TSL Part 4 - Billboards And Recycling

As we explore the tools of TSL, along with their effectiveness and history there are 2 tools that may seem a bit simple and obvious - Billboards and Recycling.  

The Billboard may also be known as the 'Tee Up', 'Set Up', or 'Tease' and can be very effective in the right hands.    Just before the spot cluster kicks off we 'billboard' a big event coming out of the stop set and hopefully everyone is so excited they don't tune out during all the commercials.   In the right hands and with the right content it can work.   But the key is 'in the right hands' and 'with great content.'   "Coming up another Katy Perry song" in CHR radio today is probably not going to get many to sit through 5 minutes of commercials.   When Katy finishes her new songs this summer you can probably get a crowd to stick through the spots for the 'first play' of the new song.  

Billboards can be a great TSL weapon, if they are well executed and justified.   In many ways we haven't really built them into an art, instead they have become a necessary task and show up before nearly every stop set without much thought or prep.  Especially now in the PPM world the billboard could be one of the most effective weapons.   How well it's used by the talent is the key.  In today's world of voice tracking dayparts and even letting some dayparts and weekends roll without air talent it seems like billboarding is taking a back seat and not being utilized or developed much as a TSL tool.

The other tool we're looking at this week is Recycling.   In some ways it's like billboarding but here the dynamic is not just to hold the audience through the stop set and into the next quarter hour - it's trying to get them to come back to another hour or daypart or day.   The most recycled daypart is Mornings with most shows getting regular sweepers and mentions throughout the day.  

While Mornings are very important what about the other dayparts?   Building up at work listening, making sure the Morning audience is also there in afternoons and could you get a little more out of evenings with some more exposure throughout the day?

Both of these techniques are obvious and they do work.  Perhaps more so in a PPM world than in the 'recall world' of the diary, but they can pull the audience through a stop set and they can build numbers for other dayparts.   The challenge is that it's effectiveness relies on:

1. Great Content - If you don't have something big to billboard or recycle it doesn't work as well. 
2. Preparation - You have to plan this out to make it really work.  You need a full recycling plan, running weekend recycling on Monday probably won't be as effective as Thursday.  
3. Air Talent - Some have a real talent for building up the excitement and some just seem to go through the motions here.   In the end the air talent has to prepare the teases - hunting down the best content in the hour and packaging it to be effective.  Are we teaching, coaching and evaluating this trait anymore???   

There really isn't anyway to find any research or metrics to prove that Billboards and Recycling help in actually delivering TSL.  Based on what we can see in PPM tracking there may be some evidence, but since we really don't track the 'content' of every billboard and compare it to the audience graphs (like we do with music and spots) we really don't have any 'proof.'   But we all know that billboards that are skillfully delivered, well planed and that promote captivating content the audience will stick around or try to come back. 

TSL Part 3 - The Music Sweep WARS

We continue exploring the importance and evolution of the Tools of TSL for radio programmers.  Last week we looked at the early days of clock tweaking to Arbitron's editing system.  This week we'll see how programmers turned to more obvious marketing tactics in the 80s.  

The decade brought on the advent of 'commercial free' sweeps, hours and even days.  In Detroit WLLZ launched with months of commercial free music into a crowded rock battle and wiped everyone with format leading shares in the debut book.   We had every kind of name you could imagine to package 20-40 minute blocks of music and the long music sweep fever became a part of nearly every music format.

Contesting was also a part of the marketing.   Stations started building in 20 song marathons every few hours and backing it up with - 20 songs or $20,000.   Many DJs in those days of live control rooms feared skipping a song or having an unforced error cost the promotional budget 20K during their watch.   Others set their clocks to always promise 8 in a row every hour or some always played 25 minutes music sweeps with only 2 tops sets in the hour.  It seemed there was no end to innovative clock systems to build in music sweep tactics.  It kept us busy in Selector and no doubt made many a traffic director duck when we came into the room.  

This tactic clearly worked for many stations.   The WLLZ story may have been extreme but you could see a number of other stations pull in stronger TSL with the music sweeps.   The problem is that wars started and the music sweeps also didn't lower the commercial load - it just moved more spots into some hours and less into others.  While you reaped more TSL in this hour it was quickly give up in the next hour with long stop sets.  

There were also lots of concerns from the sales teams.  Going on the air and proclaiming that 'commercials=bad' wasn't exactly making it any easier to convince the clients that radio was their best friend for marketing their brands with those 'evil commercials.'  By the mid-90s the more music/commercial free tactics started to fade.  Between the sales concerns and the over hype of nearly every station trying to out due their competitors in the arena it looked like the fad had run it's course.    But like any fad it can, and probably will, come back.  

PPM has brought new life to the 'B97 (((MONSTER))) Music Marathon' with the long music sweeps playing a role in the TSL tactics and strategies today.  In fact they are really enjoying a bit of a comeback.   In PPM the minute by minute - hour by hour - tracking of the tune in and tune out shows that the music sweeps are effective.  In the PPM markets there are commercial free days and hours built into many logs and dayparts.   Programmers have started to look at every hour and plot where to pull in the most benefit from TSL more music tactic.

Next week we'll see the TSL tactics start to shift back to more of the Money Ball - Arbitron Data analysis side of the quest.   Thanks for stopping by and let your radio friends in on this series.   Improving, keeping and developing TSL will be radio's key need as more and more media options evolve in the digital world.   We all need to master the art of TSL.   

TSL Part 2 - Clock Tweaking The Early Days

One of the first programming tricks designed to build more TSL came right out of the 70s.   Buzz Bennett was a pioneer from the old Drake days and came up with lots of tricks and innovations.

For this TSL trick Buzz looked at the Arbitron editing process which gave you credit for the full 15 min quarter hour as soon as you had 7 minutes of listening in the quarter hour.   If you tuned out at 10:07 for another station and noted that in the diary the full 15 min segment to 10:15 was credited to your station.

Buzz looked at the clocks of the day and there were many that ran spots at the :15 and :45 slots and also often ran news at the top of the hour.  Buzz's idea was to move the stop set to at least 7 minutes into the quarter hour and try to get credit for the full quarter hour as much as possible.

Today you can still see that pattern in most of the stations we listen to.  Breaks typically at :22-:25, maybe one around :37-:40 and the last one close to :50 or even later.

While this trick looks like it can't miss there are a few issues.  The first is that hardly anyone fills out a diary minute by minute with the exact time logged in the entry.  We really don't know how the diaries are filled out by the listener.  Some recall what they did today and log it in estimating what they listened to, others fill it out minutes before the mail truck shows up, others may jot down a few entries throughout the day and try to keep up.  Even if they did fill it out right to the minute on their wrist watch - how accurate is their watch?

At the time when the news of Buzz's innovation circled the PD world - clocks changed instantly.   In the end we now have different credit rules with PPM and in PPM the actual listening is automatically recorded so there is no diary keeper estimates in the data.  While we all jumped and Buzz is still a genius programmer on many levels this one probably didn't deliver much help in building TSL as we would have hoped.   Today in the PPM world spot placement follows many new innovations that throw out many of the traditions from this tweak.  We'll cover that more as this series progresses.

Next in the evolution of TSL came the More Music and Longer Music Jams we'll take a look at these tactics next week as we continue to explore the many facets of building TSL.   TSL is a huge challenge as we continue to see more and more options to listening to music from the digital world and over the next month we'll take a full look right here.   Thanks for stopping by and pass the word.   

TSL - The Big Challenge Ahead

As more and more tempting alternatives come pouring into the audience's smart phones, dashboards, tablets and computers terrestrial radio listening continues to hold a reach of 92% of the population weekly.  Ahh but what about time spent listening?  So far the 2012 analysis by Arbitron seems to indicate Radio is holding fairly steady.   But, we all know that TSL is likely going to be the real battle field for the audience's time spent with music and audio entertainment.   All of these music and entertainment options have to cut into Radio's TSL sooner or later.

TSL is very tough to analyze for the whole industry and across all the formats now.  The advent of PPM measurement in the top 50 markets has changed the data dramatically.  We really can't compare the old TSL levels of the diary with PPM's huge volume of tracking data.  Meanwhile we still have lots of 50+ markets that still live in a diary world.  This makes tracking this data across the whole radio landscape nearly impossible.  Even though this 'money ball' data may be impossible to quantify it is still the driving force behind AQH, Ratings and market share.

Much like 'Money Ball' programmers have taken on all levels of data analysis and implemented a number of programming 'tricks' to try and move the magic TSL needle.  Moving the stop sets, billboarding, laying in commercial free blocks, gaming the editing systems for diaries and meters, and appointment listening are some the tools we've tried and still implement today.  But, will they really work as the choices expand from 30 stations on your car dashboard to thousands of streaming stations, podcasts, mp3 playlists and custom built streams?

Over the next 4 weeks as you gear up for the Spring book, or continue your 52 week marathon of ratings measurement let's take a look at the tools we use and perhaps a few we could be using to build more TSL.

We'll start next week with a look at the first 'tricks' programmers used and then progress to the newer tools that we are still developing today.  Next week - moving the stop sets the early days.    I hope you'll tune in and spread the word to fellow programmers and radio pros.

Thanks 

2013 The Trends Ahead in Radio

Looking into 2013 you can spot 6 trends that will likely impact our media in the coming year:

1. Social Media - Over the last 3-4 years Social Media has become the new norm when it comes to interaction.  It's a complex web but it's also very extensive in it's reach and evolving at light speed.   Most radio brands have set up shop on FB and Twitter but we are a long ways from developing effective strategies and content to engage, entertain and impact the audience here.  Like just about every brand in the world we have a lot to learn and 2013 will have to be a break out year.
2. Metrics- The new 'Nielsen World' comes to radio with the purchase of Arbitron.  While any change in our ratings would make an impact on our products this will be a complete revolution.  If you thought  PPM was a big wave this will likely make it look like a ripple.  The integration of all media, from the web to PPM data with data pouring in on reach, exposure, engagement and the potential to measure the impact will change our view of success and also the view of marketers using any medium.  Radio will have to be more creative and engaging to our audience to stand out on this stage.  
3. Digital Dollars- We all realize that growth in our revenue will have to come from integrating multiple platforms for our brands - just selling 30 second spots is not a growth plan anymore.  While it may seem like we are chasing digital dimes instead of analog dollars the new digital world is growing quickly.  We have a huge reach and also a local platform with brands that already have a fan base here.  Radio can emerge as a pivotal media but only if we can integrate and weave ourselves into the digital world.  We will have to catch up on developing more integration into the smart phone world, the new challenge of the digital car dashboard, and keep expanding on the web as more and more new platforms become commonplace.
4. On Air -The world here has been in a revolution for the last 15 years or more.  The march of using new technology has given us options to change the way we build the brand and product that offer amazing potential.  On one hand today's personalities and programmers have a huge tool kit and pallet to paint on.  On the other hand we don't need 8 personalities living in a studio loading up carts and CDs anymore.  We have some personalities clinging to the past and living in the studio while others are reaching out to their fans, communities and advertisers fully applying their talent with the tech potential. You can see the ones that will have an impact. Embrace the future and don't live in the past and you'll be a star. 
5. Music and Radio-The music biz is improving.  Artists and the industry is learning to live in the digital world and radio's role is also becoming more important.  Both will benefit - so let's have fun together again.  
6. PR - Telling Our Story- 'Making radio hip again' is not just Bob Pittman's mantra - we all have to learn to tell the story.  Being an integral player in the digital and mobile world is the key to showing off the creativity and talent we have.  Offering advertisers a pallet of distribution and creativity within and around our brands is the key to growing our real success in revenue.  We can't dwell in the past we have to embrace the future if the PR is going to change here.  

There is so much opportunity and potential ahead.  We should all be pumped up and ready to charge into 2013. Thankfully the economy is improving and marketing brands has never been more important.  Yes, it will be challenging - but it will also be exciting, creative and demand our best.  Happy New Year.   

Now That The Election Is Over

Regardless of how you feel about the outcome there was a lot for all of us to learn in radio programming from the tactics and strategies of the Obama and Romney teams.  Some of the lessons include:

Demographics and Target Audience: The post election analysis all points to Obama's ground game and their ability to get out their vote.  Many thought that Obama couldn't turn out the numbers he had in the 2008 election again - the thrill was gone.  But instead the Democrats worked a ground game that pinpointed the key demographics and voters and got them to act.  In the end Obama actually ended up with more Women, Hispanic and Afro American voters and their numbers in the population all grew over the GOP turnout.  They used all the data they could find from their email lists, past voting records, party affiliation, and perhaps most importantly the 2010 census.  The GOP seemed to put their hope on lots of PAC TV spots and that fact that the economy was struggling.

The lesson here is know where your audience is and how to reach them.  Also track the changes in the population trends and make sure your message is on target.  Another trick here is that they got their audience to vote - our goal is to get them to listen and also to report or record it with their PPM actions or their diary.

Carefully Evaluate Your Research and Ratings:  The GOP seemed to be going into election day doubting many of the key polls and were actually betting on a big win for the GOP.   They felt the polls were biased mostly from their model on voter turnout.  The thinking was that the Dem voters were not as passionate as the GOP voters and wouldn't turn out.

Look at the trends in your ratings carefully.  This is why we look closely at TSL, CUME patterns and now are able to track tune out tendencies with PPM Media Monitors.  It also affects us in reading and evaluating research studies - you have to know the sample and understand what is motivating their actions.

Social Media Matters:   A lot of effort was spent on Social Media, Email blasts and Web Banners for this election.  While there were no shortage of attack TV spots much of the Billion Dollar war chests were spend with the precise targeting of Social Media and the Web.

Using Social Media, Email databases and the Web has to take center stage in your efforts to engage the audience.

Know your audience and stay close to them - in the end a pretty simple formula.

Fall Music Trend Forecast

As we head into another Fall season and watch 2012 start to fade into history the musical stars do point out some interesting changes showing up as we read the charts, music releases, and audience trends.  Some facts and trends and what they could be pointing to?

• CHR has had a big Spring and Summer - As the Spring books were rolling out you could see the trends for CHR stations.  Record shares in many markets.  We've also seen more and more stations moving to the format.  But, CHR has been on a roll for around 4 years now.  Could it be at a peak and the real news here is that CHR stock is at the high end of it's range?  

• Spring looked very good for Alternative Pop crossovers.  Gotye, Monsters and Men, Fun., GroupLove, Foster the People, and a few others manged to crossover from Alternative to the Pop charts.  But, has anyone been able to establish themselves on the CHR side for more than 1 song here?  We seen trends like this before in CHR - they often seem like a 6 month flu that passes.  

• For the Fall there are some more Alternative leaning songs in the pipeline that could  cross over - The Lumineers, Alex Claire maybe some others?   But, while we are seeing a little more presence for some Rock leaning songs in the Pop world it's not a place to build a career.  

• Pure Pop music is really driving the CHR ship. Katy Perry can get away with re-packaging her last CD and adding a few new tracks and stay on the charts for 3 years and counting.    You can also see other pop artists that pretty much start and live on CHR radio - Maroon 5 is probably the best example but there are plenty more. 

 

The reality here is if you want to really build an artist and not just 'get a hit song' CHR is a very tough place to make that transition.  Since the 'age of the download' began we have transitioned away from CDs or Albums as the main packaging for music.  Now we download it , pop it into the playlist and unless we stumble on other songs from the artist or become a big fan we may never be exposed to else from a hit artist.  

Right now CHR radio sits at the center with music coming from nearly all the other formats  But, how long will CHR keep opening it's doors?  As the wars for audience continue with more stations jumping in and other AC formats leaning on more and more music from the CHR world.   Will CHR retreat to a war around the real core - young females?  Will the format start to focus more and more on their world and and hits? 

As we head into the Winter it's very possible we'll see the audience shift it's focus.   Here are some trend points: 

• Will Country pop back into the spotlight.   Go back a couple of years and you see Lady A and Taylor Swift pulling a lot of audience more and more into listening to Country.  Will the new Taylor Swift be able to stand up in the spotlight?  Will it draw those P2 and P3 young females over to spending more time with Country stations?   It could be possible, but will Country Radio embrace Taylor or continue to play her but not embrace her?   Could there be an opportunity to build a real young/female country lean to the format that lives in the pop side of the format? 

• The spotlight on breaking Indie Bands will continue to surprise.  But, will any of the bands break out and become more than a 1 hit wonder?  Another possibility here is a band that avoids crossing over or appealing to CHR to make sure they don't hurt their Indie Cred.  Having stations returning to the Alt format in NYC and Chicago will help bands break out here.  

• Harder Rock will continue to shun any crossover attempts.  Bands that make it to the pop charts are doomed with their core in this world

• Rap and Hip Hop - One segment has clearly merged with Pop in this world and another tangent is moving further and further away from being even accessible to the pop or radio world.  Will this end up being a world that starts to live more and more in a world that doesn't crossover very much or at all?  

You can see the forces within the audience and the formats here.  CHR is looking like it will become an even more Pure Pop world that will probably have less and less variety in the mix.   This usually leads to more and more button pushing from the audience and we'll probably see that the big CHR shares this summer are the peak that will level off over the next 6-8 months.  This opens up the door for Alternative, Country, Urban/Hip Hop stations to get more attention on the stage.   

Even though a lot of the younger audience claims 'radio is so over' for discovering new music we continue to see more evidence that Radio still rules - look at the recent Nielsen study.   If you want to see how important it still is just dial up the wikipedia story of Katy and see how radio really built her career from 2007 till 2010 when Teenage Dream was released http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katy_Perry  .  

Alternative Returns To NYC and Chicago

A year ago Randy Michael's Merlin Media looked like it had a very interesting plan for FM News and some great tools to work with.  Randy's built some impressive News and Talk properties and so many consultants and researchers have been nearly assuring the success of FM spoken word formats for the last 10 years. You'd have to think this would work.   Also factor in the POTUS election with tons of story lines and campaign news to cover as well as local issues, congressional elections, health care, the economy and so many more big stories -- you clearly had plenty of content, even if there are 4-5 competitors in the field here.

You also had the new campaign spending rules that allowed unlimited spending from the Super PACs and given that there are estimates of over 300 million raised and the prediction that campaign spending will surpass a billion dollars this year.   Only one problem here - Illinois and  New York are solid Democratic states.   The GOP has nothing to gain spending a dime in either state - same for the Democrats as Obama has a huge lead in both states.   The other market is Philly and there they keep News on FM - at least this could be a swing state.   In the end News, Talk and Spoken word seems to still have a place mostly on AM in the radio format landscape.  Perhaps it will change, but it seems like the cards were stacked for it to happen and even with Randy's abilities and resources we are back to music formats for Chicago and New York.

The big opportunity here is to build an Alternative station for New York.  This is a huge opportunity, but one that somehow seems to never live up to it's potential.  NYC only has one station that could be considered in the rock arena - WAXQ - Q 104.3.   It's a very unique Classic Rock station that is very tied to the NYC scene of the 70s.   Artists that many CR outlets have left to the soft ACs years ago still live here - Simon and Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Elton John are all a big part of the mix on Q104.3.   You also have the early punk/new wave era of the early 80s with the Talking Heads, Ramones and others from an era when the club scene in NYC had more rock opportunities.  The harder 80s staples of ACDC, Guns N' Roses and Ozzy don't see much airplay on Q104.3 - it's really more of a Classic Hits mix.  Q 104.3 is really a station aimed at the 45+ listener and leaves much of the 18-40 year old demo without any form of a rock outlet, unless they pull in signals from New Jersey or maybe upstate NYC.

While the hole is big for the music - it's been there for a long time and a number of stations have taken swings at this pitch over the last 15 years with no one getting much more than a single.   While some of the failure may have been not finding a music mix that really fit all the uniqueness of NYC there are also other challenges when you build any radio station that can't be ignored in markets like NYC and Chicago.

1. Social Media - Twitter and FB are huge keys to getting the word out here.  These are huge markets and you need over 100K in likes to move the needle.  Where is the big launch contest for either to gather Likes in NYC.  You could have signed on with tons of I Pads to hand out or other easy to gather prizes and linked up with a one of the FB Apps to give them away.   How about doing some creative Twitter tweets to get trended here.

2. Sell the Music - The imaging and the whole personality of New Rock 101.9 should be about bringing New Rock to NYC.  But with no one to intro it or sell it or no events to catch it live in the clubs and on the street - it's just a bunch of songs.   Most of the fans have that on their phones, and I pods - go beyond the jukebox from day one.   Or at least do a bunch of imaging that sells the new music.   They are tagging the songs but they could and should do more.  If you are not excited how do you expect the audience to get excited?

3. Get some Personalities - You don't need Howard to come back - that would probably ruin the music side of the station - but you need to bring in some known entities or a group that you can build into authentic air personalities pretty soon.   This is the home of big stars and big names in the big city.

The Chicago launch by using the old TV 6 frequency 87.7.  Why didn't they move it all to the 101.1 frequency where Q 101 has always been?  Why launch an experimental Adults Hits approach on 101?  Are there issues with the Q101 name still being with Emmis or is there something with the Q101 website holding on to the name is some way?  It's going to be an up-road climb for Q87.7 with the frequency confusion and they also need to build in the basics here.  Chicago does have more competition than NYC.  Q101 was fairly successful 10 years ago, but little by little they seem to fail to consistently build a strong bond with the market.  They also wandered musically.  Lots of challenges here - are all of them necessary?

Right now Alternative is a hot format musically.  New ground breaking acts are emerging, there are crossover songs in CHR and there is unique pop quality to the music that sounds new and fresh.  Especially in comparison to all the Idol/Pop and Diva Queen songs that have had the spotlight for over 3 years now.

The opportunity is ripe for the format in both markets, but it will take more than just playing the songs.  The usual 10,000 in a row is not the way to launch in NYC or Chicago if you want to impact a crowded music landscape.  Even if you have a pretty wide hole to shoot at - you still need to make a full impact.   Good luck to Jim Richards and Randy on their launches - both have all the brains and skills to pull it off - but it will be challenging.