The Radio Industry and Coffee

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?

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:  

1. 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. 
2. 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

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

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

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

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

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.

Taking Music Risks

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.