where Lee covers the history of the format and seems to conclude that the 'Rock Era' may have passed on - read it here.

Really the news here is that 2 stations (both Alternative) in top 3 markets are shifting formats to News Talk. Why? Probably the 2 biggest reasons lie in the future of the very profitable news talk format on FM and the huge revenue potential at stake for the 2012 battle for the White House.

Just look at the revenue opportunities in the last election and now with the caps off on letting special interest groups spend money for candidates and issues the flood gates will be open. Randy is also a complete expert in this format. PPM has been kind to AM News Talk outlets, but we also know that they live in a world where FM radio is still the dominate band for 30 years. It's way overdue for FM talk to make a big impact. Randy's assumed plan to re-enter radio with new FM News/Talk properties in 2 of the top 3 markets is shear genius. His revenue picture will be amazing when he caps his first year in business with millions in campaign revenue.

But, IS ROCK RADIO really suffering? If we take a look at the shares in the top 20 markets the data I dug up below from shows lots of top 20 markets where the Rock share of the pie has increased in the last 4 years.

Yes the rock shares are up an average of 18% - note that the comparison is indexed here and 100% would be no increase or decrease. I did not include Puerto Rico in the list. I also included Adult Alternative stations and added them to the 'New Rock' side of the ledger - since all of them do play some new rock. Alternative and Active Rockers are considered New Rock here.

The other big news here is that all of these markets shifted from Diary to PPM except Houston and Philly which were in PPM in Fall 07. Note that those 2 markets rock shares are mixed with Houston off 17% and Philly improving 9%.

In fact Chicago is one of the most improved markets with a 50% increase. Much of this coming from stronger shares for the Drive, the Loop and XRT. New York was up 56% with RXP and AXQ both showing higher shares in the PPM world.

The other factor in the perceptions of the health of Rock right now lie in the glare of the music spotlight. It's squarely on Pop, Rap, Rhythmic and a bit on Country right now. New Rockers are lying rather dormant - but the tides will turn there. We've seen these cycles before.

Groupon - An Internet Fad or a Real Competitor?

2011-06-23T11:57:00.002-04:00

The buzz on Groupon is pretty strong. No doubt your sales team is hearing about it all the time. If it hasn't hit your market yet it looks like they will, or something very close will pop up. Radio has also tried to package itself to meet Groupon 'at the pass' in many markets.

Yes, right now this is a 'hot topic.' But, is Groupon poised to last -- or is it hopeful that Rupert Murdoch (or someone similar) will pull another MySpace and cash them out?

On the 'Tech Crunch' website Rocky Agrawal, an entrepreneur and contributor to Tech Crunch makes a very convincing case that Groupon will start to struggle as the hype wears off rather quickly. As Rocky goes through the economics of the Groupon business model he pretty much ends up with a sophisticated Ponzi scheme. He makes a very interesting argument that your sales team and probably a number of your clients should read. Are all his facts straight? I'm sure some holes can be found, but what he says as he digs into their business model is very interesting. Check out Rocky's analysis here.

While Rocky digs deep into the mechanics of their sales pitch and business plan at Groupon what he doesn't cover is the ability to compete with Groupon. Many of the local sales teams in Radio, TV and Newspaper are quick to counter with coupon plans of their own. Other web competitors like Resturant.com and Living Social also have been quick to hit with their deals.

We do need to take Groupon seriously on the sales side, their pitch right now looks very interesting to a lot of local merchants and national brands. Radio does have a ton of advantages and can integrate some of the good sides of offers like Groupon. Couple that coupon with the power to reach a ton of cume in the market quickly and you clearly have a winner.

3 Kinds Of PDs

2011-06-02T11:21:00.003-04:00

Having had the opportunity to work with Programmers over the years it usually seems that they have 3 types of backgrounds or 'DNA' that lead to their career path. Take a look and see which group you (or your PD) may fit in:

The Great Jock - This PD usually came from the air staff and was the best air talent (or one of the best) on the team when it came time for them to step up to the PD office. They usually are pretty skilled at working with the air staff, often pretty creative with promotions, many are pretty good writers and they also have a great creative side. They may find challenges with grasping research, working with the logs and music systems.
The Technician - This group has a great grasp of computers and the technical side of the station. They usually do very well with the logs and studio interfaces. They grasp research quickly and often have a keen eye for analysis of the data. Sometimes they are challenged with creativity on air and coaching the air staff.
The Musician - Music is the main reason they got into radio. They are fans and may have a great ear for the music. Many are pretty strong on air performers and they usually grasp the music scheduling and promotion side of the job fairly well. They can run into challenges with research, coaching the air staff, and keeping the station focused on a tighter list in a competitive battle.

All of these skills are important to being a successful programmer. Each background or approach has great advantages and challenges. Over the years we have seen more technicians emerge as computers have taken over in the studio and the digital world has become more important. Still it does not diminish the need for great on-air talent and a full appreciation of the music we play. We've probably all seen PDs who have skill sets in a couple or even all 3 of these backgrounds - the great PDs find a way to cover all of these areas even if it means hiring great talent around them. But, in today's world we often find that staffs are pretty small - finding budget and room for a Musician to fill out the staff or pushing a Great Jock into more of leadership role presents a challenge.

Now more than ever it's very likely that the PD will have to adapt and pick up the skills that didn't come with their DNA.

I Phone Now It Makes the Music

2011-04-05T14:14:00.005-04:00

The world of the I Phone and the Apps continues to amaze. This week David Bowie announces the release of a new App that will allow you to remix - Golden Years from the 16 track master. Yes now you can play record producer - here are more details.

There's also an amazing video of the band Atomic Tom doing their song Take Me Out with just I Phones and IPods on a subway in NYC.

Now if mixing or playing songs is not your game perhaps using your I Phone to fly your airplane would be more challenging:

What's next??
How about this new APP

Research Studies Move To Facebook?

2011-03-23T11:26:00.003-04:00

Caught a very interesting article in Ad Age this week on the trend with a number of big name advertisers moving their survey research to social media (Facebook). Proctor and Gamble (which spends 350 million on consumer research) and Coke both are looking to dive into exploring their brands and consumers through social media instead of spending all their efforts on random sample data and more formalized/structured research systems which we've all used for years.

The leaders of the trend cite the fact that in today's world we can have a lot more interaction with the consumer and vice versa. Today we don't have to dial out and hope to catch someone at home, wait for a mail in survey to be returned, or have the respondents show up at a conference to find out what they feel about any product or brand.

The ease of finding 'fans' of your product on your fan page or building panels from the large Facebook community gives any product manager lots of opportunity to easily do polls, review product comments, track marketing impressions, and catch the level of engagement. You also can collect tons of rather open ended responses without dealing with as many group dynamics as you can have in focus groups or group studies. The research mavens here claim that they get a lot more from the social network's two way communication. The opportunity is there to easily get away from counting impressions to looking at the consumer's real 'expressions' on the brand - more feelings than just market shares.

The other side of the coin here - is this social network sample reflective of the total consumer picture? In traditional sample research a lot of science and math goes into building a representative sample with measured margins of reliability. In the social network world you are likely to be talking mostly to P1 fans in your sample and have less opportunity to see what the non fan is thinking. But, when you look at most products it's more about building a fan base to a fever pitch and keeping it excited as the brand spreads from the early to late adapters.

We already have a new start up service that specializes in building panels and doing research off of social media samples. It's called CrowdTap you can see how they approach the consumers on this site. And also see how they approach marketing and research teams here. It looks like they just launched at SXSW at the music fest just week or so ago. I bet this will be a HOT company real soon.

How will this affect radio brand research? This could be the next BIG trend in radio product research. It will take a whole new system of interaction with the audience and a whole new world of analysis for all of us. Extracting the real potential tools to building our brands from this new frontier of research will not come from using the same analysis angles we've been using since we started researching the audience.

You can read more in the Ad Age article here. You should also take a look at the comments from many of the advertising industry people who had a lot of very interesting reactions to this development. You almost learn more from their comments than the article.

Is Pandora Radio?

2011-03-16T11:52:00.002-04:00

While Pandora does clearly deliver music to the people who are logged on to the system are they using the service as a replacement for radio or as a replacement for their MP3/I Pod music player or playing CDs?

Radio has always had competition for music listening from LPs, 8 tracks, cassettes, and now MP3/IPods. You could always get your music without listening to the radio. Obviously now it's become a lot more compact and anyone can carry around thousands of songs in the palm of your hand. Still radio's listening levels have not taken that big of a hit from the evolution of personal music listening.

While it seems that we in the industry, clients/advertisers, investors and industry pundits all seem to be looking at Pandora and other customizable music services we may be forgetting the real role that radio has developed with its audience. That role has evolved beyond music to entertainment through the personalities and the imaging as well as the local information (traffic, news, weather), the infotainment, and the promotions/community events that we bring to the audience. Really the music is not designed to be 'your personal favorite music' - it's a collection of the most popular songs in a given style (Rock, Pop, Country, Contemporary). This is 'Broadcasting' and it is different from individual casting.

Yes if the individual casters get their product to be more usable in the car and as easy to navigate as broadcast radio they can have more opportunities to take away time spent listening to music on the radio. But, the Pandora's and Slackers of the world are computer program driven systems to build personal streams and libraries of music for individual listeners.

No doubt they serve a purpose, but it very well could be the ultimate replacement for the CD collection or even the MP3/IPod collection. Why buy songs on ITunes or carry around your music and have to go through the task of downloading and categorizing it when you can punch in some artists and create channels around them that you can sculpt to your taste.

Yes, radio should explore the new narrow casting - customizable media. Clear Channel moving into the Thumb Play world is a good thing as is CBS with Last FM. Just keep in mind that both CC and CBS will be gaining a lot more by developing the strengths of their long standing broadcast properties.

The Complex World of Technology

2011-02-28T14:20:00.004-05:00

We've all experienced it. The cell phone that suddenly just shuts down, the computer that won't boot, the program that just died in the middle of an important task. As we come up with more and more devices and more and more computer applications we may solve lots of problems or amaze ourselves but we also become more and more dependent on the ever increasing world of technology.

Recently Steve Woznaik (the real inventor of the Apple computer) lamented that even he gets frustrated and concerned about the ever increasing role of computer driven technology in our lives. His big concern - it all fails sooner or later. Read more about his concerns here.

And if you want a few laughs (as if you needed any more from Steve after Dancing with the Stars) check out his recent cameo on Big Bang Theory.

All hail to the Woz!

Grammys and Rock Music/Radio

2011-02-28T14:19:00.003-05:00

There were a number of surprises in the Grammys from Arcade Fire winning LP of the year to Esperanza Spalding winning the best new artist, but the one resounding fact was the decline of Hard Rock and Active Rock music. While the nominations and the results are not really a popular opinion poll in the Grammys (artists, producers and record company execs vote) there is a real message here and its not good for new rock music.

The musical spotlight from a sales, critics and Grammys reflection of this is clearly on 4 generes of music:

Pop/CHR - And even here the lean is rhythmic.
Pop/Rap- When you have the Top Rap Artist (Eminem wins) placed in the prime time spot just before the top song and the top LP of the year you can see how important this genre has become.
Pop/Country - You can argue that Lady Antebellum is a pretty pop act - it was still in the Country arena.
Indie Alt - Arcade Fire, Muse, and Mumford and Sons stole the show.

Really the only 'traditional' rock moments came from Jagger singing a tribute to a Motown era artist and Bob Dylan with Mumford and Sons pretty much taking over his performance of Maggies Farm.

Another 'blow' to guitar driven rock came this week from Guitar Hero where Activision announces that they are dropping the game. The new hot game is Dance Central - a clearly pop and dance with the Kinect motion sensor.

The message here is clear that Active Rock and traditional rock music in general is not even close to center stage. If you look at the sales, downloads and other sources we can track the message isn't much different. The library is still healthy, but the current Rock music scene is rather dark.

The promised land for rock may lie in the Indie Rock world - not the Stadium Rock power cord world we often hear on today's rock stations.

Facebook Fan Page Summary Thoughts

2011-02-28T14:18:00.002-05:00

The last 'idea' for Facebook Fan pages is Contesting. There are lots of options here.

Prizes for becoming a Fan - Got a bunch of tickets to a show that you are not going to use on the air? Hand them out to new Facebook Fans. Got a bunch of discount coupons for lunches etc - hand them out to new fans. Get Fans whenever you can.
Photo Contests - Even without prizes this can work well. Having them post the 'snow photo of the day' or pics of them dressed for Halloween or maybe Mardi Gras.
Get into Facebook Games - This can be tricky, but take a look. Games like Music Challenge might work for some formats like AC or Oldies. Too bad they don't have this game set up for Alternative, Country, Hard Rock, Classic Rock, 80s etc.
Do face offs - Have 2 new songs to debut - link to the videos and the most 'likes' wins.
Tips for on-air contests - How about taking a High Low style contest and giving tips on the amounts on the fan page? Ideas like this could help build fans.

Summary Thoughts: We covered a number of tips and steps to making your Facebook Fan Page a hit - here is a quick summary:

Basics: Make sure to have a plan with your staff about using the Fan pages, Promote it on the air consistently, keep a log of your postings and promotions to track growth, make sure your name and logo are easy to remember for the audience.
Build Fans: Use links, special fan greeting pages, on air promotion and get your fans to spread the news to their friends.
Stay Active: Post at least a couple of times a day. You can overdo it here, but it's more likely that we will not keep as active as we could. Posting 1-3 times a daypart is about right. Also make sure that you have a 'big post' of the day that sort of cuts through all dayparts.

Radio brand have a long ways to go in building friends. Lots of stations have barely scratched the surface of their real cumes here. Just make sure you have a good plan, some creative/fun tactics and the strength to execute it everyday.

Facebook Fan Page Ideas Part 2

2011-01-24T10:55:00.002-05:00

Once you have the basics down of an easy to remember address, a good Facebook friendly logo, a plan for pics with regular updating and a healthy system of daily posting it's time to try a few other tricks.

Links - Yes you should link to your web site and any special show pages (Morning for example). But, also go beyond - link to artists fan pages, local club/concerts, music reviews, and even cool products. Getting your audience to link from your page will help you link up to more fans. The more active the more action.
Pics - Invite tagging. A while back Lenny Kravitz posted a pic of tons of fans at a concert and invited everyone to tag themselves. Consider a similar tactic with concerts, local events, etc. Also let the audience post pics and make it a game - remember the old Show Us Your Rock 97 contests where they painted houses, cars and cut fields with the logo. How about a contest with them posting pics? Make your pics interactive and get more action.
Link you stream - Make sure you link your stream and also look at any other cool audio links you can put in here. Podcasts, cool bits, best of morning shows, etc.
Polls- If you can find FUN and meaningful polls use them. But avoid the mundane here. Too often we have polls that are not fun to participate in.
Badges - Make a badge for your station and your big personalities and invite fans to share them. You can also award badges - maybe with some small prizes?
Interact - The key with everything on your page is to get the audience to interact and watch it show up on their pages. If you can attract their friends to check out your page you can really build your fan base and that will also help you build your brand and listening potential.

Later in the week we'll wrap up the Facebook series with a summary and give you a potential action pla

Ideas for Your Fan Page Part 1

2011-01-17T11:18:00.002-05:00

The Basics: Some very simple points that many Facebook Fan pages seem to ignore:

The Address - How do I find your page? The addresses are often a bit hard to figure out. Especially when you have a brand like 'Kiss' where there are many of them out there. Try to get a memorable address and also PROMOTE IT A TON ON THE AIR as well as on the web site.
Logo - The problem here is that your logo is really a 3X4 picture format on the top of the page and then in all your posts it ends up being cropped to a square format. The trick here is to get your logo to fit in both formats.
Pics - Make them fun, interesting and current. Of often the pics don't look that inviting in radio pages.
Link your Stream - Let them dial you up from the fan page with a link. There are a few stations that have developed Apps for facebook so you can invite the audience to link up their friends from their pages. Surprised we only see the big internet only streamers using this for the most part.
Keep the Posts coming - You should have a status for every day and the air staff should have something on Facebook for every shift. If you have a hot topic or big developments you can move to hourly contributions from the studio, but watch having a lot more than that. The key is making it interesting- too many entries just to have entries and too many 'commercials' will hurt.

The key to making the Wall happen is to set up a real team here that is all on the same page for the Wall Think of it as if you just let the jocks play whatever - you'd probably end up with less focus and a real confusing product. The same for the Wall - make sure everyone is together on the guideline for posts and that you have a method to the madness. Later in the week we'll look at more ideas including tab tools in Facebook you can add to get the facebookers more involved on your site.

Tips and Ideas for Your Facebook Fan Pages

2011-01-10T10:44:00.000-05:00

Building a real destination for your listeners on a Facebook Fan page is the marketing tool for 2011 and beyond. We've already looked at the wide spread usage of Facebook and looked at the results from the dabbling we've done in the media. It's pretty obvious that we need to have a healthy brand presence on Facebook just as we needed to have a station website 15 years ago.

The first step is building a Fan Page where you can gather the audience with their 'likes' and begin to interact with them. Let's start by looking a few pages that really stand out:

First Red Bull : A very active page with over 14 million fans. They have a pretty active Wall that is mostly controlled by them. They also have Web TV, Games and a page dedicated to their athletes who endorse the product.
Nickleback: Not much here with just the Wikipedia bio on the band and little else. No wall, no pics, no news on the band, no links to their music. Gee they have a ways to go here - especially a band that is as plugged in as they are on the web and sporting a full time AOL/CBS artist streaming radio channel.
The Beatles: Apple Corps did a nice job with a basic page. Good links to the music, a wall that has lots of interesting posts about Beatle stuff/artifacts, and with over 12 million fans.
103.5 Kiss Chicago: A very active page with over 75,000 fans which is a lot in the radio world. But not a lot here? No ties to the artists or the music, no station events noted, not a lot of updated pics and the wall is pretty out of control here with lots of complaints about their new morning show.

This should give you some ideas and tips and there are tons more pages to look at. Over the next 10 days we'll look at 9 specific tips and ideas and some thoughts on developing an effective and comfortable Facebook Fan Page Plan for Radio Brands.

What Excites Facebook Users?

2011-01-05T16:32:00.002-05:00

his is a tough question because there is SO MUCH to look at and new opportunities/ideas are being developed every day. At the core is DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS. That is foundation for the whole site and has to be kept front and center to help build your brand on the media. Really the core of radio promotions and brand marketing has always been about developing a strong relationship with the audience. We've done it on the streets with promotions, over the air with our imaging, personality, and audience interaction, and we also do it through the music formats we build.

As we venture into Facebook we really don't know what works. Should we be developing games, posting videos, tagging pics, telling jokes, showcasing artists we play, polling, running ads for clients, or letting the audience interact with us? Maybe we should be doing all of this, but that's a pretty daunting task. We need to look at what the audience wants in a radio brand relationship?

Maybe the place to start is by looking closely at the pages of your 'friends' or 'fans' on Facebook. Now you can't access the pages of the people that just 'like' your page, but you can build a panel or 'focus group' of fans. You can invite people to be 'super fans' of the station and 'friend' them on another site where you perhaps can offer some freebees or other incentives. Here you can look at up to 1000 people and see what else they like, what topics and features they react to and also learn a little more about them.

Another trick here is to simply keep track of what you do on the page and what the reaction is. Keep a daily log on a spread sheet and you'll see what moves the 'likes' up and what got the FB audience moving. Here is a rough example that you can build on with your own tracking fields:

Now you have some data that you can track and see what moves the meter. Yes it will add a few minutes to the daily Facebook ritual, but now you have some ideas of what is working. Of course there are a lot of features and ideas to try on Facebook, we'll look at those in the next Blog.

Learning Way More About Facebook

2010-12-29T15:52:00.003-05:00

The number of Facebook users world wide approaches 600 million as we enter 2011. It's spanning nearly all demographics and audiences no doubt it is becoming a more important tool for radio stations than the web itself. When you look at it you can do a lot more with just a few key strokes on a Facebook page than any web site from both the user and the host standpoint.

But as you take a big tour of the Facebook presence for many stations and personalities it's pretty obvious that we are just swinging away at any pitch here. We don't know much about what the audience does with our Facebook pages, what draws them? what entertains them? what makes them interact with the product?

There is a starting place that every programmer, station IT person, the sales manager and general manager should spend some time with to get at least a grasp of the usage patterns for Facebook. Take a look at Inside Facebook and you will find a lot of pretty interesting data. Head to the Page Data and you can see what Facebook pages are gaining and losing views/fans everyday. You can also look at nearly any page in the system to see the metrics. You can also look at the games and apps pages for the same kind of data. There are also blogs on the data, marketing conversations and a bunch of other topics also covered. While the site is looking to market their data and also their Facebook Bible at least we have a starting point to sort of see the ratings here.

Scanning the rankings for the top Facebook pages radio is way down the list on 'Likes.' Rush has the biggest site with nearly 700,000 but that ranks around 1,600. Hot FM in Singapore has around 650,000 as the first music station. In the U.S. guess who has the most - Z100 NYC - 108,000? or maybe Kiss in LA with only 28.600!! likes? - Kiss Chicago has nearly 3 times the numbers from LA with nearly 75,000. But none of these big cuming CHRs come close to the U.S. Winner - K Love out of Santa Clara, CA - they have nearly 600,000 likes!! with a Christian format.

Really when you look down the ranks a lot of stations from all over the world in countries like Italy, Germany, Argentina, England, Philippines and even an Arabic station that is signing on this month all have way more likes than any music outlet from the U.S. It looks like we have a lot to learn here. Next time we'll look at some research ideas for Facebook after some more digging in the data.

Radio's Mantra for 2011

2010-11-29T13:32:00.002-05:00

We're only a month away from welcoming 2011. A new year always brings forward new hopes and dreams for a better year than the one we just finished. While 2010 looks like it was better than 2009 or 2008 but we all know that our radio stations have a long ways to grow. While the list piles up with tons of needed progress on:

Growing in social media
Moving distribution channels into mobile media and the web
Remaking our rules to the reality of PPM
Developing and adjusting products for the new Millennial Generation that will become the bigger than the boomers we've entertained for years.
Keeping our strong cume penetration and TSL in a sea of new competition.
Building an even stronger local presence in the community.
Becoming Cool/Hip again.
Doing all of it with budgets that are probably smaller than we need to really do the job.

It's a daunting challenge. It may seem like a simple thought but there is a thread that weaves through all of these challenges and if we can keep our focus on 3 linked mantras I bet we can make 2011 a huge year:

EMBRACE YOUR AUDIENCE
EMBRACE THE MUSIC
EMBRACE YOUR COMMUNITY

You may say 'hey we already do that.' But, do you really? Or have you just been letting the music spin around in your music scheduling system where the computer just spits it out in the digital studio? Have you just been ignoring much of the audience's needs and realities? Have you taken the excuse of tight budgets and slim staffs to push community involvement to the side? The great stations that gave radio it's strong position in the 80s and 90s completely embraced all of these key elements. If we can do it again we can make a ton of progress on all those challenges on the checklist.

TheLast 8 Years in Rock Radio Listening Trends

2010-11-16T10:39:00.002-05:00

Last week we took a look at the last 8 years of 12+ listening trends from Arbitron's 2010 Radio Today summary which runs through 2009. Early next year we'll see the report that includes 2010 and the story for Rock formats will likely be trending down.

Over the 90s rock formats splintered into 5 groups - more than any other broad format group (AC, Country, Oldies, N/T, CHR, and Urban). When we look at each individual group the graph takes some interesting turns:

The total shares for all of rock were fairly strong in 2003 and 2004 at just over a 13 share. 2005 to 2007 you can see a 10% dip down to the mid 11 share range and a recovery to the 2009 12.5 share in 2009. Looking at the individual styles of rock:

Classic Rock - The leader with a pretty steady run ranging from a low of 4.5 in 2007 to the current high of 5.0.

Active Rock has also seen a pretty steady run with some pretty low shares hovering just below a 2 share in 2003 and 2004 and mounting a steady gain with peak years in 2008 and 2009.

Alternative has been the losing format starting out with a 3 share and sinking to the 2 share range for the last 3 years.

AOR is still listed here but many of these stations play mostly Classic Rock and many have classified themselves as CR for sales purposes

AAA has a limited penetration in many markets hanging at the .9 share range till 2007 when it began to climb to it's current 1.2 share.

In many ways this graph is looking more at history than current reality.

Classic Rock has enjoyed many gains from the bigger markets adopting PPM as well as an aging overall terrestrial audience during this period. CR is a solid performer in the PPM system with familiar music, good at work penetration and many stations have a long standing brand.

Active Rock rose up in the last 3 years mostly on the back of a solid group of middle ground newer rock artists. Nickleback, 3 Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, Shinedown, and others built a sound that was aggressive, but still had the hooks to break over to CHR (in many casts), become big concert draws, and we even saw pop worlds like American Idol begin to look a bit more at performers with Rock backgrounds.

For the most part Active Rock held it's line and did not work with the more pop world rock from American Idol and as the newness of the middle ground bands began to wain it has moved more into a world that is clearly harder and more aggressive. Godsmack, Disturbed, and other harder edge bands now lead the way in the format This is music that will only show up on Active Rock and maybe some Alternative stations. Over 2009 and 2010 this harder edge has taken over.

In Alternative the spotlight on the Active Rock bands drew much of their attention or if they held back it cost them 18-40 male shares. But, as the 2010 and 2011 shares emerge look for Alternative to start to really shine. Alternative has started to sort out the indie rock world and we've seen a lot of artists emerge to gain the national spotlight. Neon Trees, Phoenix, White Stripes, Kings of Leon, Black Keys, Mumford and Sons and more are starting out exclusively on Alternative and now crossing over to CHR and the national attention that will bring in more Alternative fans.

Clearly we hit a fork in the road for Active Rock and Alternative in 2009 and 2010. Active retreated into a much harder rock arena while Alternative seemed to go the other way. If you look at the charts for both formats there was a lot more crossover from 2007 to 2008 than there is today.

The challenge in some markets where there really isn't an Alternative station on the dial is rather obvious. There are also cases where the Active Rock or more current leaning AOR station could embrace some of the Alternative music? If you are an uncontested Active Rock or AOR that does play currents -- do you bend and take on the bigger Alt titles? It's a very tough call. The harder rockers are very vocal and will broadcast their attitude clearly if you step out too far. Will these formats and programmers end up being trapped by their core audience into a route that keeps them away from the spotlight music in rock?

While we may not see these trends in the graphs from the rock format listening trends they are there in all the other music popularity measures we have (sales, downloads, concerts, street buzz and crossover). This will be a big challenge for 2011. We already see a lot more new music activity in the Alternative camps than we see in Active Rock. And there are lots of Alternative titles that many Active Rock programmers have hardly heard of rising in the charts.

There is also changes that will come about as the Millennials (currently 15-30 years old) evolve and become the biggest generation of potential radio listeners in the next couple of years. You can read more about that in the Millennial series we did a few weeks back - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5. Big questions to ponder in Rock as we head into 2011.

Format Shares from Arbitron's Radio Today 2010 Report

2010-11-11T11:14:00.002-05:00

When you take a look at the overall 12 plus shares for Rock formats over the last 7 years (2003-2009) and compare it to the major format groups (not including religious or Hispanic) it's a pretty interesting story. Overall it's fairly consistent with a dip in 2005-2007 and a pretty decent recovery in 2008 and 2009.

Of course we can see News formats ramping up for the 2008 election and holding a lot of that share into 2009. Country has been pretty steady around a 13 share and rising recently with the younger country artists shining. AC has surged recently and the rise of Hot AC (which may include Adult/Pop CHR) as well as the surge from the PPM stations and Christmas music has impacted this format over the last 7 years. Rock is pretty steady with a dip from 2005 to 2007, we will dive into these numbers next week with more details

CHR is starting to show the spike we all know will grow in 2010 with all the big pop acts dominating the charts and sales right now. Oldies is also growing, but much of this is a shift from the old oldies formats to Classic Hits and Adult Hits. Urban shows pretty steady numbers here - note that the Rhy/CHR shares are included in the CHR graph.

I suspect we will see some changes as the 2010 national format shares come out. CHR will likely be hotter, Country could also gain, and News will grow with the mid-term election causing a stir. Rock will probably see a downtrend and we'll explore some of the reasons in the next blog.

When Do They Listen?

2010-11-01T10:54:00.000-04:00

This question pops up a lot for scheduling features, laying out contests, and for show prep (when to run that great bit or content). Arbitron has resumed their Radio Today report and this graph shows clearly where the 12 plus audience is listening.

Now this data is based on both diary and PPM data and only includes the markets that had PPM for the Fall 09 report. We've had a number of PPM markets added over 2010 and there are differences in the listening patterns when we compare PPM and Diary results, but this graph does give you a good picture of where the important hours and dayparts are.

Later in the week we'll take a deeper look at the Radio Today report from 2009 and dive into the individual formats. So check back!!

Cell Phones - Research and the Elections

2010-10-26T10:49:00.001-04:00

As we wade through the endless stream of political spots on every media with all their accusations there is another story behind this fall election in the U.S. that could be a major factor. The telephone based polls that candidates and the media has used to track the public since the 40s could end up being very mis-leading.

Nearly every analysis of the polls shows a Republican leaning wave moving the House and maybe even the Senate to a Republican lean. But, those polls are mostly done on by calling land line households since reaching out to cell phone users for research is costly and difficult. The national polls are more likely to use cell phone households, but on the local and state level it's still pretty costly and not used that much. Much of the polling data being analyzed for this mid-term election could be off the mark.

In radio we know the cell phone only households and their effect on research. For years we've struggled with incomplete data in the under 40 age cells and watched our samples decay. Arbitron and Nielsen have both retooled their sample systems and now do a better job including cell phone households. Still, we struggle with not enough cell phone sample, but at least we have a little more accuracy.

The Pew Center has reviewed the cell phone only households for the political polls and released the following data:

You can see that the Cell Phone only households are more likely to lean Democratic changing the pools by around 2 percent. When you factor in that most research has a 3-5% variance and then add the 2% Democratic lean many of the Republican margins could suddenly be a lot closer than expected.

Could we see an election here where polling is suddenly in question? Much like the famous Dewey - Truman election in the late 40s where polling predicted Dewey would win. Back then phones were not in all households and when the non-phone households voted the polls were suddenly skewed.

We have relied on phone based research for nearly all our data on the audience over the years. This fall we may see in a big way that the phone is flawed. Cell phones, VOIP, Skype and so many other ways of personal communication have made the land line a thing of the past. We - and the politicians - can't rely on it anymore for data on the audience.

Summary on Millennials

2010-10-20T11:10:00.001-04:00

In our series in Millennials (or Generation Y) we have to realize the impact this generation will have over the next 10-20 years as they all hit the 25-54 demo. This generation is larger than the Boomers and look at the impact that generation had from the late 60s through the mid-90s. The Boomers were a lot bigger than the 'silent generation' or the World War II babies so their impact was magnified. But, the Millennials are still a bigger group and they also have a revolutionary quality like the Boomers.

Boomers saw mass communication and world travel become common place. Television, Radio, Telephones, Interstate roadways and jet travel made the whole world accessible. Boomers also went to college more and had higher levels of education.

When you look at the Millennials they have a huge revolution in communication that dwarfs the old analog media. They can travel the world on their laptops, communicate with anyone they want in a variety of ways from email to text to voice to video to chats to social media. The combination of their population size and the huge leap in communication technology is already pushing us into a revolution moving at the speed of Moore's Law (the speed of computer processing doubles every 2 years). They are also well educated with high levels of post High School activity.

Radio can't keep brushing this generation aside. If you worked on FM radio in the late 70s and early 80s you probably got a preview of the times we are in now. In the mid 70s the peak of the Boomer generation was in their early 20s and just starting to fill up the 25-34 demo. Most marketers considered this generation long hair youth at the time and really not much of a market outside of fashion, music, beer, electronic equip and maybe cheap cars.

Through the 80s the Boomers completely overtook the 25-54 demo and turned marketing upside down. I can remember being at a rock station and watching agency after agency turn us down even though we were starting to climb up the top 3 in 25-54 adults. We knew it was only a matter of time till they would have to look at our audience - no matter how different they may have been.

Right now the oldest Mellinnials are turning 30 - in 5 years they will enter the 35-44 demo and completely take over 18 to 34s. And they will be the biggest generation we've seen yet in the U.S. The challenge we face is getting them to dial into our media and brands. We all can see the vehicles, but getting them started seems to elude us. It can't anymore.

Tips For Reaching Millennials

2010-10-14T15:49:00.004-04:00

Since we are on a roll with celebrating the news that the Millennial Generation or Gen Y will pass the Boomers in population figures when the Census is published in the U.S. in a few months I ran across an article by Thomas Pardee in Ad Age. Mr. Pardee is one of Ad Age's regular writers and you can read his analysis of the generation here.

The real key to the article is his wrap up

5 tips for marketing to millennials

Be fast
For millennials, there's nothing worth saying that can't be said in 140 characters or less. It's not that they can't handle long-form pitches, they just know you can do better. So do better.

Be clever
As Nick Shore, head of research for MTV, said, "Smart and funny is the new rock 'n' roll." Millennials are set to be the most-educated generation on record, with the largest social-media platform (Facebook) having been famously born on a college campus. "With their roots in college culture, it's no wonder eloquence and timing are more prized than ever for this generation. Err on the side of overestimating the millennial -- as the Old Spice campaign shows -- and sometimes they'll surprise you.

Be transparent
Millennials may be arrogant and entitled, but they're not stupid, and they know media exists to sell them things. So rather than pretending your branded beverage isn't conspicuously placed in a TV character's hand to entice them, look for new ways to make it funny. It will ring true with them, and they'll appreciate the honesty. (Need a cue? Look no further than the deliciously self-referential "30 Rock.")

Don't "technologize" everything
By their own definition, millennials are in part defined by their use of and reliance on technology. But marketers should resist the urge to attempt to "speak their language" -- Gen Yers can smell those ploys a mile away. Remember, millennials are digital natives -- they don't use technology; they live it, and they do so subconsciously.

Give them a reason to talk about you
Millennials don't like ads, but they don't mind marketing that's non-invasive, non-interruptive and that adds something to their experience, either online or off. Whether it's a fun and timely iPhone app, a targeted high-profile event or a personalized viral-video campaign, if you want your message to resonate with millennials, give them something to talk about. And if we know the first thing about millennials, talk they will.

Gen Y/Millennials - A Few Key Facts

2010-10-11T10:30:00.002-04:00

The last few blogs (below) have noted the size of the Gen Y/Millennials, which are now a bigger generation than the Boomers, and Radio Programmings struggle to reach this emerging force. If we want to reach them we probably need to learn a lot more about them. While there are plenty of articles in Ad Age and other sites on their consumer behavior one of the more in depth pieces on them came from the Pew Research Center in February 2010. Read the Pew Study here.

The Pew Study covers a lot of interesting traits for this generation in comparison to Gen X, Boomers, and the Silent Generation but a lot of the facts track their religious, political and family values sides. While they are important traits they probably don't help us programmers get a handle on their entertainment desires.

I pulled a few of charts that bring out some broad areas we may learn from:

They are more diverse:

They are less likely to be Married than the other generations in the 20s:

What do THEY think makes them unique?:

This is a very interesting comparison. While we would expect that they would have Technology Use at the top and in greater numbers than Gen X the #2 unique trait is Music Pop Culture. None of the other generations cite this trait. Radio could play a HUGE role if we chose to dive in with them.

And Just For FUN - How many of them have Tattoos:

There is a lot more to learn from the study. For the most part they are more liberal and actually more family oriented in their values than their marriage stats would indicate - guess they are just being fussy with partners and that's probably due many of them coming from split households.

They are an interesting group that is clearly plugged into the new media and technology as a full fabric of their lives. Their ability to communicate is very strong in their technology usage. Communication is key to nearly all generations. For the Boomers the 4 big communication factors were - Television, Telephones becoming commonplace in the 50s, the advent of world air travel, and radio providing a fairly common music backdrop.

Obviously radio will need to weave itself into their tech world and the new tools of communication. But, we also have to learn who are are communicating with. We have a ways to go here.

Edison Research's Youth Study 2010

2010-10-05T14:46:00.002-04:00

The crack team at Edison Research just released a great study of 12-24s at the NAB and online (read it here).

The study showcases the differences from 2000 to 2010 in the younger audience on a number of fronts. We can see that they still have an interest in radio, but the wealth of new media and the smart phone world are more and more appealing to our potential future audience every day. It's killing a lot of TSL for terrestrial radio and you can also see that the lack of interest our industry seems to have for this younger audience is damaging the future.

In the last post on this blog we broke down the population numbers that will likely become fact when the census hits in a few months. The 15-30 year old age group will be bigger than the boomers we've relied on for audience and revenue for 30 years will be a fading demo.

While the study points out a number of great suggestions on addressing the 12-24 side of the younger demo we also need to look at the 22-34s that were also included in the Edison study. Perhaps Edison will release more data on this group but the 1 chart they included on the types of stations they listened to back in 2000 and what they claim to listen to now:

The growth of Top 40/Hits is pretty obvious given the strength of the format and the music for the last 18 months. Country is also on the rise with the youth movement in the format. Other gainers include Christian, Classic Rock and even Classical. The big losers are all forms of Rock, Rap/Hip Hop and R&B. Also note that there are 9 shares missing in the 2010 data - that is probably due to the lower listening numbers to all radio in the decade.

When you look at the movement over the last decade in both Alternative and Hard/Active Rock to a lot more older songs in the mix and a lot less current music you probably have answered the 'why' question. Rock formats clearly have a big challenge ahead with the under 34 audience. It may be harder to find new music with the record companies struggling, but it's out there and somehow rock programmers need to find it.

The New Reality of The Demos

2010-09-27T11:00:00.005-04:00

You've probably either seen the Census crew or filled out a form by now here in the U.S. as we review our House Districts and population characteristics. This count will bring out some realities in marketing and demographics that will likely change a lot of the strategies many products have been using for the last 30 years.

While the final results won't be out for another 6 months or so we can see what the likely picture will be from the 2009 estimates.

Look at the 3 circled groups that roughly represent the Older Boomers born before 1964 with 63.6 million, Generation X born from 65 to 79 with 61.4 million in the middle and the new Millennial Generation born between 1980 and 1994 at 64.8 million on the younger side.

The real key here is that now we have hit a time when the new Millennial's actually outnumber the Baby Boomers. Much of the entire product strategy and marketing targets for most products has been built around the Boomers since they first came of age in the 60s. That's why we still place so much importance on the 25-54 demos even though you can see that now that audience is mostly built from the Generation X group with the lowest population numbers of the 3 groups.

We can already see the shift in many products in what they are selling and how they are using media to market their wares. Obviously the younger Millennial's are much more adapted to all the new media options. They also have vastly different desires and needs when it comes to products. Look at the car industry, which seems more interested in the compact and even sub-compact models like the Ford Fiesta or the Kia Soul than keeping the Mercury brand name alive.

The problem we face in radio - we've been obsessed with 25-54 for the last 20+ years and haven't worked a lot on the younger demos. Now that the Millennial's are centered in their 20s they are a huge marketing target and with the revelation in the upcoming Census news that now they outnumber the old champion demo of the Boomers radio has a lot of catching up to do.

There are Some Things Apps Can't Do!!!

2010-09-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

What Are Men Thinking??

2010-09-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

Esquire Magazine has a fresh article out reviewing their survey of Men and their values/views on a number of very interesting questions. If your target audience is Men it's clearly worth a close review.

The premise of the survey and article is based on a unique demographic view. The 2 spikes in the U.S. population are now at 20 year old Men and 50 year old Men. The older group are the baby boomers born around 1960 and the younger group was born as the 90s hit. Obviously they both grew up in very different worlds for values, technology, world events, and lifestyle.

The survey covers a wide range of topics including:
Overall Happiness - Both groups are pretty close here and overall fairly happy
Role Models - Both think Obama is a good one. But, they are not happy with his performance.
Coolest Men - Clint Eastwood wins for both?
Sources for News - Both groups get it from TV?
Favorite Spectator Sport - The young guys most favorite is Ultimate Fighting?
Favorite Decade for Music - 49% of the 50 year olds point to the 70s while 56% of the 20 year olds lean on the 90s and 2000+ - The music you grow up with is YOUR music.

There's a ton more questions that have very interesting parallels and contrasts.
Read it here

The Boring APP

2010-09-10T10:00:00.001-04:00

So you have your I-Phone/Pod-Touch, Android, and Blackberry apps all up and running and now your stream can go anywhere. You've entered the new mobile digital age and are all set for the future. While your audio is streaming along -- what's happening on that little 3.5 inch screen? Chances are your logo is just sitting there - perhaps we can see the title of the song, perhaps a tag link to buy the song with a pic of the CD and maybe a note on the station, but little else.

There is a lot more you could do with that screen I bet. Maybe some pics of recent promotions, a shot of the morning show with a big guest, or a visual plug for an upcoming concert or promotion. You might also be able to add weather or other info that's worth tuning in for. There is a lot more that we could and should be doing with these apps. Just getting in the App Store is not enough.

Streaming Stats

2010-09-02T11:53:00.005-04:00

Looking over the Ando Media ranker for the On-Line Radio Streaming world take a look at the Average Time Spent Listening per session for the players. Pandora is the big leader with nearly a half a million people tuned in from 6a to 8p but the session starts (cume) is over 150 million during the daypart and then look at the time spent listening at less than 1 hour.

Looking at the other providers here CBS is 2nd with the help of AOL Radio but, it's a long way from Pandora and doesn't have much more TSL. Clear Channel, Cox, Citadel, Cumulus, Bonneville, Greater Media and Entercom are better at TSL and much of their offerings are terrestrial station streams. AccuRadio's big line up of stations and their attention to upscale Jazz/Classical formats and other unique offerings has better TSL, Salem's religious streams are also strong.

As we look at the listening habits here we can see that just being a juke box with a big list of songs pretty much on shuffle doesn't make for a lot of TSL. There is a lot of cume here and not a ton of long listening spans. Is the audience trying it out and getting bored? Are they tuning around because there is so much to pick from? How is the emerging mobile (I Pod/Blackberry/Android) apps world different from the this view which is pretty much computer based?

We have a lot to learn about the new world of streaming.

The Cell Phone Radio Chip

2010-08-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

The development of the NAB suggesting that in exchange for agreeing to some fees with the Music First group on royalty fees congress would add a provision to have FM radio chips required in all Cell Phones is an interesting one. Of course Radio would like to expand the reach and having a tuner in every cell phone by 2014 or so would be great (remember it only takes around 3 years to get an innovation into the majority of cell phones with the get a new phone every 2 years approach).

Yes we will need to step up our programming and start addressing the whole mobile world - there is a lot more on any phone to do besides tune in the radio.

A tuner would also be a benefit the cell phone networks as the new smart phones suck up so much bandwidth - imagine if lots of the users started streaming all kinds of Internet and local stations what would happen. We could have apps that use the GPS to see where you are and then either turn on the FM tuner or go to the on-line stream if you are out of town. It would also help in times of emergency. Also adding an FM tuner really won't cost but a few cents to build into the chips already in the phones.

So why is the Cell Phone industry banging the drum in any way to stop this? They want to control what is on your phone and they don't want congress potentially limiting their potential or income. They want to charge for music if at all possible in some way. They also want to control your ability to listen to music on 'their' devices. So what if it takes up tons of space on the network to stream - we'll just push the data rates up. If we have to expand the network it will be because there is revenue potential in it.

Their attack is lined with 'radio is dead' - 'why should we support old tech.' While some of that might be true I bet we end up with FM chips in our cell phones pretty soon. In the world the research shows around 40% of the folks in Canada and Europe want FM tuners in their phones - here in the U.S. it's around 30% - the same as their desire for bigger screens on smart phones. Look at the Vision Critical independent study here .

While this rolls through congress we need to start working a lot harder on our wireless strategies in radio. It doesn't matter if we get FM chips or not - the cell phone is vital to our survival.

Secrets of TSL

2010-08-16T12:59:00.003-04:00

Building more Time Spent Listening is usually at the top of any programmers list of goals. No matter how strong your station is there is always room for more TSL. It's much like income - when do you have enough.

TSL used to be mostly built on perceptions - what the audience thought they listened to the most. But, with the advent of PPM in many markets it's now about actual listening behavior.

Here are some tactics to build TSL and where they are likely to be effective:

Long Music Sets - This can be an effective tactic but we've often turned it into a 'who's got the biggest' war. In the PPM behavior world having 20 minute music sets and trying to make them as clean as possible can be effective. In the recall/diary market it helps to get a number into their heads. Using 40 minutes or another number that with enough repetition may get them to write down 40 minutes of listening is one tactic that can help. Working with 10 in a row may not work as well - the audience doesn't know how long a 10 song sweep lasts - what do they write down.
At Work Listening - In both the diary and the PPM world at work listening is one of the biggest generators of TSL.
It's Occasions that count. The PPM data really shows the simple fact that if you can get a healthy average tune in time (say 10 minutes) and you can generate 5 sessions a day you can generate 50 minutes a day. If you only get 3 sessions a day - you are nearly cut in half for the TSL number. Remember TSL doesn't care if you listen for 40 minutes all at once or 4 10 minute sessions. Often it's not about extending their current sessions - it's getting another session later.
Don't trick the audience. You're in the middle of a 40 minute music set and you slide in that 45 second promo for the trip giveaway. Have you sent off the signal that the music set is over and it's time to head to other stations in search of more music? The same can go for the jock speed break in the middle of the set. Don't accidentally communicate to the audience that the set is ending or over.
Billboards can help get the audience to hang through a stop set, but watch it. We often throw 3 or 4 events or songs at them - it's almost a laundry list that they won't remember and it may go on long enough to bore them. Keep it short and focus on 1 or maybe 2 items. We don't need an all you can eat buffet before the spots - it only drags it out even more.
Get to the Meat: The jocks who get better TSL are the ones that get the entertainment in their breaks out front. They don't work the long set up or the wandering storyline - they get in and comfortably move to the highlight of the break. The engage the audience as soon as they can and move on when they have hit the mark. Wandering around just to hear your voice or because you are not prepared forces tune out we can see in PPM and in the diary world it breeds the image of 'the jocks that waste my time and I tune out.' Neither helps build TSL no matter the data collection system.

Trying to improve TSL is a lot like managing a race car. If you want to win each lap you have to tweak the set up, watch every detail, and be consistent. It's often more about discipline than it is a lot of bold statements and smoke and mirrors.

The Art of Being Authentic

2010-07-20T16:06:00.000-04:00

Being Authentic is one of those magical qualities that can make anything suddenly desirable. You see it in nearly every brand, product, entertainment venue, media and personality somewhere. The ones that can hold on to this perception are the ones that usually win in the consumer's images and desires.

So how do you capture this unique trait in your images with the audience? It's not an easy one to grasp. You can't just claim that that your brand or personality is authentic -- you have to earn it. To earn it you have to remain true to the core images of the brand. You also have to deliver the product at a pretty high standard for enough time to be recognized.

The key to executing a plan that captures the Authentic image is to build a list of the most important qualities and traits that are the core or foundation for the brand. Once you have those don't compromise them. Also build your imaging around those qualities, but be careful not to over claim or over-hype.

Much like leadership or humor being Authentic is something you earn. You can't buy it, inherent it or just claim it. But, once you have it you often have a quality that goes beyond the superficial and that's where the magical power comes in.

As you set your values in Music, Imaging, Promotions, and the Personalities that make up your station and brand take a long look at the core qualities -- they are your key to achieving Authenticity.

Making Plans Into Reality

2010-07-06T11:29:00.000-04:00

The biggest challenge working with stations often lies in making all the great ideas and plans we come up with into reality. For programmers most of the tasks that get great ideas and improvements on the air revolve around 4 areas:

Music Systems - Getting your scheduling system completely organized, working efficiently, and in sync with your library. Keeping up with the trends, new music (if you play it), resting/platooning, feature programs, weekend specials, and local events (concerts etc.) all take organization, understanding of the software and constant review.
Air Staff - Keeping their momentum, training, critiquing, and show prepping are all crucial keys to turning voices into personalities. You need a plan for everyone on your team and you have to keep working this plan to have any progress.
Imaging - This is the soul of the station's sound and your biggest opportunity to work the audience. You can recycle them, build images for your important station values, promote events/contests, increase your web presence and entertain with the content between the songs and around the spots. But, you have to constantly work at it - great imaging doesn't just fall from the sky. So often we see spurts of work in this area. Every 3-4 months we update it, when we should have been working on it every week.
Promotion - Marketing - Building promotions, events and community presence.

When you break it down to 4 areas now you can get a handle on implementing the goals and tasks that lead to great ideas hitting the air. The key is finding a reliable organization system - a few ideas:

Go at it daily. Make Monday - Music Day, Tuesday Air Staff Day, Wednesday - Imaging and work promotions on Thursday. Every week you tackle your list in each area.
Go weekly - 1st week of the month is all about Promotions, the 2nd week imaging, 3rd for the Air Staff and music in the final week.
Divide up your day - An hour for the Air Staff, 1/2 hour for imaging, 1/2 hour for music, an hour for promotions and sales.

Sometimes picking one of these organization systems depends on how big the challenges are in each department and also the style of the programmer. If you are building a morning show from scratch and they are still learning the basics it might be a daily effort for them along with taking 1 day a week and working for a couple of hours on their show. If you've just got a music test in or are overhauling your systems it might be something you need to spend a whole week on. Getting ready for the book or a packed summer of promotions/events might mean spending 2-3 days focusing on getting everything set to go.

We also see lots of programmers juggling multiple stations and having to make this model work on multiple platforms making it more confusing and challenging.

The important point here is have an organization plan. Not just a bunch of meetings on your Outlook calendar, but an overall theme/focus to a period of time on a regular basis. Now you can concentrate on executing in that area to get the job done - not just pick at a few items and really never accomplish the task. It takes time and focus to get it done.

A New Meter for PPM

2010-06-22T12:06:00.002-04:00

At least this meter looks like something from 2000 instead of the 80s look of the old pager meter. While this may help get more of the panel to carry it more we still have the issue of a very small panel that doesn't change very often when you compare this sample to the larger samples we had (and still have in smaller markets) with the old diary system. Adding more sample would be a real improvement.

Perhaps the bigger news here is behind the scenes as Arbitron buys out IMMI - Integrated Media Measurement Inc. You may wonder - who are these guys? Here is their website. They have been around for at least 3 years and have developed a full 'smart phone' system for collecting data on the media (radio, TV, Web, DVD, DVRs, maybe even more). The system takes an audio sample from the smart phone every minute and then feeds the digital picture of the audio to the IMMI computer which compares the sample to what it has on file for any media it is measuring and matches up the data. It is a lot like the BDS system we use to track airplay for music. They have actually been measuring radio in a few markets but really haven't tried to sell much to radio operators focusing on the advertisers instead.

This could be the move to do all of the data collection on Cell Phones instead of PPM devices in the future. And watch as Arbitron also moves into measuring all media usage with a cell phone system.

The Crowded Web Running Out of Room!!

2010-06-11T14:03:00.002-04:00

This is going to remind you of Y2K, but it is a fact this time. We are running out of room on the Internet for IP addresses. The current system is based on an addressing scheme designed in the 70s called IPv4 and it has room for around 4 billion addresses. Well guess what - we are almost there and they figure we will run out of IP addresses in the next 18 months, maybe even sooner.

There is a system update called IPv6. But, only the really big players like Google and You Tube are set up for IPv6 - really only about 25% of the big servers are in for V6. V6 and V4 also struggle to get along so we can expect to see slower searches, slower Internet loading, and more crashes as we struggle with translating from V4 to V6.

While we all see so much potential in the web world. It seems as if the audience views it as a place where everything is free, or everything is real cheap, and a place where you can do anything with any device no matter how small. The reality is it's a complex place that really can't live in a cost free world. Space on the WWW frontier will cost someone somewhere and we are all going have to pay. We should also expect that this super highway will soon choke up just like a 15 lane expressway in L.A. does just days after the workers finish building it.

Sean Ross from Edison Research and Radio-Info noted in a recent newsletter about his struggles with monitoring station streams on his IPhone. His monitoring was blown out by dropouts, distorted audio, stream buffers, and freezing audio on his way from home to the office on a regular basis.

Yes the new tech world has tons of potential, but with the crush of the world inventing new devices and ways to hang out in the web world we are running out of space and the web infrastructure to handle it. Expect more news on this as we ride through more significant growth on an system that probably can't handle all this change.

To catch more on the Web Address Shortage - click here
And for more on Sean Ross' streaming article - click here

Working With Sales On Promotions

2010-06-08T13:09:00.000-04:00

In most operations the days of having a big promotions budget for a contest or funding an event have faded away. That doesn't have to stop you from building some creative on-air promotions and also helping the sales team work with some very valuable clients. Yet we often see lots of the ideas we have in the programming meetings fall apart when we try to field them with the sales teams. Here are some tips for both sales and programming to help build on air promotions together:

Plan Ahead - Walking into a Sales meeting on August 1st to lay out a Fall Client Promotions package is way too late. You should be approaching the sales team 6-7 months ahead of the promotion start.
Bring lots of ideas and keep an open mind. Walking in with a detailed plan that requires a Shelby Mustang for the prize and lots of rules/limits will probably end up with no clients wanting to join in. Look at which clients have done promotions in the past, who is new or looking to make a move in the market. Then consider what potential their products could have and look for a couple of 'example ideas' to pitch.
Let the Client Join In- If you let the client have some ownership you will probably make the sale sooner and you'll also have a lot more cooperation during the promotion.
Follow Through: Once you have a promotion set to roll make sure to deliver 110%. Make sure you get an A grade. This does become somewhat of a marriage and you don't want to end up in divorce court with the client - it could be costly and tough on your reputation.
Be Patient - If you have enough lead time you can be patient and often it takes a while to get a client interested and find the common ground to build a good promotion for both the station and their business.

Lastly remember that Job 1 in the sales world is not selling the promotions. It's about selling commercials and helping the clients market their products, brands and services on the air. Promotions may help that effort for some. Also keep in mind that promotions take time from the sales team and that time could be a sales call somewhere else with dollars involved.

Even though your Spring book is still in the field as I write this you should be well into working on your Fall promotions. Your sales teams should be including invitations to key clients on participating with the station in Fall promotions and you should have a number of target ideas circulating through the sales department.

Audience Research - The Future - Summary

2010-05-26T08:54:00.000-04:00

With so much new media plus changes in entertainment and communications, as well as a revolution in our measurement systems we have many more questions than answers. Asking the same old questions to a sample gathered in the ancient days of land line phones in a format that takes lots of precious time to execute will make it real hard to find the answers to so many questions.

We have the tools and opportunity to blaze new trails in researching the audience. But, like so much in radio we have to get our heads out of the 80s and welcome the new world. Hopefully as we roll out of the recession some of the gains will find their way into learning about the audience in their new world.

The keys lie in moving more towards managed panels for our research base, moving more towards on-line resources with their rich databases. The next step is to overhaul our questions to learn more about behavior instead of just reciting recalled images. To learn more about the audience on these levels we need to look at new data gathering systems to get past the surface levels and also use new analysis techniques to get to the core of real audience actions. We'll also need to move away from talking to them on the phone and interact with them in their world which as moved to the digital world of the web, cell phones, and smart phones/tablets.

It's not like we are really blazing a new trail here by ourselves. A lot of other marketing research and industries have already started down this path. Let's learn from them and start looking at the audience's behavior and how we can be a stronger part of it.

Audience Research - The Future - Data Collection

2010-05-20T09:20:00.002-04:00

It's obvious that we are in the middle of a revolution in communication. With cell phones and the Internet we suddenly have a whole new platform that is evolving in a full digital world following Moore's law. The law is built on the capacity of integrated circuits which doubles every 2 years - and with it we double the capability the the circuits and their applications. We no longer talk on our cell phones, we text, surf the Internet, blog, tweet, Facebook, take pictures, shoot movies, and now have millions of apps that do almost anything.

In the Radio Research world a lot of what we do still relies on talking on the phone or filling out pen and paper forms - like the diary. Our measurement is moving away from this model with the PPM, but is our perceptual and music research following along?

When you think about the telephone perceptual it's a lengthy world. We have to read off long lists of stations, music mix descriptors, personality names, image descriptions and if we want open ended comments someone has to transcribe them. It limits the amount of information we can get from them and the time they will stay on the phone. We also have that interaction with the interviewer which sometimes holds people back from their real actions and thoughts.

Moving perceptual research online opens up a lot of doors. We often get a lot more open ended responses with very valuable impressions and images, we can cover long list of images, stations and other questions much quicker. There are also lots of animation options that will allow us to use dial type scales and other ways to collect data that gives us more insight than just the 1-7 scale. Imagine what we could do with the I-Pad touch screen!

Online research also moves at the pace of the responder - not the pace of the music test or the interviewer, the sample can come back to the questionnaire/music list at their schedule. And of course we can add audio, video and pictures/images into the mix with ease.

Having tried out a few on-line perceptual studies we've seen the potential. While we have all done a quick survey on-line there is a lot more that can be done in this environment. Some innovative researchers working with other product lines have started to push the envelope in questionnaire design and the potential is very impressive.

It's a whole new world of potential and possibilities that we haven't even tapped into . Perhaps as we start to dig into audience research again in our budgets we'll have the courage to innovate instead of just replicate.

In our last post in this series we'll summarize the thoughts early next week. Please feel free to add yours.

Audience Research - The Future - The Questions

2010-05-17T09:20:00.000-04:00

The usual pattern in most research studies really ends up with the same questions. We start with their 'cume' behavior/recall and then narrow it to most listened to stations then we move on to the body of the questions . We craft music blends for them to evaluate, ask about Morning shows, other personalities, maybe at work listening, contests, marketing efforts and maybe a few questions about the web site (have you been there). Sometimes we are on a format search where the music mixes or other descriptive moments take more time in the questions. There's always the pressure of keeping it under 25 minutes on the phone so we really don't have that much time.

Notice that the only area that is about their behavior is in the Cume and which stations they listen to the most. An even there we may see the most marketed station win even though we look down their answers and they don't really know much about that station in the other parts of the study. Where do they listen to radio the most, and what are those stations? How passionate are they? Are they super radio users or just casual tuners? Do they jump around as soon as the music sets end?

Also what kind of people are they? Are they innovators that latch on to new concepts or products or are they laggards who are just figuring out innovations that happened years ago? Or are they in that mass in the middle and where do they rank in that segment?

A few more questions about them before we dive into their perceived listening habits would really help us learn a lot more about what their actual behavior might be. Right now we are mostly learning what they recall about our products and not a lot about how they use them. Recall worked in the diary days - now it's about real behavior. We have to find the secrets to making our products perform on a different plane

Many products and industries have used this type of research for years - dating back to the 60s and while it's gone through a number of evolutions it's still in use today. Finding the key links in the sample or population and building products that use the keys to open doors to the bigger groups has been a big element for many industries.

Now how do we communicate with the sample? A lot has changed in the last few decades let's take a look in our next segment later in the week.

Audience Research - The Future - The Sample

2010-05-10T07:20:00.003-04:00

The land line phone and a random sample from the general population taken from the phone number listings has been the base for research since the late 50s. Since radio really didn't get into ratings till the 60s and audience research in the 70s we started in the telephone era and for the most part haven't evolved much.

Now the world has obviously changed and the tides of radio research are also on the verge of changing.

First we have the land line telephone - which is quickly dying. We are now at over 25% of the population who don't even have a land line and in some demos it's nearly 40%. The number of Cell Phone converts grows every day and we can't call them on their cells. Arbitron has begun the shift to try and integrate more and more cell phone households into the sample frame, but has our perceptual and music testing research? It's not become a widespread practice, because it's hard to try and set up systems to reach cell phone only households for a survey done 1 or 2 times year.

2nd the audience has clearly changed the way they communicate. Written snail mail and actually talking on a phone (cell or land line) are both evolving to new worlds. With the internet we communicate in a whole new world from email to text messaging to social networks and many more evolutions to come at the speed of the internet where every 18 months we see innovations all over the place. But, how do we communicate or research our audience? While we have dabbled in on-line music testing, some station database questions, and maybe a few have actually done an on line perceptual test most of the time we still talking on the phone and punching the responses into a CATI software program.

The new answers may well lie in managed panels. Really a phone listing is a form of a managed panel of households that have phones. In this case the panels could be built from a wide collection of on-line sources and serve as a sample base to draw from. There are managed panels all over the place already that we could tap into and use that base to reach out on many platforms on line to gather the data. We have started to use them for some online music testing and a few questions from our station databases, but our valid concern is just talking to our fans and not the whole market.

We also have to take a look at the new world of PPM. This is really a managed panel of the market that is carrying around the meters for months and even years. It's different from the old random draw of the sample that took place every week. Here the sample is pulled with only a few replacements every week or month. Instead of getting a snapshot of a few people's listening habits for a week we get a full length movie of them over 6 months, a year and maybe even 18 months.

Radio research used to rely on the random sample and in today's world trying to poll everyone doesn't yield enough specific information for us to work with. More and more we need to stratify the sample and narrow the vision to those we have a chance to reach with our products when we do audience research for perceptual and music surveys.

There are panels out there, the key is grooming them so we can use them to research our product. Many others have already started. NASCAR, PPG, the auto companies, and many of the major retailers already work hard to grow panels that they can rely on to help them keep momentum with the audience on their products. We need to start to find ways to make this work on much bigger scale than just our newsletter email list.

We also need to start asking new questions to learn more about behavior and not just about what they remember of our products. We'll cover some thoughts there in a few days. Feel free to chime in and contribute your thoughts on these topics. Everyone's help will be needed.

Audience Research - The Future

2010-05-04T10:03:00.000-04:00

Over the last 4-5 years doing audience research for music testing and perceptual studies has been an expense that has in many cases been deemed too expensive. With the economy struggling, lots of competition from new media, and the need for every manager to cut expenses research seemed to fall off the table. Clear Channel pretty much dismantled it's in house Critical Mass Media and left BA research on the table. Other groups curtailed a lot of their work in studying the audience and many smaller owners also cut back.

The reality here is that in many cases we've gone a long time guiding our ships in ever changing seas of new competition, audience evolution, and life style changes that no doubt have affected how the audience uses the product and their passion levels for it. Now the economy is improving and perhaps we are getting ready to return to doing some audience research.

A lot has changed with a completely new measurement system in many markets. The old sample system of using mostly land line phones to gather the panel is suspect as so many people have turned off their land lines for cell phones. Even Arbitron is using different systems to gather the sample to include non or limited land line participants in all markets. We also have new opportunities using the internet for research that we have only done a few experiments with.

Much of our perceptual research in the past was built completely on recall behavior. After all our whole game in the diary days was built on recall. It really didn't matter if they really listened to our morning show every day, if they had high recall and impressions of the show we often got credit for listening. If they could remember it to write it down - game over. Making the impression still matters a lot, but we also need them to listen.

It's time to scrap the old questionnaires, the old auditorium tests, and the call out studies and come up with some new systems to find answers to new questions. But, is anyone up for the experimentation it's going to take? Over the next 10 days let's take a look at some opportunities to remodel our research here - I'll be bringing in some ideas and thoughts, but if you have any please feel free to contribute with your comments.

First up - The Sample in just a few days.

Thanks

Cell Phone Only Households

2010-04-15T10:07:00.001-04:00

Arbitron has been working overtime to include more and more Cell Phone Only households into their reports in nearly every market. Diary or PPM you will now see more of these growing number of households included.

They have integrated both the Telephone Based Sample base and a Address Based Sample into their overall sample pool. The national average for Cell Phone Only households is 22.7% as of the 2009 research from the Center of Disease Control (they do 2 studies a year that have become the benchmark here).

Of course we'll see this number increase as the data is updated and if you look at various demos (like 18-34s) the number is much higher than 22.7%.

It's also different for individual markets and Arbitron has just released a cell phone only household map of the country for the Arbitron Markets. Take a look (Arbitron Cell Phone Only Map).

Talent Coaching and Management

2010-04-08T14:46:00.001-04:00

We've all heard that on-air talent that just seems to flow on the air. They sound comfortable, prepared, spontaneous, plugged into the audience and entertaining. So what's their secret and how can you spread this good virus to the rest of the staff? After working with a lot of talent over the years I usually focus on these 4 steps:

Comfortable - We've all see the performer or comedian that just doesn't seem comfortable. It's usually disturbing to watch and no matter how good the material they usually fall apart. Of course there have been comedians that build their whole routine around being uncomfortable, but for the most part if you are not comfortable in the studio, behind the mic, with the audience, with their PD/Coach, with the station's image/style, and with themselves it doesn't work. It's a lot to 'get comfortable with' but the real performers have that comfort level dialed in when the mic is open.
Confident - Is it any mystery that the best talent is nearly always the ones with the biggest ego? When you have that level of confidence your communication cuts through. But to be confident you first have to be comfortable.
Understands the Audience - Do they visualize and really know who is on the other side of the mic? Do they also understand how the overall station communicates and images itself to the audience? If they do then they can take full advantage of their comfort and confidence to cut through to the audience.
Prep - Not only do you need to connect with the audience you also need to organize the prep so it integrates into the show. The key here is making sure you know 'what is really important to the audience today' and also 'what is really important on the station today.' They are often not the same thing - the big talk in the audience might be the new I Pad or a Movie while the big news at the station might be that Slash has a new CD out. Find the answers to both and then you know how to prep.

If your talent is hitting on these 4 cylinders I bet they have a passionate audience, high recall scores and they will likely out perform the other dayparts.

Imaging

2010-03-23T07:06:00.000-04:00

What we do between the songs and out of the spot breaks is one of the clear identifiers of our product. Without it we are often just a limited collection of songs spinning around with perfect turnovers perhaps researched in the market or maybe drawn from a national safe list.

So often we just focus on our position - The Rock Station or Classic Rock for .... or Real Rock. Then we let the creativity roll with lots of zaps, zings, and maybe a few clips or music hooks with the big voice.

In recent years with the advent of PPM and we got to see the quick trigger finger of the audience many stations went on an imaging diet scared that anything over 5 seconds was a tune out.

We also often get pretty lofty with our claims and no doubt the BS indicator in the audience is at def con 5.

While the creativity and honesty is a big tactical issue in our imaging we also have to take a long look at the strategic side. What are we really promoting - what are we really impressing on the audience? What do we really want them to remember about our product and more importantly what actions do we want them to retain?

No doubt you have a pretty long list of actions for them to increase their time spent with the station as well as the overall image you project to them. Maybe you want to highlight your longer music sets, get them to listen more at night, listen more on the weekends, or keep your hot morning show in front of them and the competition. Or maybe you want to use this time to build your position in the community or get more on the job listening.

Do you have a real plan here or just a bunch of audio files spinning around in your studio system? How much control do you really have over the plan?

Conventions

2010-03-15T17:36:00.000-04:00

Just got back from an interesting Canadian Music Week convention. The meetings were laced with lots of digital themes and concern over the next decade. Hats off to Neil and the CMW team on another great series of meetings and showcases.

On the way we have an NAB in Las Vegas and I got an interesting offer from Jason Rouse from the NAB Travel Team. He wanted to pass on the following offer to all McVay Media Rocks Blog readers and since it's 'free' well -----

There have been some rapid changes over the last few years that we as a digital broadcasting community face. The 2010 NAB Show is the place to discover new opportunities for all of us in the broadcaster world.

The NAB Show is coming up faster than you think – April 10-15 in Las Vegas! For a taste of what the 2010 NAB Show has to offer, check out what the Broadcast Management Conference and discover how to further monetize and manage your digital products in today’s dynamic marketplace: http://ow.ly/15xv1

Oh, and just because you are reading my blog, I’m giving out a code for FREE ACCESS to the Exhibit Hall at the show. This free Exhibits-Only pass includes (but is not limited to):

- Access to the Opening Keynote and State of the Industry Address
- Info Sessions
- Content Theater and Destination Broadband Theater

Visit http://ow.ly/13T8Q today to redeem or register at http://nabshow.com/register with the code A913 (and feel free to pass this along).

Don't forget to check out the official show website at http://www.nabshow.com for more information, news, and to register

A Decade Later

2010-03-02T09:22:00.000-05:00

Just for FUN let's set the Peabody and Sherman Way Back Machine to 10 years ago in the world of Radio and Records:

Clear Channel had just purchased Jacor and was getting set to close on AMFM to own over 1,000 stations. They also owned a large billboard network, TV stations and controlled the Concert/live performance world.
CCU - stock approaches $100 a share.
Larry Wilson still owns Citadel which he will sell in a year.
Cumulus is preparing to expand it's smaller market holdings and is into it's 3rd year.
XM satellite radio is planning to launch in 18 months.
The record biz total revenue was over 38 billion for 1999 (it's around 10 billion now
Somewhere at Apple HQ they were drawing up the plans for the IPod which launched in Oct of 2001
Top artists on the CHR charts - Santana, Christina Aguilera, Lonestar, Faith Hill, Blink 182

When you take the Way Back Machine back to the Spring of 2000 it was filled with so much potential. I remember sitting in an early Clear Channel - AMFM merger meeting and looking around the room in amazement at the talent, the power of 1000 stations in all but 2 or 3 markets in the top 100. Having 2 or 3 research companies dedicated to the CC stations. Owning the big talent like Rush, Rick Dees, Bob and Tom, John Boy/Billy, and more. Owning a full service network with tons of programming resources. Having 100s of great programmers all dedicated to making a winning company.

It's too bad we can't just use the Way Back Machine and go back. What would have happened if we'd tapped all that potential of a Radio industry ready to grow into a nationwide marketing monster, the ability to own enough stations to really build huge revenue with massive cash flow margins. A record industry poised on a whole new delivery system that could eliminate the need to ship CDs or Tapes all over the world and make music truly portable and on demand. Instead we all know the realities we face today. Let's hope when we set the Way Back Machine for 2010 in 10 years the picture is much better than this trip back.

In case you never saw Sherman and Peabody -

The Radio Industry and Coffee

2010-02-04T13:20:00.005-05:00

Yes, we do drink our fair share, but here I wanted to dig a little deeper and compare our rather young industry to one that's been around for centuries -- perhaps we can learn a few lessons.

Coffee's origins date to the 1500s coming from Ethiopia in it's bean form and was first prepared in the way we drink it today in Yemen a little while later. With Europe trading with the world at the same time the drink spread to England and the rest of Western Europe and by 1600 was pretty well known.

At the time drinking water was a very dangerous idea. The supply in much of Europe was loaded with bacteria and had already caused a few plagues. The European population solved the polluted water issues by drinking Beer. A small glass in the mornings to refresh, a break at 10 for another beer, one with lunch, a break in the afternoon followed by an evening of quenching the thirst with the brew. It did avoid Cholera, but it did leave the working population in a bit of a daze much of the day.

That proved to be a problem as the industrial revolution was starting. Workers floating through the day on the beer diet was dangerous around primitive machines and it also killed productivity. Coffee was the perfect answer. Since the water had been boiled it was disease free and the caffeine kept the workers sped up and alert, helping productivity.

Coffee spread around the world as the beans moved to Latin and South America, Hawaii, Vietnam, and through Africa. Coffee became the most traded commodity in the world - only replaced in the last century by oil. Coffee was largely produced by family owned business' who crafted the brews carefully. It was largely made in coffee shops and in factories and not much at home.

As the 20th century hit Coffee grew with the population and the full fledged industrialization of the world. The family business' became absorbed into bigger and bigger corporations. As the accountants and marketing execs took over coffee it changed. The advent of the percolator in the 1920s started to bring coffee home. Only problem is the percolator kept reheating and restraining the coffee till it tasted awful. The other option was instant coffee which was brewed and then preserved or so finely ground it lost it's flavor also. Instead of seeking out new technology for home brewing or finding another model to keep the quality of the product in place the coffee execs just kept lowering the standards to cut the price. Saving a few cents now became the only goal. Profit margin trumped everything and product quality was a costly drain on that margin.

By the 60s and 70s Coffee was a dying commodity. They had watered it down by moving to Robusta beans over the Arabica blends. The Robusta beans have more caffeine but a lot less flavor - which didn't matter much because with the percolator or in instant form it tasted like junk no mater what. By the late 70s the industry was seeing no growth and some steep declines in consumption. The only thing moving the profits around was weather conditions often pushing up the price on the coffee crop. There were many other pick me up drinks to go to like soft drinks also marketing themselves to a younger generation.

So how did coffee recover and regain it's market? In the 80s the advent of the drip machines helped build more consumption, but the product still wasn't much better and it flattened out as the decade closed. Then came Starbucks. Their blend of high quality beans, stores on every corner and strong marketing through the 90s and the last decade helped. This germ spread and now we find much higher quality coffee even at McDonald's. Coffee is now prepared in elaborate drip machines with fresh ground beans or in home espresso makers. Even in the office we now see individually brewed machines.

Right now we seem to be in the 60s and 70s era of coffee's history. Cutting back on every level and lowering our standards as well as watching our market take a dive. Really we all know the way out and really it's not that complicated. Now off to the machine for a cup of Hazelnut Afternoon Brew. Just think, if this was 1450 I'd be tipping an afternoon pint.

Is Your Morning Show In Sync With Brand Expectations?

2010-01-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

It seems like every month we watch some pretty legendary all talk Morning Shows being ditched in PPM markets. Johnny B, Dahl, Chainsaw, Lex & Terry, and probably a few more I missed have all been pushed off in the last 18 months or so. The big reason is that they just don't perform as well in PPM as they did in the old diary days. The big costs of the shows just doesn't seem to pay off in a PPM world.

In the diary days shows like this seemed to drive the station outperforming the rest of the dayparts and offering a big lead in. Most of these shows started out (many 20 years ago or more) playing some music and really being more of an integrated piece of the brand. As they grew in popularity (or assumed popularity) and developed more content they started ditching the music all together. For most of them going back to a mix of music and their content didn't seem possible so the buy outs or letting the contracts lapse began.

Even if you are not in a PPM market you have to wonder if your all talk morning show is really performing as well as you perceive it from the data you're getting now.

It looks like we have 2 big factors that are playing into this trend:

Brand Confusion - If you are THE ROCK STATION or THE CLASSIC ROCK STATION to the audience your brand is built around music to a big degree. The all talk morning shows are often a brand on to themselves with few ties to the whole station in any content. When you add that they don't play music (which is a central image to the brand) they end up on an even more remote island. Are you're station P1s also P1s of the Morning Show? And are you Morning Show P1s fans of the music side? Often not - we saw this most in the Howard Stern stations which often had great loyalty in the Diary world but ended up with a cliff after the show when the music hit. Notice how most of the Howard stations ended up in a different format after he left - their music images were so low there was little to recover and keep the station alive.
Sample Sizes - PPM samples are around 40% (or less) of the sample sizes we had in the diary days. While there are more meters around every day collecting data than we had with diaries in their hands the final numbers in the diary days had more individuals in the sample and the sample changed every week. The PPM sample is also listening to nearly twice as many stations in an average week. Fewer individuals that spend less time with any one station, than we saw in their diary recall data, ends up with fewer opportunities to reach the super P1s for a given personality. We also see more listening to the other dayparts in PPM than we saw in the diaries so your Morning Show is also less likely to out-perform the other dayparts. You can't just live on a great morning show as much as you could before.

The lesson to learn here - you Morning Show better be in Sync with the Whole Brand - not just itself.

Making Big Events

2010-01-20T13:11:00.001-05:00

Doing promotions is a great way to make any product (including your station) stand out. We often think it takes big prizes or a huge event to get noticed. Really what it takes is an ANGLE. Something creative that catches the audience with a bit of a surprise.

Take this one from White Castle - who claims that if you want to break up on Valentines Day do it at the Castle:

Here's the official explanation from the White Castle Team:
Wanna get dumped on Valentine's Day? Try taking your lady to White Castle. But you'll need a reservation. The home of late-night cravings has had a Valentine's Day promotion since 1991, and it's expanded every year. This chain closes participating locations to Valentine's couples with reservations.

The special: a "steamy," "candlelit dinner" of 10 sliders, two 21-ounce sodas and French fries for $10.49, "leaving plenty of room in the budget for flowers, candy and entertainment." Staff will also upload a photo of your "romantic rendezvous" to the White Castle website. The restaurants will also be decked out in "theme" décor

You can see it doesn't take a lot here and it today's multi-media world they can get good coverage and get those White Castle's noticed. Might not be a bad bit for your Morning Show to do if you have a Castle in your market.

We can all learn from their example. All you need to do is get creative.

Rock's Music Drought

2010-01-07T07:59:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year and New Decade

After 2 weeks of celebrating we're all back building great radio and of course that means the first music meeting or review of your currents for the year.

What's there?

Not much a bunch of 3 and 4th songs from releases as old as 18 months, a few new bands we added back in October that really haven't taken off yet and when you look at what's out to add -- it's even drier.

We usually max out over the Summer and Fall as the music industry typically gets most stuff out before the holidays then takes off. Hopefully we recover in Jan/Feb and by March we're off to a good year?

If you go back the last time we had a good year was 2008 and maybe 2007 for new releases. Right now we are running on fumes for the Currents and there is not much out there to consider. For most of the stations I work with we are revamping the clocks and adjusting rotations to deal with a new reality that new music will be scarce.

The other factor we have to consider here is that Record Companies have been going through near death (or death) experiences and no doubt they are not signing as many new acts and also not able to work the old system to promote them.

So how are we going to capture new music and bands in the future (which seems to be now)? Should we be scanning My Space? Digging bands out of the clubs and bars? That's pretty risky move and we all know the odds of hitting anything that sticks is probably worse than the lottery - especially when you are working this plan all by yourself for the most part.

Obviously we need a whole new approach. Any realistic ideas?

Brand - BINGO

2009-12-02T11:24:00.001-05:00

No doubt you've played (or seen) the Meeting Bingo Buzz word games (click here). As these overused buzzwords pop up you check off and win.

One Buzz Word that doesn't usually appear for some strange reason is BRAND. Is 'Brand' too important to be linked to all these overused and perhaps meaningless buzz words?

Well maybe, but when you hear this word tossed around so much you have to wonder if it's not becoming so generic that it really is becoming as meaningless as all these buzz words.

Is your 'Brand' in danger of becoming just another Buzz Word on a Bingo Card with your audience and clients? If it is perhaps it's time to develop new synergy with our core business, get out of the loop, be proactive not reactive and stretch the envelope [BINGO].

Campus Radio

2009-11-20T08:28:00.000-05:00

Been visiting a few Universities as one of my children gets ready to pick a school. It does bring back some great memories of the college days and of course I spent most of it in the Campus Radio world. I usually end up wandering into the campus station just to see what is going on, or at least ask a few questions.

In a recent visit I was rather surprised at the 'policy' for the campus station. First the station was all programmed by the students with some help from the broadcasting faculty and looked like it was pretty well done with an Alt/Indy format and special programs for some minorities and special interest groups. They had a decent FM low power signal that probably covered the campus and the small city fairly well. The station looked to be pretty staffed with people in on a Saturday morning doing shows. The professor giving the tour of the communications department mentioned that you need to sign up early to be a DJ if you want good shifts. So there was a student interest here.

When I asked if they stream the station - 'we've been trying to get the 'Board' to approve it, but they are scared.' What??? It's OK for the campus and the city to hear it, but not elsewhere? I would think it might be a recruiting tool - you can catch a little of the campus life by listening. Catch some of the 'music vibe' of the school. As important as music is to most 18-24 year olds it's probably worth more than the condition of the pool table in the rec-room.

Then as we toured the Union and the eating area they had some music playing and it was obviously a radio station. I thought it might be the Campus station. It wasn't - they had on a Sirius - Mix modern hot AC channel. I'm sure the campus really rocks out when they play Huey Lewis and the News.

Too bad the school didn't support the station. This school was pretty into their broadcasting department with a school cable TV channel coming on soon, a full weather department geared at teaching TV meteorology, complete with a Doppler radar.

We do need to work more with our local colleges and their radio programs. The air staff and the PDs should be stopping by to host a class, invite them to the station and try to help the faculty with any materials they might need. Not only do we need more people in our talent pools, but we also need to keep radio relevant on the campus scene. In this case we can do something so reach out and drop you local broadcasting faculty an email - and help the future.

At Work Listening

2009-11-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

It's still a BIG key to building P1s, long TSL and big shares in valuable demos, but there are new rules. In the 90s At Work listening really took center stage, first with AC stations and then to Classic Rock for the most part. We ran special at work contests, dropped by with pizza for lunch, called the offices with 'secret contests' to build listening, tried building at work databases, and ran endless 'at work network' imaging to try and build this audience.

Most of these programs had some success in the 90s and we could see big At Work listening shares for the stations that followed the programs. Over the last 10 years it's still important, but a lot has changed:

A lot more Media to Choose from at work. You all know the list of new media suspects here.
More listening done on Computers. According to the latest Nielsen Internet Media studies around 7% of all listening is done on computers and around 1/2 of that is done at work. As we see more smart phones, Wifi spots, and even more people realizing they can use their computer with decent quality to listen this number will grow. You don't need to lug the radio to work any more to listen.
At Work is not just In Office. We've known this for years, but a lot of our strategy seemed to have that rare vision of a radio playing for a bunch of people in cubical office set ups. That's only the case in a very few spots - it's a lot more individual now and it can happen in delivery vehicles, in the shop, with people who travel locally to sell, and even at home as they work.

Here are some new and familiar workplace listening ideas that might help:

An At Work website - We have special pages for the Morning Show, how about for listening at work. Maybe with some obvious links, workplace jokes/cartoons, job listings, and maybe some at work news stories. You could also link up with some workplace tools like - google calendars etc.
Wallpaper/Screen Savers - People still theme and decorate their computers, how about some of these old tricks to get your message on the computer screen everyday.
Creative Imaging - Have some fun between the songs with work humor, workplace of the day, and some testimonials from the audience.
Make sure your air talent visualizes their audience at their workplaces during the day.

It will be harder to track at work listening as PPM becomes currency. You can't tell if a meter is at work, in the car or just roaming around the market. You can only measure if the meter is at home or away from home. In the diaries the listener had the option to note if the listening was at work but not in the PPM world.

There are also issues with PPM tracking on-line listening with getting the encoded signal in the stream and also having the levels up enough to register with the meter. And there are also issues with the stream being different programming with Arbitron since we often replace the national voices in the spot breaks on the stream.

Still, at work listening is very important and if you don't focus on it with a well thought out plan you will see more and more new media invade this great source of TSL and P1 audience.

Taking Music Risks

2009-10-16T10:16:00.000-04:00

As the role of Music Radio changes from a dominate taste maker for music (old and new) to a world where there are many other players in the game we are faced with new challenges to stay in the game. At the core of radio's music model is the need to hit as many people under the signal as possible. Our first mission is to build as big of a cumulative audience as possible and then try to find some way to hold them as long as we can. It used to be much easier when the only options where the other stations in the market or maybe someones cassette collection in the car or Walkman.

Obviously now the options are nearly infinite and growing every day. With the customizable media the audience can really build their own stations. They catch new music on MySpace, You Tube, and through blogs or websites.

Yet we still pretty much hang on to the old rules, strategies, and tactics when it comes to programming our music as we did in the old days of broadcast domination. Tight is right. You're never hurt by what you don't play. Sort the test to 90% familiar, 80% acceptance, and play those powers as much as possible. So what if you only play 200 songs? If they are the right 200 songs.

We've also gotten pretty tight when it comes to breaking or adding new music. It's one of the biggest complaints we get from the audience on the street and on-line, but we still play a game of wait and see with the charts.

Our tightness and reluctance to take any chances or risks over the years is adding up. If you go back to the days when radio built it's huge influence in music (the 60s and 70s) you see a lot more boldness in adding songs and playlist size. Can you find a CHR station today that actually plays 40 current songs? Probably not - seems like most are around 25 or 30. In Rock we spent the 70s often adding 2-3 songs from an LP when it hit - not just 1 song. Rock used to have 800-1000 songs in the old card rotation system and the freedom to really take requests as well the jocks throwing in a personal pick here and there - now you probably average 500 songs or less.

It's lead the audience to start discovering music in many different places. Just take a look at the Big Champagne download charts and you'll see music that radio has only touched lightly pretty high on the charts. In fact Led Zeppelin's tour a while back built 2 song lists for the shows. One came from rock radio plays and the other from Big Champagne downloads. Reports are that they were quite a bit different with Plant and Page using the Big Champagne list with good results.

We are going to have to find a new way to balance our need for that huge cume that fuels the core of our business model with the endless variety of new opportunities the audience has to explore music and hear more than we offer on our playlists.

The key may be taking a few risks and working to make them pay off as big as possible. Letting down our guard here and there to open the door more to lead the audience instead of just following them.

It's not all science - there has to be an equal balance of risk and art.

If you would like to learn more about Big Champagne catch this article in Wired.

You can also see condensed versions of the Big Champagne charts in All Access under charts.

Killing The Clutter

2009-09-08T23:58:00.000-04:00

When you stand back and break down the content of so much of radio's non music areas you can see the big blocks of clutter we so often have in our breaks.

The information segments are filled with it. Look at the extra words we often see in weather, the long winded descriptions around traffic reports, the waste in our music sells, or all the extra words in any news story. It's not that we need to come up with some kind of text message code here to tighten it up, but do we really need all the details we usually include to get the message across?

Also look at where we put content in breaks. How many times do we hear a backsell where the jock has 'forced' some trivial music info into it, then rolls a liner for a bar night filled with extra plugs and finally we get to a great call from the audience? All the extra dancing before we hit the real 'punch line-caller' that was the real entertainment in the break.

Sometimes it sounds like we are talking just to hear our voices in the headphones. Hyping it up and giving that extra sell is also a test on the audience's patience and time. Make that liner extra special, sell those concert tickets for the promoter - our name is on that show, last week's wet t-shirt contest at Woody's was down give it the extra sell. We've all heard it and so has the audience.

Or we fall victim to the 'formatics' of the break. A contest is set up in the backsell and then we go to the phones while the spots run. After 5 minutes of spots we finally have the pay off and a caller on the phone with an entertaining bit - is there anyone left that's really paying attention?

Then there is the billboard or tease. Just because you have AC/DC on the way is that enough motivation to stay. We often cite the great Casey Kasem set ups as examples, but even those don't often carry the weight to get the audience to hang in there anymore - there are just too many other options at the press of a button.

The more we look at the tune out by studying the audience's reaction with the People Meters the more we see that they don't have much patience when the music stops. They know the spots are coming and your break is really more like a time bomb waiting to go off in just a few seconds with them. You have to get the MEAT or most entertaining part of the break out in front and try to hold them as long as you can. The longer you hold them the more likely they are to pass that urge to tune out.

Look at it much like a comedian who opens his slot with a joke about an Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman - you know the joke is going to wander around a bit till you finally get to that entertaining/funny punch line. In the comedy club you can't flip the switch and jump to another comedian so you hang in there.

Also look at the practice we often see to build the break and finish with a big laugh or moment as we wrap it up. Leave them laughing. Run off the stage with the audience demanding more - a standing ovation. Again that works on a stage where the audience has to get up to find the exit. In our world - punch - you're gone.

We've seen a number of stories that radio programmers are pushing the talent to 'shut up.' Even the most recognized terrestrial radio jock, Ryan Seacrest, is under the gun to keep it quick according to his comments on The Kevin and Bean Show.

We all know the reality is that just being a jukebox won't do anything for radio to survive an a new media sea of jukebox options. We need the personality, entertaining elements and the information to build the unique product that broadcast radio is. Now that we can see what the audience does with the meter we also see that we have to be more focused. If we can learn to value their time and patience a lot more we can still deliver content that holds and entertains the audience. Sticking to this basic tenant of radio will turn out to be the real magic of our medium.

Perhaps a few lessons from SNL's MacGruber will illustrate it in an entertaining way.

12 Rules of Advertising and Marketing

2009-08-24T11:01:00.001-04:00

Ran across 12 Rules of Advertising from

Bill Bernbach – Creator of the old VW – Think Small campaign in the late 60s/early 70s. Even though they come from the pre-digital age these rules still rule. Might be something to forward to your sales teams as they hit the street to help their clients.

1) The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

2) Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

3) It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.

4) Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.

5) You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You've got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don't feel it, nothing will happen.

6) Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before.

7) Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed... but dull?

8) No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway.

9) Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.

10) Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

11) Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

12) Properly practiced creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.

Playing it COOL

2009-07-30T11:06:00.000-04:00

Projecting a Cool image is one of the toughest skills to pull off in marketing, branding, and creating the product/station/personality. It's a tight balance point of being noticed and making an impression without overstating or overdoing it.

Watching a Biography channel piece on Letterman he said that he wanted to get into late night talk because he watched Carson and 'he made it look SO easy that I figured I could do it.' The reality Letterman found when he started his late night show and his CBS show was that the job was anything but easy. Carson pulled it off with an style that looked effortless and COOL.

Even though Carson was probably way off the cutting edge in guests, humor or show style from 1975 on he still had enough Cool in his style to pull it off.

Cool can also be way over done. Being too cool for the room is a common phrase and for a reason.

Swing too hard and you will miss the ball a lot of the time. The same swing principle applies to your Cool on the air and in the produce. One of the 'coolest' icons in movies was probably James Dean in the 50s, but look at his movies - often his lines for a 2 hour flick would have fit on 1 page. It was his look, his eyes, his silence, and a careful pause in the timing that built his coolness.

How are you handling your cool factor? Is it in that delicate balance or is it overcooked or coming up rare?

A New Idea for the Royality Mess

2009-07-22T09:57:00.000-04:00

The debate continues with Sound Exchange on radio stations paying royalties for the music we play to the record companies with the thought that perhaps some of these funds would go to the musicians in the performance. Of course the real 'exchange' here for many years has been that exposure radio brings far outweighs the royalty potential for all involved and many a musician and record company has made millions from the exposure. Now that the business model centered on the old school distribution of CDs and Albums is dying a fast death the record companies have clung to the old school and are tying to hang on by taxing radio.

Even though there are tons of new media outlets and streaming options Radio still remains a strong exposure vehicle for music. Just look at the remarks from the judges on American Idol. All have talked about 'hearing the performers on the radio' when gushing about their latest performance on stage. Still, the debate rages on, mostly from older musicians who haven't turned out a big song in ages and want to get more from their 'glory days' since we still play their catalog.

Sound Exchange has been pulling artists together and forcing the issue with the Congress and the NAB has been lobbying to continue the exemption. Meanwhile we sit back and wait. But, could we do something?

How about this idea:

Most of the 'force' from the Sound Exchange side comes from the record companies and their hold on the rights of the performance. Yet, we now live in a music world where the record companies no longer control distribution and no longer have the promo machines they once had to really break new artists. We all know that the next wave of new artists are more likely to come from social networks, You Tube videos, and other independent sources outside the record companies.

How about setting up an industry wide 'emerging artists' program. The program would offer exposure of any independent artist to the programmers, music directors, and DJs at commercial radio stations. The artists would be able to post their songs, radio would be able to listen to them, watch charts on them, and even chat with each other. The artists would simply agree to let radio expose their music and performance for free. Radio would pledge a percentage of their new adds to come from the emerging artists and link our audience to them on the web site - perhaps through My Space. There they can distribute the songs and build their fan base.

To fund it? How about taking the funds we were sending to Radio and Records and allocating them to this idea. I bet it would be enough to pay for a few out of work Radio and Record staffers to mind the store here and start to build a business out of it. As the site grows there could be other advertising options - how about Guitar Center??

At the least it would send a message to the Sound Exchange world that there is another way for music to get exposed on radio without their old world business model. It would also open the floodgates for new artists to build their business model on a new world of distribution that is already built and rolling - it just needs an organized way to promote itself.

If any of you folks from Radio and Records want to get started - be happy to help you brainstorm. Just reach out.

Using Imaging to SELL Not Just Identify

2009-06-30T22:09:00.000-04:00

I always look forward to monitoring stations. When you hit the road and spend a few days immersed in a market or even just breaking down a station with an on-line monitor the area that seems to fall short is in the imaging.

All too often we work hard at just keeping it short - so it says nothing and just repeats the calls, name/frequency, and maybe some positioning.

We also tend to make such grand positioning statements. THE best rock!!, All the Hits not just some of them, Today's Hit Music, -- we throw around statements like these and expect the audience to believe them and embrace them mostly because we make sure to say them 14 times every hour.

Of course there is also the BIG production packed with sound effects, movie drops, TV clips, Music hooks, and anything else we can find to layer into the 10 second sweeper. Often these are so packed you can only hear the copy in a production room with the processing set 'just right'.

When you actually break down the message much of the time it's about recycling personalities, selling feature shows, hyping contests, promoting events, and selling that we have more music than others. It's ok to push all these important parts of the station, but does it really SELL THE STATION? Does this really build up any images in the audience's head? Or does it just try and push them around the dayparts? If it's not recycling it's usually making claims that set off the BS meter in much of the audience as quickly as humanly possible.

Think of it like a billboard for a minute. A billboard that just says McDonalds Next Exit will make the sale if I'm hungry on I-75. But, a billboard with a clever phrase or an eye catching picture that leaves a lasting image about McDonalds even if I'm not hungry goes a much longer way to building McDonalds into a real brand.

We don't just need listeners right now. We need them to have great images and feelings for our brand as much as possible to win. You won't get those great images if you don't project them on the air.

The best way is to think in campaigns. Brand building advertising works in series of well crafted messages that communicate the facets of the brand with a creative presentation that catches your ears and eyes. If you approach your imaging this way - with a clear message in mind and stick with it you will be building a real brand.

Now that's worth putting between the songs.

The Old Fashioned Consultant Sell

2009-06-22T14:22:00.000-04:00

As radio really came of age in the 80s one of the keys many sales teams used was 'the Consultant Sell.' The concept was built around the sales people taking more of a role as a marketing advisor than just being a person who sold 60 second spots. Learn as much as you can about the business you are selling to and apply all your marketing knowledge and resources to help them make a name for themselves or ring the cash register. The goal was to become their trusted advisor, on the inside of their marketing plans which would obviously mean more sales for you and the station.

It was really a great idea and when it was well done by a sales person it did move the needle on the sales budget and also worked well for many clients who now had a trusted advisor at a media outlet that reached the whole market at a reasonable cost.

We don't hear much about the 'Consultant Sell' anymore. In fact you don't hear much about this style of selling in any industry anymore. One would think that this is a basic building block of selling anything - learning as much about your customer as possible and then try to fill their needs. The sales person who could fill this role should be in the drivers seat.

I see a couple of reasons the Consultant Sell could have fallen off in Radio:

Too many Corporate mandates. Who has time to hang with the local Auto Supply store or Insurance Agent to find ways to help them build their business. You have 2 sales meetings, a mandated call sheet, a budget session, 5 spots to write/produce and 3 pitch presentations due today.
Not much support. When you have to do all the research, presentations, write your spots, and work with an overstressed promotion department you have to wonder what resources you really have to offer as a marketing consultant to the local business person.

While these reasons may be factors at some stations I suspect the real reason the Consultant Sell isn't used is because it doesn't work anymore. In today's world anyone who can use Google can network on their own to find out all about new marketing techniques and theories. They can stop in on any number of web sites to learn how to use databases, the web, viral video, search engines, ebay, and many more options.

No doubt the web has replaced the sales person in many industries as an expert on their wares. Here in radio we do still have the sales teams - but do they have a role in today's world to relate to the business owners and potential advertisers? Maybe it's time to take the old idea and rebuild it for the New Realities of the digital and new media world.

Product Priorities

2009-06-16T13:39:00.000-04:00

Even though Summer officially begins this weekend and vacations are in the air this is the time for every manager to take a look ahead at the Fall. A year ago we really hit wall in the Fall with the economic downturn becoming a nose dive and for most any plans or priorities were tossed overboard for survival. Hopefully the 'storm' has passed and while it has left some damage to the products to repair this Fall you should be able to start looking at rebuilding the product and at least setting some priorities besides cutting everything you could.

So where do you start?

While the specific needs of your station or group of stations are no doubt unique there are some common areas that I bet everyone can look at as starting points to rebuilding the products. Here are 5 areas I bet would be on your list:

Get an Honest Evaluation: What shape is your product in? Have you lost key people that are affecting the quality? How are your ratings holding up? Has the competition made any progress or have YOU made any progress during the last year riding the storm out
What training and coaching does your product team need as their roles have probably shifted and their time constraints are larger than they were a year ago. Is one of your PDs now handling more stations in the cluster? Are you doing a lot more with fewer staffers and wonder how can they get help to cover all their work and still do a good job?
Production and Imaging: This is a crucial department to not only the product but also to sales and clients. Getting good messages on the air for clients to move product with is the lifeblood and I bet many of you cut back this department. It's also the place where the messages and images for the stations are built. Rebuilding this department could be the fastest return on your investment in the building.
Promotions: Another spot where many cluster had to cut back on. Just like production and imaging this is another spot where clients interact and use the product to move goods and services. It's also a place where a lot of the images for the product are built. Getting it back in shape can return on the investment.
Research: What does the audience think of your product now? How damaging was it to trim out that Mid-day person? Did the promotion cutbacks matter? How about the competition - did they advance? Has their music preferences shifted? Are their feelings about radio as dire as we've been lead to believe? We have lots of questions on the product side and while some of them are not worth answering with a tight budget others are crucial. Many stations have gone years without much perceptual research - it's probably time to get much closer to the audience.
The Web: The web and new media have advanced. In the last year satellite radio has faded and the Ipod has become rather common place - no longer the newest gadget in the bag. Now it's the cell phone and the smart phone - using apps and streaming stations into these devices is the new hot gadget. We also have new smaller computers (the Net Book) and more and more wifi in the world. Between the smart phones and the more wifi world the audience is getting closer to a fully plugged in and portable communication experience. While terrestrial radio has let much of the past web/new media world pass it by this is our opportunity to jump in. No it won't return on the investment now, but in 2-3 years those who move on the options here can expand their distribution to the new media. Remember all the years AM wished it could become FM? Here there is no tower-transmitter-modulation system to limit the conversion. Get out that and stake your claim and build it.

There are plenty of opportunities as the economy improves and business gets back to growing instead of just surviving. This summer is the time to assess the situation and build your plans to get moving this Fall and into 2010.

Wow Cell Phone Households - Big JUMP

2009-05-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

The Center for Disease Control has released a preview of their bi-annual study on Cell Phone Households from the last 1/2 of 2008. Of course it grew again and now over 20% of the households in the country have no land line. Another 14.5% take almost all of their calls on the cell phone despite having a land line.

That's nearly 35% of the country and if you break it down by demos and over the last 6 years it's a pretty amazing graph:

In 18-34s is around 40% - nearly half and at the rate it is growing it will probably hit 50% of this demo before 09 ends. Even when you move to the 45+ cells it's around 15%.

Keep in mind that this study was from last year and with the recession hitting so hard as the year wrapped up no doubt the growth of Cell Phone Only households will pick up even more. Cutting out the 20 or 30 bucks a month to the land line is really pretty painless - gee now I can add the data package and not even notice it.

Aside from the trends in the audience here we also have to realize that this greatly affects our ability to have somewhat accurate audience ratings and research. Connecting with Cell Phones for research is very hard or impossible as we all know seeing the shrinking samples in our audience research. We also have to look at the audience research we do in music tests and perceptual studies. If they are based on telephone samples they are missing at least 20% and probably closer to 40% of the population and in the younger demos it's over 50%.

If you look at the early snippets from the study you can see that the cell phone only world is different on many levels. We'll see more in a few weeks when the whole study is released. You can read the preview here.

A Current Music Slump??

2009-05-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

As we approach the Summer we usually hit the meat of the new songs for the year in Rock. Traditionally there is very little action in November, December and January with signs of life in February and by May we are looking at lots of options and usually there are a few real standouts building to the peak in August to October.

2008 was a banner year when you look at the year end charts. Especially on the Active Rock charts.

On the Center Rock stage we had a long list of fairly established bands and a few new comers. In the top 40 on the year end list you can see Seether, Theory of a Deadman, Buckcherry, Hinder, Finger 11, Nickleback, Saving Abel, Stained and more.

On the Harder Rock side Disturbed, Slipknot, Korn, Drowning Pool and others kept the hard core's attention.

On the 'Heritage' stage Metallica, AC/DC, Guns and Roses, Motley Crue, 3 Doors Down, Apocalyptica and Sixx AM came on with some strong songs or at least releases that the audience seemed eager to hear at first.

So far this year the picking's been a bit dry. The big news is the new Green Day which may be our only ace in the hand. Papa Roach came out late in 08 and is still fairly fresh. Pretty much the rest of the top 20 chart as May gets underway is filled with:

Leftovers from the Big Releases from last year.
Songs that just won't go away even though they have been around 8 months or more.
Songs from big artists that just are not testing or causing much excitement (Pearl Jam/U2)
Brand New artists we really don't know much about yet, Red - Cavo, All That Remains, etc.

Looking over the Alternative charts the story might be a little better with the breakthrough of the Kings of Leon, the return of Silversun Pickups, and Anberlin but a lot of the rest overlaps with the Active Rock charts and suffers from the same issues mentioned above.

Should we be looking at playing less currents? It might be worth the debate when you look at what is out there right now. It could be that all the issues in the record label side have put us in a bit of a drought. This could very well be a Summer that is more focused on CHR Pop and Urban tracks with not a ton of effort for Rock.

It might be time to review your clocks and turnovers so you don't get caught with a set up that's too dependent on strong currents - there may not be enough real 'hits' here to pick from.

Your library and older recurrent cards may be worth more in your music poker hand than those current aces.

Are You Ready For Summer?

2009-04-30T09:19:00.000-04:00

After a tough winter on many levels we are finally seeing the signs of Summer in the Northern Half of the Country and it's time to get your station ready. Often we seem to push Summer off in radio programming. The Summer book (if you have one) is usually not that important for business and the staff is usually taking vacations and laying back.

But, Summer is one of the most important times for the audience and entertainment. Radio has a real chance to shine as TV largely shuts down and our mobile medium has the advantage of being able to move with the audience. As they spend more time outside radio goes with them to the patio, the car, out in the community and even to the beach/pool. This is a time to hustle if you want to build your audience for the Fall.

Here's a quick checklist of areas you can focus on to make your station shine in the Summer:

Festivals and Community Events: Every area has their events of Summer and your station needs to be center stage at as many of them as possible. Don't just show up with the vehicle - make it an on air event somehow. If you look into any event surly there is something you can really get behind. It could be as simple as a dunk tank with local celebs at the local fair, or maybe a raft race at a water fest, setting the fireworks to music, or a rib cook off at the food fair. Twist it and make it unique and you can be the star of the event, but you have to plan ahead to win.
Concerts: There are a lot more of them in Summer and it's time to look at your presence and involvement with the bigger shows.
Music: There is more new music available throughout Summer. Are you clocks and systems up to to the task of introducing more new songs - this can be exciting if the artists are big. You also usually have a few new artists pop up every Summer - are your systems ready to see them bloom? If you are more library driven (and even if you are not look at your library) consider that Summer means FRESH to the audience. The Heat brings a different tempo to them also. Is your music up and hot? Or dull and boring?
Think Mobile: The audience moves around more in the Summer. They spend more time in their cars, get out on the weekends, and get outdoors a lot more. Is your team working this reality into their content, is the energy of the station matching the energy in the audience, and are you working in your imaging and presence to be with them as the get out?
Services: Weather and Traffic take on a whole new world in Summer. It's more likely that the real issues in both shift from Mornings to Afternoon. In the Winter we get snows and school closings and many of the issues revolve around Morning Drive. In the Summer it's thunderstorms and a bit lower traffic in Mornings. For a lot of the service info this changes the whole game - are you ready. Also do you have a full plan for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and other disasters. They are different in Summer - storms can pop up anywhere in Summer, for big snows we usually have some idea what's coming a day or more ahead.
Sports: It's moved outside and now the audience is more likely to be playing more sports also.
Brighten the Station: Enjoy the Sun and have more Fun with the audience. Make the station sound bright and hot every day.

Summer is special - make sure your station is special this Summer. It will pay off in the Fall.

The State Of Classic Rock

2009-04-22T10:48:00.000-04:00

Classic Rock started around 25 years ago as one of the first sub folders of the origional AOR/Rock formats of the 70s. When you go back to the 80s most rock outlets had pretty much the same approach of 40% currents and 60% older songs dating back to the late 60s.

As Classic Rock began to spread many AOR/Rock outlets became pretty defensive on the library side of their music mix. It was a period when AOR was moving from it's dominance of 18-24s to having enough 25-40 year old listeners to start winning the all important 25-54 demo. Of course a format that targeted just the 25-40s at the time was not just a threat to the 12 plus braging rights - this was danger to the bottom line in the sales department. Many a GM and Owner issued the command to either join the format now or be prepared to win when it comes.

By the time we hit the 90s rock radio had undergone a complete transition. Now there were 4 emerging formats (Alternative, Active Rock, Classic Rock and the AOR/Rock as well as a few scattered Adult Alternatives). In many ways the Classic Rock format was the golden one with strong 25-54 shares and the easiest for the sales deparment to work with for clients.

But, where does it stand now? When you look at the music mix most Classic Rock stations focus on rock titles from 1967 to 1988. The average year is 1978 to maybe 1980 - 30 years ago. If you were in High School in 1979 you are now 45 to 48 years old in the last phase of the 25-54 demo. This group made up 2/3rds or more of the 25-54 demo in the 90s and now it's around a 1/3rd.

A decade ago we saw the same situation with the Oldies stations. While many had consistent strong 12+ ranks they had fallen too far down in 25-54s as their audience aged. The format moved from being mostly a 50s and 60s world to a whole new era balance.

The make over for Oldies in most cases forced a whole new position and often a name change. The word 'oldies' meant Elvis to the late 60s to the audience and had to completely evolve. Still the former oldies stations are still challenged in 25-54 and their audience is still aging out of the key demo. They have put a finger in the dike, but the dam is still cracking.

Classic Rock faces the same challenges. For most of the audience the format IS the 70s and 80s. When you try to move beyond Guns and Roses in the late 80s it's tough to convince the P1 audience that this is also Classic Rock.

While there are still good 25-40 shares for many Classic Rockers and we even see good 18-24s once in a while when you get a few in the sample that like to play in mom and dad's record collection the days are numbered. As you break out 25-34s and 35-44s you can see the down trends although they are often offset by the strength of 45-54s.

How will Classic Rock evolve it's music mix to maintain it's 25-54 strength? It's a big question and D-Day is fast approaching.

Local Local Local

2009-04-15T09:54:00.000-04:00

We hear it over and over that the key to success for the radio industry will come from it's local advantage. Local is clearly our trump card as most of the new media is rather national or worldly in scope.

One of the big parts of my travels is monitoring the market. For the 3 or so days the visit lasts the biggest task is absorbing as much of the market as possible. Yet, when boiling down the monitor notes it's surprising that so many stations seem to ignore the local opportunity.

The music list is often the 'national norm', the sweepers/imaging are a collection of stuff stolen from other stations, and jocks all seem to follow the standard patterns in their breaks. The promotions are often copies of contests done elsewhere and even the logo or station brand can be found in many other markets (Jack, the X, Rock 102, Q92, The Fox, etc).

When you do find a station that's embraced the local angle it's usually a long term success. Just look at DVE, RIF, KSHE, and a host of others. These stations are woven into their communities. If you look at the music mix on each of them you'll see some big differences. DVE insists on playing The Clarks, RIF's list is often loaded with Michigan rockers, and if you do any music research in St. Louis you better be prepared to test some classics you've never thought of.

These stations also hit the streets all the time. They don't just show up at a festival in the summer with a booth - they create events that often make the festival a much bigger hit. They don't miss a concert or a hot local sports team. Their jocks talk about the community, know the streets, and are in touch with what the local audience is thinking about.

It's not just covering a few local stories in the news or in the weather and traffic, it's a beat that's underneath the whole station. Every market has a 'personality.' You go to Springfield IL and you eat horseshoe sandwiches, Milwaukee it's brats and cheese. Every city has a street culture that's unique, even in the smaller cities.

In some cases the great local stations have MADE events and traditions in the city. The EBN Fireworks, the Philly MMR Cardboard Classic, and The Bear's Howler Halloween party in Edmonton.

Some blame the corporate radio conglomerates, but DVE is Clear Channel, KQRS is Citadel, and FBQ is also Clear Channel.

It also doesn't take a ton of money to become woven into your community. It does take careful planning, creativity, and a huge effort from the whole staff. Even if you are running with a syndicated morning show and just 2 jocks you can still build a huge local presence. After all you have a big tower that talks to the whole community.

All you have to do is use it.

Getting the Staff Prepared Every Day

2009-04-09T10:17:00.000-04:00

Formatic radio often ends up being very robotic. We follow the same clocks day after day with the same 300 (or less) songs rotating around and read the same liners over and over.

So what's to prepare for?

Everyday is not the same for our audience and also every day is not the same for the station.

These 2 points need to be at the center of every show every day.

What's important to the audience: It might be the economy, Cramer was on The Daily Show, baseball started, the final 4, hockey playoffs or maybe the news that Metallica is coming to town. It could also be that construction has started on the big freeway or any number of local issues that affect their lives.

What's important to the station: It could be very different from what's important to the audience. The station may be having a big night to cap off the final 4 promotion at a local club. You might be announcing that Harley giveaway for the Spring book. The morning show may have pranked George Clooney.

As you can see the 2 points are very different, but just as important when the air team hits the studio for their shows.

Make sure they all know the 2 priorities and learn to build them into their shows. It can make the difference from a station that just spinning the hits to one that is woven into their audience.

Radio's Outdated Research Systems

2009-03-31T09:37:00.000-04:00

We really don't have any index or measure of how many stations are doing any 'formal' audience research, but it's probably a safe bet that few are. The days of doing an annual perceptual study and a full auditorium library test are most likely fading, or in many markets completely gone. No doubt the economic slump isn't allowing the 'luxury' of gathering the audience's impressions of our products. Clear Channel used to have a division (Critical Mass) with hundreds of people devoted to perceptual, call out and telephone marketing, now it's pretty much dismantled. No doubt many in the top 50 markets are flying without any 'radar' looking out at the audience and gathering their impressions, preferences, and the reasons why they listen.

Perhaps with all the data we have from PPM what do we really need research for anymore? With PPM the game has changed from a recall strategy. Now we actually see what the sample listens to minute by minute every day without any recall on their part. We can see when they tune out and trace back to see why? But, do we really know? Did they leave because they hated the song or jock? Or did they have to go to work and leave the car? Did they pick up the kids and they flipped on another station?

While we can finally see an accurate picture of what they listen to we really don't know why they listen, or why they don't. We used to get some of the picture from perceptual and music testing, but we also had to tailor our research to the reality (from the past) that the audience had to recall their listening - not have it measured automatically. Before we often won if the audience just remembered our call letters, frequency or slogan - now they actually have to listen for it to count.

For many stations the perceptual and music testing has been taken over by the station's database. The folks who are big enough fans to visit the web site, bother to sign up for another database, and wait for their mailbox to fill up with our newsletters. We can test our music with them, ask a few usage questions, and maybe even find out who they think will win American Idol. But, these little bites of data we get from a small universe of very dedicated P1s is a very distorted picture of market and the audience. We really can't see the much larger P2 groups or fans of other stations that could also be users of our product. No doubt the low cost of doing music testing and asking a few questions of the super P1s in your database is worth it, but we have to realize it's not a very complete picture.

The advent of PPM, the changes in the way the world communicates, and the economic realities are all combining, making the old styles of research outdated and ineffective.

Spending 50K (or more) on a perceptual study that only reaches the households that will bother to answer the phone and hang with a 25 minute questionnaire are gone. While we used to justify using the telephone with 'that's the way Arbitron does it' it doesn't work anymore. Even Arbitron is trying to use address based samples to gather the sample and in PPM they pretty much keep the same panel for up to 18 months.

Not only do we lack the budget in today's world - is the data still giving us an useful picture?

In PPM we are now looking more at behavior - not recall. To be effective we actually have to understand how they behave, not just what they remember or what we've drilled into their brains. But, we've pretty much quit asking the questions in an organized and strategic format. And it's happening at a time when we have a complete overhaul going on in the media landscape. This is like shutting down all the weather monitoring systems in Oklahoma in February for 8 months - we'll just keep looking out the window for those pesky tornadoes.

It's time to get our heads out of the sand and start listening to the audience again, but we also need a new model. The perceptual studies from the 70s/80s are too slow, cumbersome and expensive in today's world. On top of that we are still asking lots of questions that date back to the recall days of measurement.

It's time for innovation in research, but is anyone working on it?

Rock and PPM

2009-03-11T10:05:00.001-04:00

With the news of K Rock in New York flipping to CHR from Rock there are some interesting questions on the format in general.

K Rock launched 2 years ago as the news out of Philly's early days with PPM that Rock formats look to be gaining from the change in measurement systems. The early graphs comparing the data clearly showed in Philly and Houston that rock radio's shares were a lot higher. Back in the Fall of 06 both WMMR and WMGK in Philly were up over 70%.

The thought was that with a broader panel that was in place for longer runs and able to be more 'controlled' for demo spread and the move to the meter, which didn't require writing it down or remembering listening would benefit rock. Philly added a rock outlet and suddenly New York was back into rock with 2 stations added to the format.

In the end PPM's benefits for rock may have cooled, but the reality here just may be that K Rock didn't do a very good job in launching the station and flat out failed. Some of the likely reasons:

Morning show - Oppie and Anthony may have had some interest in NYC, but it clearly wasn't enough. They may have had a chance to really establish themselves if they had been able to build on their gains leading up to the Sex for Sam bit that pushed them off the air. But, the years waiting to come back and the dominance of Howard took much of that avenue away.
Music Image - In the end a lot of the station rode on O and A and tried to keep what audience they had to hang in there. The problem is that O and A hurt any chance to develop a music image for KRock.
Music Strategy - What was it? They played everything from Classic Rock stuff like Heart to the latest from harder rock bands like Shinedown. Really they only played 1 current an hour for the most part and tried to wander to Alternative, some pop Active Rock acts, and a bunch of Classic Rock all mixed in. With another Classic Rock in the market and now a 'Adult Alternative' what did K Rock really stand for? They could have been a more pure Alternative or Active rock and focused on the 18-40 audience but they took a broad approach and tried to cross cume with the Classic Rock and probably also reacted to the launch of the Adult Alternative. The launch with the K Rock Los Angeles team sort of 'passing on the playlist' and then a number of shifts as they PDs left the station. The air staff also wandered around. Really the only constant here was O and A with a wandering approach in all the other dayparts.

KRock could have taken advantage of the gains PPM has to offer (by fairly sampling 18-49 Men) if they had followed some basic rules to making a great rock station:

BE LOCAL - This rings true more so in rock than any other format. KROQ in LA is a very unique product that is tailor made for LA. WDVE is different from most other heritage Classic Rock leaning stations - completely customized for Pittsburgh. We could go on and on here. You have to reflect your community in rock more than any other format. This is really a street format and you have to come from the streets to build it. Having an British guy in afternoons and a playlist mostly from LA to launch with really hurt here.
ESTABLISH A MUSIC POSITION - There was plenty of room to come on and be the loudest, proudest and in you face rock station in NYC. It was obvious and last year was a great year for this approach musically.
A MORNING SHOW THE REST OF THE STATION CAN KEEP UP WITH - Not that O and A overshadowed the station by that much - but they made every day about them - not the station. Also going with a Syndicated product that was in pressure for many markets as well as their XM deal really made O and A NOT a part of K ROCK. They were from another planet beaming it into the biggest market in the country. At least Howard earned a huge NYC audience before attempting to branch out.
MORE THAN BILLBOARDS - Yes they had lots of them, but building a rock community in NYC would have been a lot more valuable. Building the club and concert scene, getting your team out in the streets, and making the station musically special on a regular basis would have helped build more than just some rock cume passing through.

When you look at WAXQ (Classic Rock) on paper or through the speakers the playlist is very New York driven and the air talent has a long history in rock in the area. This station has worked the streets for a long time and is first in mind for rock music as it was the only outlet to count on for much of the last decade. They were hovering around a 3 share in the old diary system - now they are a full share stronger in the 4s. As K Rock leaves they will likely go higher.

There are great opportunities for Rock formats with PPM. The audience is at a very strong point right now. But, you have to do the homework and hit the street. This is not a plug and play format.

Pumping Up RADIO

2009-03-02T16:32:00.000-05:00

As we watch another exciting plunge in the stock market and more reports on radio's economic picture for 08 and the first months of 09 - the news looks worse every day. Here are a couple of thoughts that might help:

A Message for ALL:

Here's a thought - think of all the commercials we ran for HD radio. In the Nielsen most played commercials 'charts' the HD campaign was in the top 3 for much of 08. How about launching a new campaign across all formats and stations that goes like this:

Hi this is your radio. Yes I've been around a long time with music, news, sports, weather, traffic and witty comments here and there. But if you look deeper you'll learn that radio can really help this economy and our community get out of these tough times. Radio gets advertising messages out to 94% of our community and the whole nation every week. The retailers of our area can get the word out on their products and get this economy moving again for very reasonable costs. Radio is also easy to use - a few creative words and your good to go. The message efficiently reaches our market area. Radio - a part of your community, living here, working here, playing here and striving to make our area a better place.

Of course a professional copy creator could probably do a better job, but our industry could turn this tough economy into a turning point for Terrestrial Radio with a well crafted message like this. I know we didn't do a great job of selling HD radio, but this is a basic message we could sell to our audience and clients. And the good news - it's true.

Bright Spots in the Economy Dust Storm:

There are some business and retail segments that are growing in this downtrend. I gathered these from a bunch of stories from USA Today, CNN, CNBC, Yahoo and MSNBC:

Movies: The box office for 08 was off around 5% but for the first 2 months of 09 it's up 15%. Just like in the depression when the movie industry became a big industry. Escaping the reality is worth a price.

Fast Food: Just about everyone is improving - especially McDonalds and Subway.

Wal-Mart - Discount Stores: We're looking for bargains.

Cell Phones - There's still growth left and lots of 'turf wars' over subscribers. Give up your land line? Why Not. Turn in your Cell Phone? Are you crazy?

Used Cars - January was a strong showing for Used Car sales. Maybe we can't go for the new cars, but that 05 Mustang looks pretty good. Car dealers often make as much or more on their used inventory.

Financial Services - From Tax prep firms, to credit assistance, to bankruptcy assistance. It's a time for these services to grow.

College and Trade Schools: Plenty of people who could use new skills and now with college tax credits, more loans and some layoff packages offering re-training the local colleges are running at full throttle.

Home Style Cookin: Restaurants that are off the beaten path and offer 'comfort food' are gaining more customers. Good news these are often local advertisers.

Bars, Beer and liquor stores: Biz is up here - we can guess why.

Video Games: Activision and EA games had record profits in 08 and were some of the best gaining stocks in January. Game Stop is opening 300 or more stores this year!!!

Little Luxuries: Flowers.com did a huge number this Valentines day. So did Pajama Gram and Vermont Teddy Bears, with a lot of it from their radio campaigns. Many higher end restaurants also did well. We'll spend the money for love.

Banks: They need to restore their trust in the community and get funds flowing into them. They need to market.

You can bet there are more business segments that will gain in this down time. If you have any stories pass them on.

Rebuilding Radio's Advertising Potential

2009-02-04T09:40:00.000-05:00

After signing up for a daily Ad Age newsletter I started getting the weekly Ad Age magazine for some promotional reason. Was roaming through it over breakfast this morning for their Super Bowl wrap up coverage, which was very interesting.

One thing stood out - Full Page ads for both Val Pak and Newspapers posted above (sorry they didn't all scan in, but you get the picture here).

We have 2 older type advertising media here. The Cox owned Val Pak direct mail service, which Cox is trying to sell along with a few newspapers. And one from the Newspaper Project, an industry alliance to help their cause.

2 media that are way behind radio in reaching the masses. While Val Pak is in many markets they don't have full coverage and still rely on the mail box - a tough delivery system. Newspapers are falling in their reach and while they claim 100 million readers here - radio reaches over 230 million people 12 plus in a week according to the latest Arbitron estimates (mostly done with diaries - imagine what it will be with PPM in the top 30 markets).

Looking at a number of Ad Age issues I only caught 3 radio ads or campaigns in the last 6 months. 1 came from SBS - Spanish Broadcasting - with a small ad in a special Hispanic section Ad Age did. Another came from Entercom who ran a very nice full page ad that explained their properties and reach. The only RAB ad was for their 'radio coverage' of the Ad Week convention last September. It didn't talk about radio or any of our advantages, just that they had some kind of radio system set up to deliver podcasts and to broadcast live updates at the convention. Gee - that really helps sell the media, we can talk about the latest Google marketing system or maybe cover the conference on the latest way to reach people on the web.

While Ad Age may not be the best vehicle to promote our potential to market stuff to our huge audience what kind of effort are we really making here? It's one thing to offer lots of sales training and come up with a few buttons that say Radio Heard Here. It's another to rebuild the image of Radio as a media that reaches nearly the whole country on a local level with very affordable programs.

We need to 'fly the flag' a lot more for our industry. If you look through Ad Age's articles only one showed up on some form of radio - Did Mel Pay Too Much For Howard. Even Ad Age seems to have forgotten all about our Cinderella story. Maybe it's time to hitch up the pumpkin coach, get all dressed up and hit the ball. I bet if we spent just 1/2 of the money spent in Washington trying to push for more consolidation on some public relations and selling our advantages we could have weathered this storm a lot better. Radio could have the image as an efficient, huge reach, and economical way to market products. Just the tool to un-freeze the customer without killing your budget.

Making a Syndicated Show Local

2009-01-29T09:24:00.000-05:00

I think it's pretty obvious that the key to Radio's success and future lies in being Local and having strong ties to your local audience and community. It's our BIG ADVANTAGE in the whole new media world that is very 'national and international' in its scope.

We also see some big advantages in using Syndicated shows. When you look at the debate in using a show like Bob and Tom in mornings the advantages usually outweigh everything. Say it costs you 110K in market 120 to have the show. If you tried to build a local show for 120K you would have to be very lucky to find 2 or 3 people who could even mount a very basic show for that price. You wouldn't have the parade of comedians, stars, and the well timed humor of a veteran crew like Bob and Tom. In many cases Bob and Tom outperform the rest of the station and add 20% or more to the overall shares and usually win (or come close) in 25-54s. It takes a big local show to beat them.

But, they can be beat with a local show. A show that hits the streets, covers the local scene and preps with a vengeance can zip right past them. Having worked on both sides of this street we've learned a few 'tricks':

Working With A Syndicated Show: No matter if it's B/T or Alice Cooper or any one of the other shows the key is making it a real part of the the station. Don't just aim the satellite dish, program the digital studio and sit back. Make the show as local as possible with tons of recycling, custom inserts in the show, special imaging (including lots cut by the show''s stars) in the breaks and make sure to use the show in as may promotions as you can. Don't just give away a Harley - make it the Bob and Tom Harley and tie them in someway on the air. Weave the show into the WHOLE day and on the flip side weave your station into their show as much as you possibly can.
Beating a Syndicated Show: Make your show as local as possible and make it as great as possible. Remember you are going up against great talent - average talent doesn't get syndicated. Your team has to know the audience inside and out, know the community, and be super prepared every morning. It takes lots of coaching, good talent in the room and a non stop effort in the streets. You also need to package the show well, build a strong web interactive presence and make every show noteworthy/special.

Yes they are simple steps, but so many times when look at the stations who don't win in either scenario they either thought that B/T would save the day all by themselves. Or on the other side that just having a bit of local flavor would put their weak show on top.

In the end it takes dedication and tons of hard work to make a show work today. Especially in Mornings the field is often crowded. And in today's tight belted world finding the resources to make a show into a winner is a challenge. But, it can be done.

Views on the New Year In Radio

2009-01-20T09:23:00.000-05:00

Of course we face many challenges as 09 starts off with a deep freeze here in the North. It seems as if the whole world is frozen with an economy that seems so confusing and desperate that everyone and everything has come to a stand still. No doubt it will thaw out, but we are the only ones who can warm the climate here.

On to some notes from the first few weeks of events and news in Radio:

The mass layoffs at Clear Channel and other groups is tough to watch. Having worked for CC they gave up some very talented people from the programming side and no doubt also left some productive sales people on the street. But, did they do much trimming in their corporate accounting and legal teams? I bet not.

Even though these jobs don't really produce the product or make revenue from it I bet there are still people counting every penny 3 times and lawyers reviewing every contract and dragging things out. I remember when CC took over the AM/FM world and most of the business managers were rather stunned at the corporate oversight. Nothing happened without a long list of approvals and seemed out of control on the local level. OK, so times are tough and cuts were needed. Was it the best move to cut programming even further (it was already past the bone) and now to cut out sales people? Could a few productive people have been spared by only counting the pennies 2 times?

While we can question the cuts the reality is - it's time to remake our business. It's time to get hungry again and re-invent our programming and our sales systems for a new world that is already here and passing us by.

PPM has now spread it's wings to Canada with the first release of the Fall ratings in Montreal. The rest of the bigger markets in Canada will adopt the system over the next 2 years. There are some differences as they have set the meters to measure it minute by minute and they print out the Cume by both the Average Daily Cume and the Cume for the whole survey. It was interesting to see that Cumulative Cume number - the top 3 stations reached over 3 million people in a market of 3.3 million, 4 more stations reached over 2.5 million!!! Wow you could reach nearly the whole market by just buying 1 station if you ran the message for 13 weeks. Don't know any other media where you can accomplish that.

PBS - Make Em Laugh should be must see TV for your air staff. This is a complete history of comedy from all angles. Billy Crystal and Amy Sedaris host the show and gives your air staff a big picture look at what makes comedy work. All the styles from shocking to physical prat falls are showcased with a complete history of all the greats in each style. If you're going to entertain an audience you need to study the craft and this is a great resource.

Music Thoughts for 09: In 08 we had a good year in rock with veterans like AC/DC, Metallica, Guns n' Roses, and Motley Crue adding to an already strong line up of more current bands like 3 Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, and many more. The year starts off with U2 returning and perhaps a Pearl Jam and STP CD later in the year. It doesn't look as promising as 09 did, but you never know.

A Programming Thought For the New Year: Radio has been all about the format for a very long time. I don't mean being Rock or CHR or AC - I mean our programming structure on the air hour after hour. It's the same clocks and rotations nearly every day. 10 in a Row every hour with breaks :40 and :50 or some other robotic plan. The same rotation system day after day to the point where we have to trick the software so everyone doesn't know what A is next in the stack. Why can't every day be unique, surprising and a little different? It's time to get creative - anyone with a computer can duplicate robotic-formatic radio. In any research we do the biggest audience complaint is repetition and while they often cite the music a little probing also shows they mean the formatics that rule every hour over and over. For your brand to stand out and be a leader you have to lead them somewhere. Let's quit being robots and start being outgoing - creative humans again.

The 00 Decade

2008-12-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!!! We're into 2009 this week and the last year of the first decade of the new century. We've been defining the decades for a long time. It probably started with the Roaring 20s and picked up steam in the 60s and 70s. The revolution of the 60s and the wild days of the 70s, the conservative and yuppieness of the 80s and the digital 90s decade all had 'themes' that defined the trends in our culture.

These themes all have had a lot of influence on our music and entertainment choices as well as evolving new media. The 60s brought on the maturity of network TV, pop music super stars with music as a revolution messenger, and the top 40 format, the 70s saw the beginning of Cable TV, the evolution of FM radio and a continued growth of the music industry into the Super Groups. The 80s conservatism re-established Pop music trends, saw cable TV evolve to a new norm, and FM radio grew to the dominate music platform. The 90s brought in the digital revolution which evolved over the decade finishing with a wealth of new WWW based media on a platform that was a government project at the start of the decade.

The 00's or Ought decade or maybe the twenty-ohs is nearing an end and Jonah Goldberg from the National Review Online (and CNN) makes some interesting observations in this article.

Goldberg's observation's on the 00 decade being one of self centered-ness maybe best illustrated on the factoid from the 90s that bottled water consumption passed beer in the decade. Goldberg notes - Beer gets the party started. Water is the thirst quencher of choice for the solitary fitness addict,. Beer the outgoing social drink - passed by bottled water and it's inner driven world.

He also notes that the Ipod follows a similar trend - the personalization of music and entertainment generally. An inner driven world where music is personalized - not shared or experienced in a community like a live performance or a radio station where we all hear it at the same time. He goes on to point out the IPod culture, is a mix of self-promotion and atomization: broadcast yourself, indeed.

Yet at the end of this decade perhaps we are seeing a big clue that the tide is turning away from this me driven, self absorbed, over personalized and customized world of the 00s.

A key clearly stood out in the election - Change was the KEY mantra and turning out in big crowds and joining in a huge community voter turnout were the clear signs. From a world revolving around the solitary keyboard and monitor to communities filled with real people and personalities. A movement from individualistic concerns to UNITY. A movement away from 'greed is good' to a far more social and sharing society? The signs are starting to show up on a very regular basis.

This could be a great movement for radio to re-invent itself upon. Don't you think????

Hope you had a great holiday and are ready for the evolution that starts in 2009.

Opportunities for Radio- The Wrap

2008-12-17T12:31:00.000-05:00

Looking back on the 4 opportunities for radio that we've covered in the last few weeks I bet you can't believe they are SO SIMPLE. Outside of building our brands into the web and embracing new distribution channels most of the opportunities here lie in getting back to the basics of our products.

Focusing on our LOCAL presence, being special and creative, and refocusing our sales effort to be effective with the new competition are ingredients we've all used over and over. Yet, the only plan we seem to see right now is cut costs in every direction, and many of the cuts are no doubt going to hinder efforts in these basic opportunities.

Yes keeping or re-building local presence means keeping people in the building on the air and in the streets. Being special and creative also means having the staff to create and execute. Refocusing the sales effort will also take time, good sales folks and a well crafted plan. While there are not many low or no cost solutions here I bet most of you could build a plan and find a way to make it work even in the present tight times.

If there ever was a time to pull it off - it's NOW. With the economy in a holding pattern and so many advertisers rethinking their whole approach Radio has a golden opportunity to come out of the down cycle with a big rush.

No doubt advertisers will be looking for low cost opportunities to get their business' flowing again. Radio to the rescue with huge reach, low costs and so many opportunities to get images and messages to the consumers.

Our biggest problem is that our image is tattered with many advertisers. We are not the new 'sexy' media. But, we are the affordable, big reach, still local, and we can be as creative with the message as well as any other media. That is the message we need to get out there right now. But we need to start building a focused plan on both the local and national level.

Yes we are the underdog in many ways, but just like so many success stories where the underdog pulls out a big win we need to set the table for our wild card team to bring home the winning run. That takes a plan and the team to execute it.

Opportunity #4 - Sales Make Over

2008-12-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

While there are a lot of opportunities for product rebirth in the past 3 pieces of this series I sense that seeking out new opportunities in sales may have the most potential. Having said that I'm not a sales department expert. Yes, I've worked with some talented sales people and managers and seen both success and disappointment. I've also been in on many a budget session as the sales leadership laid out their plans and reviewed that past year.

From my 'outside the box' perspective I see a lot of potential for the sales teams to really ramp it up and improve.

Radio HAS reach: Just this past week Arbitron released their Radar report showing that Radio reaches 234 Million people 12+ and older in the average week. That's up from 232 last year. In the younger cells - teens radio reaches 90% and with 18-34s it's 92%. Can you find a web site (outside of Google - maybe) that reaches that many people? If you want to get your message or product in front of 92% of the population at a reasonable cost you just can't beat radio. More and more big products are figuring it out - Walmart has finally recognized it, Geico, a bunch more. Hershey recently admitted that it's strong 3rd quarter came from using radio more in their marketing. You see people jumping over web sites that have 100,000 people hitting them in a week - so what, when you compare that to radio its peashooter territory.
Radio IS Local: For the retailers and services in your area Radio reaches them better than any other media.
Radio is a bargain: When you look at the prices we have for the reach it can't be beat.
Radio is proven: If we look at all the success radio has brought in the post WWII marketing period there's no doubt the media works.

These are just the top 4 reasons, but do the sales teams of today really understand these clear and simple advantages? Or are they caught up in endless data crunching for CPMs, rankings, and market shares? Are they watching other weaker and less reaching media walk in and steal away business with products and web gimmicks that are clearly not proven?

I often wonder if the sales teams of today know who the competition is? Do they understand Google Ad Words and how they are used? Do they see opportunities in spreading clients media to both the web site and the station? Do they know what the web metrics are and what are the most popular sites selling space in your area? I can remember the sales teams of the past having 3 day sessions on selling against the Yellow Pages or Newspapers in the 80s? Do we have anyone helping build the case for radio over the web today?

Radio could hold the KEY for many business' to getting out of this recession. Face it much of the problem we have with the economy is that the consumer is spooked. The crash of housing, credit/banking/investment, and the market damage from all that has everyone frozen. Discretionary income has just about dried up all over the country - if we don't need it we aren't going to buy it till we see some signs that the storm is over. It's going to take marketing for most of the business' to get the motor going again and we have great advantages with our huge reach, lower costs, quickness in creativity, and local market coverage.

Now is the time to train and build the sales troops for the opportunity ahead. The storm we are in will pass and it's a golden time for radio to come out roaring again. Hopefully we'll have enough creativity left on the product team, but we're also counting on having a sales team that's ready to play in the new world of media and marketing. If you're a manager or sales leader it can be your time to hit the weight room and train for the new season ahead - this could be your year. Great teams are made in the offseason and shine in the real season - this is clearly the off season.

It would help if our industry would ban together and really make the story for radio. Yes we have the Radio - It's On campaign. Forget the slogans - how about getting out the FACTS. Maybe a campaign in Advertising Age, maybe using the web ourselves to market ourselves. How about dropping all those HD radio spots (for the wasteland it is) and just spend the time and effort talking about radio and the power of it's audience? The RAB and the NAB need to step it up NOW. There's a lot more to do than hang around Washington and lobby.

Next week I'll conclude the Opportunities Ahead segment - looking forward to the holidays and hope your's are happy ones.