The Last 8 Years In Rock Listening Trends

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.

Secrets of TSL

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.   

At Work Listening

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:

1. A lot more Media to Choose from at work. You all know the list of new media suspects here.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Wow Cell Phone Households - Big JUMP

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. 

Heard Here, New Ratings System?, and Bob

3 pieces of news stood out for broadcasters this week:

1. Cumulus decides to give Arbitron notice that their stations in markets outside of the top 100 will be looking for a new ratings service. They open the floor for bids that would provide a service that seems mostly concerned with getting sample sizes that would be a lot more reliable than the Arbitron model.

While it's a great idea and I looking over their request for ratings proposals its filled with lavish 'dreams' of what medium and smaller market reports could look like. Plenty of qualitative data, healthy sample sizes and the potential of avoiding recall methods (like telephone surveys and diaries use).

We saw the same show 4 years ago when Clear Channel put out a similar request and what happened. Nothing. In fact if just faded away with a few inches of coverage in the trades.

What will happen here? Unless someone steps up with a cheaper version of PPM and can somehow find a way to build a panel that includes the cell phone only world probably nothing.

There are potential systems and vendors out there that could make a run here. But, can a system be developed for the smaller markets that is profitable? It's going to take more investment to build a data collection system and healthy panels. Will medium and smaller market broadcasters be willing to pay the freight?

When you look at the way most stations use the ratings data outside of the top 100 markets I wonder if most would say - who cares. These markets are out pacing the bigger cities in revenue growth because they are built on local direct advertising and don't live in the agency driven, cost per point, and try anything on the Internet world in the bigger markets.

Still, I hope we end up with something here. At least some pressure on Arbitron to do something. The world where we have PPM in the top 50 markets and a system of diaries and weak samples in the rest of the world will only make ratings worthless outside of the PPM markets will end up hurting in the long run. More and more we are seeing national chains moving their boxes and restaurants into the smaller markets and to get them you will need some proof of your audience.
2. The Spring NAB in Vegas launches RADIO HEARD HERE. It's great to see the NAB doing something positive to unite radio. Don't know if this creative will cut through with the rather retro looking logo and the viral video pieces are rather long, boring and don't talk to the audience. We do need to communicate our real value with our huge reach, ease to develop a message and our power to build your brand in a controlled market and this campaign will help. Frankly I think we'd be better off shelving all the HD spots and spend our resources here for now.

3. Bob Pittman speaks at NAB. Look at these highlights from his address:

Radio is mobile, it’s easy to use, it has a lot of choice,” Pittman said.
Repeating comments we’d heard him use previously when talking about new
media, he said what makes a great consumer business is convenience and brand
– and “radio wins on both counts.” The one-time radio programmer noted, “I
think there are probably no better brand builders in the world than radio
programmers.” Despite all of the hype about the Internet replacing
broadcasting, Pittman, who is currently an investor in radio and TV groups
as well as new media, insisted “the Internet is not television or radio.”
People still turn to broadcasting for entertainment, while they use the
Internet to manage their lives.

Bob's always made a lot of sense when he speaks and it sounds like his address in Vegas was true to form. Thanks Bob.

Radio's Real Advantages Go Ignored

Sometimes in our effort to 'keep up' with all the new technology and the 'cool of new' we forget a lot of the real advantages our media has.

Radio is simple to operate. For the most part you turn it on, simply adjust the volume and select the station from your favorites already punched in. No need to download anything, remember complicated web addresses, or try typing words on the numeric keyboard.

It's portable. You can take it anywhere and get solid reception for the most part. The radios are as small as I Pods or big as a wall - take your pick.

Quality. Compared to the small speakers in a laptop or always using earbuds the quality is really much better than most streams and reception is really more reliable.

We know the technology. A 5 year old can work the average car radio with little instruction. Even the 60 year old computer novice can easily get the radio to work.

There's a long ways to go to get WiFi everywhere and reliable. Look at cell phones where they have been trying to get a reliable network up for over 20 years. They still struggle, as we've all experienced, and still have one of their big advertising points around reception. What do you think it will take to WiFi the world? It could go even slower. We don't have the frequency bandwidth to auction off that we used to.

In the end perhaps radio's problem with the image we have now with the younger audience and with clients of not being 'cutting edge', or 'hip' lies in our presentation both on the air and on the streets.

On the air we haven't really evolved much - the same tactics, formats, and imaging styles have been around for decades. The look of the new radios isn't much to marvel at either - this is one of the big keys in the failure of HD radio to catch on. You don't see much new in radios, like more display screens for the RDS data. How about a system to send pictures and more data on the RDS system - just having a few text lines is very limited. While we can't push the set makers much we can work with the on-air sound and start exploring new imaging, formatics, music rotations, personalities, and promotion tactics.

On the client side radio seems to be trying to do some Internet integration into the packages and maybe a few new power point tricks in the presentations, but is that our real advantage? No doubt we need to integrate the power of our brand into the Internet, but it might be more important to sell our real advantage. That is the large reach we still have. Radio reaches over 90% of the market and it covers a specific territory. A local business or location can rely on radio to deliver an audience that is within the reach of the store or stores. Not in Russia. Is there a great website that reaches that much of the market where you can advertise on? Maybe the Google start page, but the only thing on it is their logo and the blank box to search with.

It's also a big audience. PPM has pretty much proven that you can take your CUME audience and double it for a conservative estimate of the real reach of your station. For most that's a big number. Perhaps we need a new number here - instead of the CPP or CPM how about CPC (Cost Per Cume). Take a market like Madison WI where the top cuming station is around 90,000 in Arbitron without PPM - the number in PPM is probably closer to 200,000. That's nearly half of the 1/2 million that live in the metro. Even at $200 a spot the cost per Cumer is $.00125. Now that's pretty cheap - probably less than any Google Adword that hits that many people in your market.

I know selling with CUME is probably harder than doing our pitches in Latin, but CUME will be evolving to the be the new advantage of radio and perhaps the new currency of selling tactics. It's going to take re-trainng the buyers, clients, and most importantly the sales teams. Cume is going to be our new friend and we need to learn how to use it in sales.

We have a lot going for us in this new era, but we need to get our confidence back and make the most of our positive points as we also explore ways to work with the new media opportunities. Right now our industry looks like we are surrendering and whining towards depression. Let's get our head out of the sand and realize that we're still above ground. Let's vow to make radio about the future not the past.

The Random Sample - No Longer Random or Accurate

For years in research we have relied on the "Random Sample." It's the core of statistical based research that relies on a sample instead of a census. We all know the theory that in a world of limited options we only have to talk to sampling of the population to get a confident estimate of their behavior.

When the Telephone came along sampling became easier. Suddenly research became pretty simple. Get a phone bank together and get a list of the telephone numbers in the community then put together a random formula to grab the names and call away. At first it was easy as everyone had a phone, very few had private or unlisted numbers, answering machines were rather complicated new fangaled equipment and caller ID wasn't available.

Now we are in a world where the land line phone is a relic. Over the last 20 years the database has become torn apart by more and more unlisted numbers, don't call lists, over tele-marketing, caller ID, answering machines, and the biggest issue THE CELL PHONE. So where do we go from here in research?

Perhaps the first realization we need to make is that a simple random sample is really no longer available. In most of our research we stratify the sample in some manner, perhaps making sure we hit a sample goals. In Arbitron we have ethnic groups, population distribution across the market and demographic groups involved in various sample goals. In our radio product research we also limit ourselves to target audiences and P1 preferences based on the goals of the project.

So why are we still clinging to the idea that we need to have a random sample in research for it to be accurate? What we are really doing in nearly all reserach today is building panels. Groups of respondents that fit some picture of the world we are looking at - realizing we can't see the whole picture on any subject in today's world.

I bring all of this up because we need to start looking at a different model for our panels. It will have to start with Arbitron which is still clinging to the old land line phone database.

Now Arbitron hopes to get a little wider view from the shrinking land line phone view from going back to home address based databases in combo with the land line database. By comparing the 2 they can find out who are the cell phone onlies and try to get them into the panel by going around the phone.

The problem here is that while we all probably have a mail box it also suffers from many of the same problems we have in using the telephone. We screen the mail closely and quickly sort non important items and Email competes with the mail box for a lot of communication needs.

We're going to have to reach out and build a complete database and it's going to take more than an outdated phone and address list. We need to communicate with the audience and the sample on the internet - it's their new community and finding sampling tools here needs to be explored quickly. It's a fast moving world and unless Arbitron starts to experiment here and move a lot quicker we will continue to live in the past with the audience estimates we sell with.

There are many experiments to tackle including building panels using email, text messages, social networks, and reward based incentives. Yet, we seem to find the radio research community looking at the web options with an evil doubting eye. Look at Neilsen's web site research where they are purely soliciting the panel online. You apply to join up and are rewarded if chosen to put a collector on you browser to relay your activity back to Neilsen for their data. In their TV research they gather the panel by door to door solicitations, the phone and via email. And once you are in the panel you stay for years much like PPM.

How about building a big panel that we pick from for the diary system that will still be in place for 150 to 200 markets for at least the next 5-10 years. If we had a nicely proportioned panel of 10,000 in many of the markets where we have 1000 diaries in a report we could draw from that sample and suddenly it would be easy to find enough males or Hispanics or 25-34s. We have a group that knows how to complete the survey, is better compensated (since we don't have to go to all the expense of random dialing through the whole database), and reliable to respond. A lot better answer than striving for a Random Sample in a world where no sample is random any more.

Imaging - We Need New Tricks

Looking over the PPM data we get a real picture of how the audience uses our programming. We can see exactly when they tune out and in and with a little reconstruction we can see what was on the air when they left.

What the early data analysis is showing is that the 'trigger finger' is quicker than we may have imagined. They mostly come for the music and when we spend too much time away from it they leave. After you've spent hours and hours pouring over the data the most obvious reaction is DUH!!!

The first reaction by some programmers has been to cut it all down. Limit the jock breaks at all costs and cut the imaging down to the smallest level possible.

No doubt we needed a big hair cut in imaging. Look at the long winded morning show recyclying promos with a 40 second bit (or longer) and plenty of set up around it. Or take the contest where you listen for the secret song, which will be announced by Jimmy and Debbie at 7:35 every weekday morning and then listen all day for the song with special clues at 9-2 and 5 only on WXXX the best of the 70s 80s and 90s. Did we really think anyone with a life was going to play the contest? Or how about the music promos with long music clips in them and spiced up with clips from movies only a Blockbuster employee knows.

Also look at our imaging plan for most hours. EVERYTHING has imaging around it. It's between every song, sometimes in the middle of the spots and of course on both sides of the spot break. There are more imaging sweepers/promos in an hour than there are songs played on nearly every station. Much of this has come from the diary recall system. When you look at the task of getting into a listener's head with enough impact to get them to remember you station that evening or even a week later and enter it into a diary many of us programmers took the sledge hammer of frequency to it recklessly.

In the end we have bit off way more than we have time for with the audience. We often want to accomplish way too much with every sweeper and promo.

It's time to get organized. It's time to get creative.

How well organized is your imaging clock? Take a look at the MOST VALUABLE images you need and want to convey. Then take a look at how much 'inventory' you have to invest in building the image. You need both a long term plan for the campaign and also a short term clock to execute it. Gone are the days when we used to put all the Morning Show sweepers in a cart/folder and just let them rotate. You need a lot more detailed and strategic plan to execute your imaging on this kind of budget.

Creativity counts big time. Every second counts and at the same time you can't overcook it. You also can't just let the same imaging piece ride for weeks on end. It needs to be freshened.

Another fact seques are back and should be used. Many may shutter at the 'dead air' as 2 songs just blend together. How will they know who they are listening to? Guess what - they have some brains and if you've done your job in building the brand and your stationality they will know. Most radio's have a little indicator of which frequency they are tuned to - let's let the audience use that resource to also record their listening.

Even if PPM isn't on the way to you we have to fact the reality that this reflects the real behavior of the audience. Take a close look and listen to what you do between the songs - remember the audience does and from the PPM data it looks like we have some work to do.

Selling CUME

One of the BIG CHANGES we face in selling with the new PPM Ratings system is the sudden advantages we have in Cume. On the other side of those advantages is the news that the AQH numbers are not as large as they have been with the old diary system.

In Arbitron's analysis of the Houston and Philly PPM data so far we are seeing HUGE Cume numbers that are a lot higher than we are used to seeing. Just look at the comparisons from Fall 06 comparing it to the diary Cume of Summer of 06 in Houston.

For years we've sold radio a lot more on frequency than we have on reach. The focus has been on how many people will hear my spot when it runs. In working with Cume the focus is really more on how many people will MY CAMPAIGN (the whole schedule) reach.

Getting the advertisers to understand that they are reaching a ton more than they imagined is a challenge. Look at the numbers here - the Cume for every station is DOUBLE what we see in the diaries and for many stations the Cume is close to TRIPLE.

The advantage here is that radio is really a MASS MEDIA. It reaches over 90% of the market and when you look at individual stations they all reach over 450,000 in Houston. In today's crowded media landscape is there any other outlet that you can go to and reach this many people? Not many if any outside of TV and when you consider that most have over 100 channels to pick from on the cable/satellite you have to buy a lot of stations to reach the levels radio delivers.

The news here really does make RADIO a great vehicle. But, we have to change the habits of the media buying community which is pretty point/AQH driven.

Why not start selling more with Cume numbers in all your presentations now???

Even if PPM won't hit your market for a couple of years you still have a lot more diary cume than you have AQH numbers. The more you start to use the Cume numbers the more the buyers and advertisers will begin to get used to them. Explain that these Cume numbers are way under estimated and reality is a lot bigger. Add a bullet point on the Cume - even if they typically 'don't care.' The more they see it, the more they will get their arms around it when PPM is in place.

Not in a PPM market? It's still important.

As buyers in regional and national spheres begin to work with PPM they will be shifting their focus to the Cume numbers for radio. Arbitron is doing it's part by mostly publishing the Cume figures in the monthly releases to the press.

How will the buyers work with 2 different systems - PPM and Diary? Will they have one set of parameters or expectations in PPM markets and different settings for the Diary markets? Maybe, but we will probably see 1 set of standards emerge here and the bigger markets will take the lead.

The sooner we start to 'prime the pump' for selling Cume the better off we will all be. Maybe including CUME in your presentations should be your New Year's Resolution in 08.

Old and Tired?

With all the 'new media' tugging away at TSL for radio we all need to make sure we are look and sound fresh. As we all approach the new year with our stations take a good look and listen to your product.

Is it the same tried and true music, positioning, look, air staff style, and imaging that's been there for years and years?

Is it laden with 'old style' cliches in the production and from the air staff?

Does the logo and marketing image look the same as it did in the 80s or 90s?

Is the air staff doing the same features over and over for years and years?

Does it sound like a machine or is it human?

Does the web site look like it's right out of the 90s?

In radio we often get into a mind set that over focuses our habits and thinking for consistency. We get SO worried that we might ruin the recipe for success that we refuse to update or change anything.

Some of this comes from being measured with the recall -diary system for so long. We had to drill it into the audience's head so we did it over and over and over till we pounded it in there - and then we kept it up fearing they might forget.

Hopefully the diary system will fade away in our life times (it could take that long). But, our relentless pounding on so many fronts has damaged our image with the audience.

Aside from all the flash of new media we have been our own worst enemy when it comes to creative thinking, innovation, and just trying new ideas.

It's making terrestrial radio look old and stuck in our ways to the younger audience and in the older demos they've been exposed to it for so long they often show boredom or weaker passion levels.

If this describes your station it's probably time to take a long look at the ingredients of your brand and see which ones can be updated or shined up to look and feel fresh. Everything has a shelf life - radio is no exception. Take a day get away from the office - listen and look at your product as if you were a new listener. If it looks boring, old, tired then it's time to dig in and bring it back to life.

Christmas List For Programmers

It's that time of the year when we make our list and check it twice - hopefully we've been nice and Santa will deliver. What's on the list for radio programmers? Here's a few suggestions:

1. Better Ratings: The old diary/ballot system with land line telephone recruited samples is our worst enemy. It's not fair, accurate or trustworthy and we have the technology to make it better. PPM now seems a long ways off and for most of the markets beyond market 40 in the U.S. and outside the top 10 in Canada we might as well put 'world peace' on our list. Perhaps our wish here should be for a competitor for Arbitron and BBM - maybe that would speed up the process.
2. HD Radio: This is looking like that toy that you wanted as a kid and when it arrived you had big plans to play with it all the time. By January it was sitting at the bottom of the toy box. No budget to make the new channels happen, no radios in the field to broadcast to, and lots of other toys for the audience to play with.
3. Music: Wouldn't it be great if we had a steady supply of great music for our formats? One that we could rely on to bring the best to us in an organized manner without the mess around royalty issues.
4. The Web: We could all use a lot more presence on the web. Some of it takes money, but lots of it takes dedication, awareness, and discipline to actually make it happen. While we might have lots of little 'stocking stuffers' for Santa to bring here a lot of this is up to us to dive in and stake a claim in the new frontier.
5. More Talent: Everyone has gone through a lot of downsizing and we all operate with a lot fewer bodies and less talent in the building than we did 10 years ago. Just building more formatic jukeboxes is not a road radio can win on anymore. We need the magic personalities, creative imagers, and the people to build those all important local ties/images bring to great stations. It takes money, but how well are we using the resources we have?
6. Better Team Management: We all have to make the most of what we have. Over the years I've seen lots of stations turn in great progress and ratings not because they spend the most, but because the team is inspired by the leadership. Santa can't put leadership in his sack and get it down the chimney - we have to learn how to do it.
7. A Big Promotion Budget: Yes we'd all like to give away big prizes in contests, have billboards all over town, and maybe a new TV spot running all the time, but again we have to ask - are we using the resources we have? Is your imaging organized to make the most of the huge cume you already have (PPM has proven we have TONS of cume). Are you taking advantage of building a full presence at community events? Do you have a strong calendar of on air events and promotions to keep the audience entertained all the time? Are you using all the tools and toys of the web to interact with the audience and build more loyalty with them?

As I look down this list the presents are either ones that Santa can't make with the Elves (like the Music, HD and Ratings issues) or ones that we really need to 'make ourselves' (Promotions, Talent, team management and the Web). So now it's your turn on Santa's Lap and the list is down to ------ Guitar Hero 3. Merry Christmas.

Personalities and Tune Out

In Mark Ramsey's excellent NAB presentation on Seducing PPM one of his conclusions focuses on tune out around the 'open mic' vs tune out during music. Of course the data is not favorable for the jocks. For most stations it's at least twice as likely that the audience will tune out.

While some of this may be jocks that have nothing to say, are un-prepared, or really don't know anything about the audience and can't relate to them. We all know there are personalities that have huge followings and DO connect with the audience. But, there could also be another factor at work here - OUR FORMATICS.

When do you hear from the jocks? In most clocks you hear from them 4-5 times an hour. 2-3 of those exposures are just BEFORE THE SPOTS. So what has your personality become? A SET UP MAN/WOMAN FOR THE SPOTS. The jocks clue in the audience that - COMMERCIALS IN 20 SECONDS. So what do they do? Start hunting for more entertainment and avoid the spots.

If we somehow re-worked the clocks so the personalities were doing more between the songs and perhaps we started going from a sweeper into spots perhaps our personality assets wouldn't end up in the audience trash bag as much.

Mark's presentation is great reading and he also has a video on it on his web site check it out here.

Arbitron National Numbers - Rock is UP!!!

For the first time in around 18 months we are seeing Rock's shares improving in the national format breakouts from Arbitron. These are the numbers from the continuous markets (up to roughly #100) and the shares have improved from the all time lows of 7.3 (Fall 06) and 7.2 (Winter 07) to a 7.9 in the Spring 07 analysis. Active Rock was flat at a 1.9, AOR was up to a 1.9 (from a 1.6) and Classic Rock went 3.9 to 4.1 (Winter 07 to Spring 07.

For some reason Alternative has it's own format group with AAA and it was down 3.6 to 3.4 Winter to Spring. Actually we should lobby to have alternative join in on the rock subgroup here. Hispanic has a summary of all hispanic formats even though there are 11 varations. And HC has 5 different formats.

Hopefully we can expect to see these shares improve as more markets come on-line for PPM. Realize that only Philly was into PPM for these shares and we will have Houston to add in Summer and Fall. Next Winter and Spring will also showcase opportunities from New York and other markets rolling into PPM numbers and we should see rock shares improving. What would really push up the shares would be a decent return from the 18-44 Male population - it keep declining more and more with every month. Soon there will be NO ONE.

When you look at the growth of the new Clear Channel Rock station in Philly WRFF which has risen to nearly a million cume in just 3 months. With PPM we clearly see the results of a format flip RIGHT AWAY. Now Philly will likely be over 3 million combined cume for the rocks stations as WYSP converts from talk to Rock.

From 2 Rock stations to 4 in 1 summer in Philly.
Will this trend continue in PPM markets? Bet on it.

Are Our Clocks Kookie??

#4 - In our realities that apply to both PPM and Diary markets let's take a look at our clocks.

Back in the late 70s clocks began to evolve into a pattern that was supposed to extend TSL. A very skilled programmer of the day (Buzz Bennet I'm pretty sure) studied the whole Arbitron system of recording the listening and determined that because of the organization of the diary pages and the way they granted you a quarter hour by rounding up the listening that if you waited till :17 or :20 and that was properly recorded in the diary you would get credit for 2 quarter hours. Ever since in most hours outside of morning drive we typically sweep music from :55 all the way to :17 or :20. We also take the next break (if we have 3) around :37 to insure we get a full quarter hour in the 3rd segment of the hour and the last break is usually closer to :52 or :53 ideally to cover the last segment.

While the rule is right as you look at the diary layout and the rules for crediting that grants you a full 1/4 hour after 7 minutes 2 realities stand out:

• Not everyone is walking around with an atomic clock in front of them while entering the data. Do they really know the 'exact time' when they scribble it down?
• Most diaries are not filled out while actually listening - but are often filled out at the end of the day or maybe on Thursday morning for the whole week.

But, we sort of pushed those realities aside and nearly everyone adapted the formula. It probably did work to a certain extent as nearly everyone still breaks pretty close to this formula and we all may have extended TSL as you punched away you often find commercials on many stations in unison. The listeners probably think it's a govt. plot.

With PPM we have real data coming in and it's all controlled by an internal clock that's probably pretty accurate. When Arbitron breaks out he PPM data the listening is nearly equal in each of the quarter hours. From :53-:08 26% - :08-:23 24% - :23-38 25% and :38-:53 25%.

Did we gain anything from all these years of setting the clocks on the Buzz standard? I bet not. I bet some brave programmer will start breaking around :10 and be able to sweep either :20 or :55 and be the only station on the planet playing music there. Don't know that anyone in a PPM market has tried - but it could happen.

#3 - TSL Realities for PPM and Diaries

In part 3 of the PPM realities we can all learn from we take a look at TSL.

#3 – Extending TSL: While the TSL is lower in PPM and higher in the diary the challenge is always the same – get more! The longer they listen the higher the ratings go. The difference in PPM and Diary TSL mostly comes from the higher number of stations the sample is listening to in the PPM world. The average diary in Houston had 2.6 stations listed while the average PPM device recorded 4.4. In Philly diaries came in with 3.6 and PPMs recorded 6.6.

Capturing more stations on the PPM will lower the average for the number of quarter hours (or TSL) spent with each one. You also lose a lot of those super heavy diaries – you know the ones with 75 or more quarter hours. In fact the decay starts with PPM at around 25 quarter hours. PPM meters don’t rely on recall and don’t get lazy and they don’t wait till Thursday morning to jot down a few stations.

If you live in the diary world you will still have to live with those super heavy listening diaries and with sample weighting they can cause the number to bounce a lot. We’ve all seen a young male who logged tons of listening to a soft AC station push their numbers way up with weighting. The next book the numbers fall apart for the AC as they ‘didn’t win the statistical sample lottery again.’

What we can really learn here is that ‘real gains’ in TSL are what we need to focus on. They come from:

Not getting off track musically. You can call it ‘playing the hits’ but a boring turnover of the same 20 high testing songs can be very damaging to TSL. It’s more about living up to the expectations that the audience has and also leading them to new worlds within their musical expectations.

It’s more about a few minutes. How many times do we launch a big campaign for 20 in a row and think they will listen for the whole 90 minutes? No problem I’ll just sit here in the driveway for another ½ hour till you’re done with song 20. Or we set up a contest with a magic song they have to hear and expect them to listen all day and be the 55th caller. Setting realistic expectations is the better way. How about a billboard within a sweep of music that sets up a big song coming in a few minutes? Building more music campaigns more on ‘overall images’ (hour after hour WACD delivers the most Classic Rock in the valley – listen and prove it to your self) – instead of 10 in a row.

Talent really matters. Compelling personalities and creative imaging between the songs no only attracts cume it also holds them. But, watch how much you use the talent and imaging. We’ve made the mistakes of too much talk from the DJs in the past and we’ve also made the mistake of pounding the audience down with sweeper after sweeper which soon becomes seen as hype. Entertain them and don’t waste their time.

The measurement systems may be different, but the tools are the same. Like a great meal – don’t under cook it and don’t over cook it. Assemble with care.

At Work Listening - Even More Important!!!

In part 2 of our look at the realities from PPM that apply to everyone (PPM or Diary). In a recent FMQB article from Arbitron's Gary Marince he observes:

"In PPM, employed male listening is higher than female listening . . . employed males appear to have the most listening to radio. This helps explain why great Rock stations enjoy healthy ratings in PPM."

Even in the diary books we usually see the Classic Rock is #2 in At Work listening and all forms of rock do better than many expect at work. With the PPM Meter automatically recording listening, instead of relying on recall Gary feels we are seeing even more TSL from at work in PPM than we see in the diary- and he has all the data at his finger tips.

If you've ever looked at the diaries it's easy to see At Work listening with that entry at the top of the page and a squiggly line all the way down to 5p racking up 25-30 quarter hours in 1 day. It isn't quite as dramatic in the PPM as we all know that few sit by the radio all day. But, the reality is that Men work and they do listen to radio on the job. You can hassle with your MP3 or hunt for off beat Internet stations or fiddle with the satellite receiver at your desk - or just tune in the rock station we all know in the market and keep it on in the background. In the end terrestrial radio is still easier to use and more familiar.

How much effort are you putting into at work listening? 20 years ago when we began to really focus on at work there were telemarketing programs, big contests, donut remotes, and a fair amount of imaging spent on at work. Monitoring around as I travel - you don't hear as much of an effort anymore. In some markets mid-days is a daypart where we most often 'hard drive' it with the PD, VT talent or a production person doing the shift. There are some contests, but is that really the big draw? Is it more likely that the un-employed person, or very un-busy person at work - is hanging around waiting for the code word of the day?

The wiser choice might be to focus the show on the at work listener. Make sure the mid-day talent is live and interacting with the at work listener. Take a few calls, have a few features that stand out musically, but most of all make sure the talent has a vision of listener in an at work environment. The imaging should also take on an at work lean - look for drops that lean on the at work experience, copy that relates to at work moments and make sure to brand yourself as the at work station.

AC is really the last format that really works at getting at work listening. But, even there we see less effort than we saw 10-15 years ago when it was at its peak. In both the diary world (where you have that squiggly line) and in the PPM reality where you are more likely to have a longer TSL than the average 2:50 hours per week from at work listening and boost your TSL.

5 Realities From PPM That Apply to EVERYONE

We are learning more and more about PPM and the audience's actual behavior, rather than their recall of what they did, with the early data from Houston and Philly. While PPM may be a long ways from impacting your market, or it may never come, but there are some 'real world' lessons to learn. This week I'll take a look at 5 Realities From PPM - covering 1 each day.

#1 - You Reach A lot More Than You Thought: We've see nearly everyone's cume jump a lot in comparing the diary numbers to the PPM realities in both Houston and Philly. Cume numbers are twice as big in PPM and in some cases nearly 3 times the size. Your station reaches a lot more of the market's audience then we ever thought. Holding on to that listening and turning that cume into P1s is the ultimate challenge for programmers.

One thought for everyone - PPM market or stuck with Diaries forever: You're on air marketing, imaging, and promotions reaches a lot more of the market than you thought. How many times have we all felt that we didn't have enough outside marketing to grow the station? No billboards, TV or direct marketing for long stretches.

Do you really need to use other media to grow your audience? Looking at the high cume numbers we see in the PPM data suggest that you probably already reach a lot more than you thought. Look at the cume for The Buzz or Arrow (the Alternative and Classic Rock in Houston) - the Buzz is over 1 million and Arrow is close to 900,000 in most montly reports. This is in a market of just under 5 million. These stations already reach 20% of the whole market. When you consider that they are targeted stations that are not designed to reach everyone they already reach a lot more 'real potential target listeners' for their music mix and stationality than you could probably get from a billboard on the interstate. How many people will 'cume' the billboard that are very unlikely to become P1 or P2 listeners? Probably not a lot and when you consider how much the board costs!!!

The answer for programmers here is to MARKET TO YOUR CUME ON YOUR AIR. Use your imaging, personalities, and promotions to keep the excitement up. Stay top of mind more often with your cume and more may become P1s or P2s. Crank it up on the air and make it memorable or actionable with the audience. Don't just go for 'small ball' all the time - hit it out of the park and do it as much as possible. "If we only had some marketing dollars" - shouldn't be the issue. Did we capitalize on the potential between the music and with our personalities? You probably don't need to spend lots of money to reach an audience you are already talking to, unless you are a brand new product or have made improvements that are so dramatic that a whole new audience needs to tune in and hear them.

Yes exposing the product all over the place can help - but the first steps to gaining more audience is to charge up the audience you have. Entertain them and keep them excited and entertained every quarter hour.

Research or Ratings SAMPLE is EVERYTHING!!

Recently we've seen lots of discussion over samples in ratings. Much of it relates to Arbitron rolling out the PPM and we've seen some industry concern over the sample both in size, return and balance for ethnics and demos. No doubt we'll see more confusion on the sample with PPM rolling out because PPM is really a different type of research than we have traditionally used for ratings. With the diary we are looking at a snapshot of one weeks listening as recalled in a diary vs the behavior of the respondent over weeks and weeks with no 'recall' necessary. If you go to our reports in McVaymedia.com you can get a lot more information and analysis on the differences between PPM and Diary methods here.

Before you work with any research or ratings data the most important analysis tip we can pass on is LOOK AT THE SAMPLE. How far off of the population estimates is the return? You may also want to look at how the sample returned in zip codes or key ethnic areas. Know who they got of hold of. Of course Arbitron does reveal the numbers, it may be a little harder to find on the Max or Arbitrends menus but it's there and you should look at it before you celebrate or wonder what happened. The same goes for any perceptual or music testing you do.

In order to get realistic results Arbitron and many other studies balance the sample by weighting. This places more value on demos or areas where they have lower or higher returns than in the population estimates. It does affect the reliability of the results and the confidence levels. While it might not be a tool that sales wants to dive into trying to sell with the numbers, programmers need to make sure the sample is reliable before you make 'big' conclusions based on it. It's also more of an issue in the smaller markets where often see a lot of weighting with a small sample and some pretty big wobbles in the numbers. Are you feeling real good about gains that were more the result of a few diaries weighted way up that will disappear in the next report? Or are you looking at a downturn that's really an illusion? No research is perfect you have to look deep into the results and the sample before you act.

Some Good Signs For Rock Music/Radio

Usually twice a year we take an in-depth look at the Spring and Fall Arbitron Format analysis where they gather all the ratings from the top 100 markets and break them down by format.

The news is usually released after all the books are out and nearly always headlines another decline for all the rock formats. The facts are there as we can see the last 8 years showing a steady decline in most demo breakouts. We've all been hopeful that someday we'd see the tide turn here and perhaps it could come as we get the first 2007 numbers in just a few weeks.

Even if the numbers don't show a turnaround yet there are lots of signs that one is happening on a number of fronts:

• Rock is HIP again - Look at all the signs from the huge popularity of Guitar Hero, overall CD/download sales of rock acts, the summer concert sales picture, and the 'Indie Rock' movement in the 16-22 age group. Look at the music out right now from Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, Finger 11, Velvet Revolver, Ozzy, Pumpkins, White Stripes, Nickelback and other fairly well established acts. We also have lots of new artists breaking
• PPM - Suddenly in the markets where PPM will be taking over there is a rush to rock. New York and Philly both signed on new rock outlets and expect to see more in the top 20 as the year progresses. PPM finally shows a lot more acceptance and listening to rock radio than we've been seeing in the diary system. Arbitron will also likely be trying to shore up the sample issues in the diary a least a little. There will still be over 200 markets on the diary system for years to come and of course we all need confidence in the numbers. Both of these events could combine to 'turn the tide.' We will probably see some confusion in the Format reports from Arbitron as they phase in PPM data. The data is different in diary and PPM and there will be issues combining it for a national perspective on formats done with 2 different methodologies.
  
• Howard's History is fading - One of the big reasons we saw declines in 06 was from Howard leaving and seeing many of the CBS rock stations either change to a full talk format or at least have their ratings chopped up over Howard leaving.
• Other Formats - Look around at the other formats - CHR is struggling a bit as a lot of the core younger audience is very into other media. Country seems to be in a little lull for artists right now - no one is crossing over or getting huge notice outside the format core. A/C doesn't have a huge new artist and note that Christmas music is months away rock could benefit. Urban is also a little light lately as the rap/hip hop artists are not as rebellious and authentic as they were a few years ago - too much commercialization and bling have worn out their welcome. Hispanic may still be impacting some markets but here we also see a leveling of the playing field as PPM will not show as much listening as we see in the diary where Hispanics can 'vote in a diary' for their culture and language vs. recording what they actually listen to with a PPM monitor.

We're about 3-4 weeks from the report and it could be a confusing one from Arbitron, but the signs are there. Now back to trying to best my son's score of 99 on Kiss' song Strutter on Guitar Hero - a song rock radio added nearly 20 years before he was born. I bet we'll see even more teen and 18-24 number for Classic Rock formats over the next few years and we'll happily have Guitar Hero to blame.

Don't Be Yourself - Be THE AUDIENCE!

How many times have you flipped on the radio and caught the personalities chatting all about THEIR world. What a pain it is when the coffee pot is dirty, the printer is out of ink, Bill doesn't flush, or how they spent their time this weekend hanging out backstage with the stars being pampered. Often you have to wonder if the audience cares at all about the every hassle or activity your personalities are experiencing.

One of the things we will be able to see in analyzing PPM data analysis is that the audience reaction to self indulgence may be even worse than all of us imagined. By tracking listener tune out on the minute by minute data and comparing it to what happened on the air we'll be able to see graphically how damaging these moments are. While we still have to have more time with PPM data to really pull out this kind of analysis we all know in the 'common sense' sector of our brains that it's likely to show up as a key element in tune out. And in a PPM world tune out is directly reflected in the numbers - not just forgotten in a recall game.

While in the studio - protected from the audience by soundproof walls, double pane glass, a transmitter, stl, processing, and a really tall tower it's easy with all the flashing control sliders and computer screens to think that you are the center of the universe.

If that's the thought swirling around your studio its time for a big de-briefing. It might be time to sit down with your air personalities and make sure they know the golden rule - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE AUDIENCE. What are they thinking about, what are they laughing at, and what do they want to know more about? Make that the priority in each break and you will be a star - forget about it and you are just another self centered person behind a mic with some headphones on that thinks they are a big star.

Listen to your breaks all day long - this can easily go on well after the Morning Show has left the studio. Is the content all about ME or is it about the AUDIENCE? While a little of the 'ME' sprinkled in to relate to the AUDIENCE is fine - just remember to keep it in moderation, on topic and planed out. If you just start rambling pretty soon you will forget about the audience and it will all be about you. As you prep for a show look at what your target audience is reading about, following on the web, watching on TV, watching on DVD, going to see at the movies, music they are into, and what news or gossip is in the air today. Make sure your breaks center on those areas and not too much on your personal world.