Exposing Your Content

What are you really doing with your content?


Are you just putting it through the transmitter?

While most of our audience uses the transmitter we all know and see all the expansion of distribution channels.

For example look at a cable TV show like Mad Men from AMC. The whole first season can be watched on DVD, On Demand/Comcast Cable, and on the web site. You can also watch the shows on Mondays (it airs on Sunday night) on line or through On Demand.

With all that distribution you may wonder - isn't this killing their ratings. Why would anyone tune in on Sunday nights for the regular broadcast? Well the reality is that it doubled the numbers for the show as the new season began a couple of weeks ago. They went from around a million viewers to 2 million and now the award winning show is starting to catch on. Watch as AMC pulls off a hit. Much of the work was done by spreading the distribution. Now that the audience has started to discover the show from all the distribution channels they are developing P1s. Otherwise AMC would have had another award winning show that got missed in the maze of 300 cable channels and so much other media.

Could Rock Radio benefit from a similar strategy. You bet.

1. Pod casts - Some stations use them but I bet 90% of you have only 1 or no podcasts on your site.

2. You Tube clips - How much as your station or team posted from station events, guest shots on the morning show, or even just a tour of the station with some pranks from the staff.

3. Collections of morning show bits.

4. Replay the phone calls from your afternoon show.

5. How about a new rock pod cast every week that doesn't air on the transmitter but only on the web with comments on new artists and songs.

6. Maybe a place for local bands to showcase their videos and music complete with reviews and chats.

Most sites I visit don't have much that really pertains to the station or it's content. In Rock we seem to have lots of girl pages (as if there isn't any more revealing content in this genre on the web), RSS music news feeds (wow Billy Joel is on tour), some corporate stuff (the Clear Channel web feeds), the link to streaming, maybe a list of the last songs played, a chart so you can buy songs, hype for the database, bios of the jocks, and hype for the contests.

Where's the audio - this is supposed to be RADIO. And is it local? In the content arena this is supposed to be our biggest card to play.

Are we worried that if we leave the content on the web that the audience won't dial us in to hear it? We are way past being exclusive - now is the time to be INCLUSIVE.


We all know the problem here. Most stations have no resources to get their content to the web. It takes human effort to get it there and with so many stations running so bare boned on staff we can't get ahead. As we come out of these tough times hopefully we can put asside some of the resources to start building a purposeful world here. AND SOON.

Sales Solves All Problems?

In the 80s as a programmer I heard the claim in a station strategy/budget session that 'SALES SOLVES ALL PROBLEMS.' In that case we had a solid product and really the sales effort was doing well but the potential to grow was clearly there and the team responded. While the revenue gains didn't really solve ALL problems it did exceed the budget and on paper we had won.

At that time we all bought in as the extra sales effort meant more resources to keep the product competitive and ahead. That statement has popped up a number of times and in many ways it became the mantra of business strategy for many station and group strategies for our industry.

Clearly sales generates the revenue and that is the lifeblood of any business. But, you still need a product to sell. In our case we still need a strong and healthy audience.

Does the business plan of your station or group still living in a world where you expect sales to solve ALL problems? It's obvious that we need content and product to sell. With all the new media in the advertising holding and building an audience has never been more challenging. Are you investing enough to get the job done? It's a simple question, but one that we are obviously not asking enough as we watch new media invading on our shares of the market more and more every day.

Building a product that draws both audience and advertisers is a careful balance. Throwing money at the product or making it all product and slighting the sales side doesn't work but, making it all sales and ignoring the product doesn't work either. It's all about balance - are you balancing your resources?

The Air Staff Critique

Sitting down with the air staff one on one with a trusty air check is probably not on the top of most PDs punch list most days. Over the years it's become almost a forgotten PD art. With voice tracking, digital/computer studios, and more and more formatic rules I bet most of the talent on the air has had very few of these meetings in the last few years.

In fact I've run into studios where you can't even run an air check, unless you tape the whole show off air. These are important meetings and you probably should be meeting on on one at least twice a month with everyone.

So where do we start? Just cue up the breaks and hit play?

Really the better meeting comes when the PD has taken a half hour or so and reviewed a show before the talent arrives. Although I usually review a whole station over a number of dayparts one of the tricks I use is recording the station's stream and going back with a generic wave editor and running through a couple of hours of breaks. You can get stream recorders from a bunch of on-line download sites (www.topdownloads.net - Absolute Sound Recorder 3 - is one of many shareware programs you can use).

The keys to look for in most presentations:

1. Is the talent COMFORTABLE on the air?
2. Are they talking TO the audience or announcing over them?
3. Do they know WHO the audience is?
4. Are they TOPICAL to the target audience?
5. Are they PREPARED?
6. Are they EXECUTING the basics - call letters, billboards, liners, and most important interfacing with the music.

The key is picking one of these topics for each session and focusing on just that area.

To get the talent into it - try brainstorming instead of preaching to them. Get them involved in answering these questions and let their ideas and thoughts jump out. If you do you will make a lot more progress with each session.

Selling THE MUSIC

One of the biggest complaints on radio that we constantly see in focus groups, listener panels, and just talking with the audience in passing is 'it's the same list of songs over and over.' We've all heard it and for the most part just thrown up our hands over this BIG issue with the audience.

We've all done the math and know that the minute we expand the playlist the ratings fall off as the audience can't keep up with the depth of the playlist. If we don't play the top testing current hits 20 or 30 times a week the audience's time spent with the station won't allow them to hear them enough to become familiar. The ratings consistently show that the bigger the list the harder it is to attract large enough cume to deliver a competitive share.

It's all translated by the audience as tight corporate playlists that don't challenge them or match what they can now carry around on any MP3 player.

We've faced this before. Many of you may not have been around at the time. Back in the early 70s top 40 radio ruled the world and was mostly on AM. As FM was building one of the cornerstones was the 'progressive rock' and early AOR formats.

Most of the AM - Top 40 stations had playlists of around 100 songs. At some the top song of the week was played every hour at the top of the hour. It truly was the same songs over and over. The top 40 DJs talked over the music with hyped up voices, on air gimmicks and a bunch of one liner jokes in some cases.

The complaints we heard as FM was launching on radio programming are not much different than what we hear today. As rock radio planted it's seed there were 4 rules:

• The DJs pick the music
• No talking over the songs
• No Hyped up voices - be laid back and just talk to the audience
• Blend the music together with segues and fewer interruptions in the hour.

While the FM rock audience didn't seem that big at first it grew as more and more got FM radios and by 1980 FM Rock radio had evolved to race past most of those top 40 stations and built a bond with the boomer audience. Yes we did build a controlled library with card systems and did play the hot current songs in a rotation over the day. But, the perception that the DJs picked the songs was still central to the format.

As music scheduling systems came about the jocks were taken out of the music selection process and pretty soon they were more used to sell liners, billboards, and maybe toss in a little audience interaction on the phones.

What would happen if we brought the air staff back into the music selection process now?

We've all watched the launch of the "Jack" formats and their positioning statement - Playing Whatever We Want (or something close). Often the first adaptors for the Jack stations come from an audience that remembers the day when the jocks picked the songs. We often found in the early research that it was Classic Rock and Rock listeners that jumped on the Jack stations and cited the positioning as a key reason to try the station. Of course most of them didn't stick around when they played ABBA and other train wrecks trying to prove their point. Also not having jocks on the Jack formats made you wonder - who is the WE in playing Whatever WE Want.

Is there a way to get the air staff more into the music? We all know there is and it's time to start experimenting. We all know that the listening 'math' won't allow a jock free for all, but just going around with the air staff sounding clueless and totally uninvolved in the music isn't working either. There's a middle ground here that need some exploration.

A Lesson From WKRP

All of us in Radio have laughed hard at WKRP over the years. The bumbling GM, the sexy receptionist, the geeky news guy, the sold out sales guy and the jocks trying so hard to be cool. In typical sit-com structure the jokes and stories all revolved around the personal problems of the characters. It was all about their lives within the halls of the radio station. We rarly saw any interaction with the audience. Once in a while we'd get a caller on the air and a few storylines showcased contests or concerts but that was about it.

Part of the plot of course is that WKRP was a losing radio station. It sat at the bottom of the ratings and we can only imagine that it was also at the bottom in revenue. We never got to see a budget meeting - I don't think they had a budget. KRP did climb to 6th in the ratings in one of the eposides in the final season. But, the humor and drama came from the characters within the building.

Perhaps WKRP could have been a winner if the team had been paying attention more to the audience than how much office space Les Nessman had or who Jennifer was dating this week.

But that wouldn't have been funny. KRP is not real it's a sitcom.

How much effort and time is spent in your building with the internal drama? Could spending all that effort on the audience drama be more productive?

Cell Phone ONLY Households

The National Center for Health Statistics has released the bi-annual survey on cell phone only households for the 2nd half of 2007 and the 18+ percentage of cell phone only households is now up to 15.8%!!!!!

This percentage has grown from Jan-June 2004 at 5% to nearly 16% in just 3 years. And the growth is really increasing. The percentages grew 14% in the last 1/2 of 2007 compared to the first half. Looking further back the percentages from the first 1/2 of 2006 were up 6% over the last half of 2006. At this rate of growth the numbers will quickly hit 20%, it could happen when they release the first half of 2008 around September. So it's likely that right now we are over 20% of the adult population in cell phone only households. By the end of 2008 we will probably be over 25%.

They are also tracking the people who may have a land line but take nearly all their calls on the cell phone. That's another 13.1%. So nearly 29% of the households really don't use the land line as a phone. When Arbitron calls - 29% of the adult population is out of the game. And I repeat it's growing every day.

Now look at the data by age cells:

-------Jan-June 2004 ---- July-Dec 2007

18-24 ---10.3%--------------30.6%

25-29---- 9.9% --------------34.5%

30-44-----4.4%-------------- 15.5%

45-64----- 2.3%-------------- 8.0%

65+ ---------.9%-------------- 2.2%

This is not just 18-24s and college students - look at the rate of growth in 30-44s and now the biggest percentage is 25-29s. If your target audience is 18-44s you are well over 20% of the households using only cell phones. The number is even higher if you factor in the land line households who really don't take calls on the land line.

You can read the study here.

Using landlines for Arbitron samples and research in general is quickly becoming a very biased sample that leaves out big chunks of the population. Obviously we NEED new answers here. Find a way to call cell phones or start using the web, email, myspace?, maybe text messaging, or other new ways to contact the sample. Our data is quickly becoming too in-accurate to be credible even with People Meters we still don't have a reliable and accurate sample with land line phones as the base.

So Where Are The New Format Ideas?

As we approach the Summer it could be a great time to see some fresh thinking and new ideas in formats and new approaches in radio programming. In many ways Summer is a time when the ratings pressure is off a little in the 4 book markets to launch something fresh and new or roll out a few experiments and see how they sound.

Last Summer we saw the 'Movin' format get rolling in a number of markets, but now it's pretty much looking like this adult rhythmic approach is not exploding. The summer before in 06 was really the wind down of a 2 year period where the Jack/Variety Hits formats were the news, but for the most part they have stabilized or even faded away in many markets. Last summer we also saw a number of Oldies stations re-vamp themselves as Classic Hits and bringing in a lot more 70s/80s titles.

So what could be on tap for this year? There are some ripe territories that could be up for grabs:

• 90s Rock - In the late 70s the oldies format was born, in the late 80s we saw Classic Rock flourish, the 80s formats largely came into being in the late 90s and here we are in the late 2000s. There is a lot of great rock from the era and a few stations have already started in this direction this year. You many not have heard of them as the launches have been rather low key and involved existing rockers tweaking their approach. The climate is ripe as today's 25-40 year olds all spent their teens and early 20s in the 90s. The dawn of Grunge, Alternative, pop alternative, Active Rock and 90s metal are all part of the rock side of the 90s and lots of it still tests very well.
• Youth Formats - We have given up in many ways on the teens and 18-24s in our research and experiments in recent years. The news isn't good and we haven't even looked carefully at this market, perhaps due to tightening budgets. It's time to get off our butts and at least take a long hard look at what could be an exciting radio product for the 15-25 year olds. Is anyone doing anything? Doesn't look like it but it could be a spot to work on. It's going to take a lot of new thinking, social networks, texting tricks, unique web approaches and a whole new approach to music. In many ways it's a lot like the launch of young formated youth stations on FM in the early 70s. They threw out every rule of the AM top 40s to make an impression and the going was tough for a while, but look at the big winnings 10 years later!!!
• 90s-Current based AC - A few jumped when the 'Fresh' approach hit in NYC, but there hasn't been much news of recent. This approach to get the more mature 25-44 female could work well in lots of markets.
• FM Talk - We've been talking about it for years but very few have turned it into a strong format.
• Rock - In almost all forms could be a good move this Summer. The music is in good shape for currents and the classic forms of the music reach into the 50 plus audience with ease now. There's Rock out there for people from the late teens all the way to the 60s in some form. Now with PPM finally moving into the top 10 markets this Fall and we're still seeing stronger shares and cume for Rock in PPM than in the Diary system.

It could be an interesting summer, but it could also be a drought in creativity and experimenting. Even though our industry desperately needs to innovate with our products there doesn't seem to be much attention focused on it. The top news seems to be the Clear Channel buy out, which is no doubt distracting all the Clear Channel stations from investing or experimenting for a while. There is also lots of news on the economy and struggling revenues which is another deterrent to innovating. We're also continuing to invest a lot of time and effort into HD Radio and not gaining anything for it. Perhaps it's time to get back to focusing a lot more on our product and the audience.

Al Ries - Views the Internet and Mobile Net

Al Ries' involvement in the revolutionary 'Positioning' series of books has always put Al's thoughts and observations high on many of our must read lists.

I caught his recent Advertising Age article on the state of media and the emerging Mobile Net (the web on your cell phone) - the third screen. Al feels that this media is the 'next revolution' joining the big leagues of media - Books, Newspapers, Radio, TV, Internet.

It's a bit scary as Al makes a number of observations that are astute:

Fasten your seat belts. On the horizon, there's another profound shift in media, consumer behavior and technology coming. In the near future we are likely to welcome the arrival of a sixth mass-communications medium. And what is this earth-shaking new medium? It's the Mobilenet. The what? Surely you are joking, Al. The Mobilenet is just a subset of the internet. Just another way of going online. Just another way of surfing the net without using a computer. That's why mobile devices are commonly called the "third screen." Third-screen thinking is going to cause you and your company to miss the boat.

Which big brands were created by moving content from one medium to another? Very, very few.

Moving The Wall Street Journal online didn't save Dow Jones from the clutches of Rupert Murdoch for just $5 billion.

Moving ESPN onto cellphones didn't take it to the big leagues.

So far, moving TV shows to the internet hasn't created as much value as one internet site, YouTube.com. Less than 20 months after its launch, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion.

Hopefully Radio will keep evolving with new ideas and strategies for the Third Screen-Mobile Net, but Al's point here is that the real 'killer ap' in the new 3rd Screen world will probably not be a line extension of our brand on a different distribution system. We need to think WAY OUT OF THE BOX.

One of the 'dreams' we all have on the web and new media is that we can extend our brand with all it's reach and content (if we don't cut the heart out of it) to the Web and Beyond.

Al's point here is - don't count on it. Read Al's whole article here.