Jaye Albright's Breakfast Blog

Do Dreams Come True?

2015-10-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

Find out and support this initiative by clicking here.

Let's all encourage them to look more broadly than just video and ultimately include audio measurement as well in this work!

This Will Make You Feel Better, Country Radio

2015-10-21T03:07:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to yesterday's blog post, it must be noted that history indicates that country's shares shouldn't be jeopardized by updated encoding technologies as they come online over the coming months.

© Nielsen PPM markets combined average persons trend

Voltair really took off about a year ago and into the Winter.
New Country shot up starting last summer.

Why?

IMHO: Music cycle, season, more stations in format. While some country stations did buy a Voltair, it took place a few at a time over numerous months.

Mike O’Malley recently made the statement to an A&O&B client that he can think of sixteen different things that affect time spent listening/time spent exposed (his list didn’t even include Voltair).

Both Mike and Becky Brenner will be sitting in the front row at Nielsen’s December 3-4 client conference in Washington where CBET testing and impact, the new SDK measurement system for digital audio, which reportedly gets away from having to rely on the meter panel and headphone adapter since it is measuring the traffic to the content regardless of how it’s heard, are on a full two days of presentations.

We appreciate Nielsen hosting this meeting and we’re absolutely looking forward to getting as many answers as possible.

Hope to see YOU there.

Nielsen’s Answer To Voltair

2015-10-19T15:03:00.005-07:00

In a presentation at the NAB Radio Show in Atlanta Nielsen tells us that the brand new generation PPM encoders, the first update to the technology in eight years, created in response to the proliferation of at least 500 Voltair units across both the US and Canada have generated average quarter hour (AQH) ratings growth in 52% of stations tested during afternoon drive in the Baltimore-Washington market.

48% showed morning drive growth while there was 45% growth in middays.

Roughly 61% of the 289 station-demographic-day combinations tested, Nielsen says, showed no ratings increases using the encoders.

All American PPM stations will have the new encoders by the end of this year. Since shares are a zero sum game, it seems very likely that the next few months in PPM markets in North America are going to experience changes unseen since the move from diaries to PPM and, prior to that, way back to 1986 when COLRAM's diary was adopted.

Billboard Sep 13, 1986

After that change was implemented, Top 40 suddenly went down and AC stations went through the roof. Country, over the next few years, had to learn the new rules of the game ushered in by the change in methodology and work to get our listeners to fight for their favorite station at work or face audience erosion.

Numerus in Canada asked all stations using Voltair to unplug them and wait for the new update, which they hope will put all of their subscribers on a level playing field. It wasn't difficult to guess which stations plugged Voltair in their audio chain and when they stopped using it from tracking PPM trends (up/down).

The dueling presentations of Nielsen and Telos/Voltair leave many, many unanswered questions.

Country radio has had a great run over the last few years and PPM technology that helped us tell our reach story. If this change that is going to happen over the next few phases of our surveys helps some stations, will it hurt country? I wish Nielsen was doing more to allay these fears and could give us more insight into their rationale beyond declaring that they have a right to do what they want.

For example, if you're in the mood for a bit of irony, search the Nielsen Newsire site for any news of "enhanced CBET:"

It's no secret that many of us in broadcasting have long wondered if the entire ratings process is a bit of a crap shoot, but I never expected a Nielsen site to suggest it could be an "enhanced bet!"

All irony aside, why isn't there anything on the Nielsen Newswire website about the presentation?

Why aren't they reporting publicly on their actions and reasoning? It has been four months since the last Nielsen Audio Advisory Council meeting and radio's reps on the committee continue to be tight-lipped. Surely, they know that secrecy only breeds conspiracy theories. Just ask Richard Harker if you don't believe me (click to read his latest update).

If you are a PPM-rated station, here are the questions I hope you'll ask your rep:

1. Even if I can't actually use my Voltair to process my signal once the enhanced CBET PPM encoder is on my air, why can't I continue to at least use my Voltair as a monitor? I find this screen very informative and reassuring, especially since CBET is being implemented so quickly with so little testing.

2. Are there radio groups who have decided to stay with their Voltair processors and won't move to Nielsen's new equipment? I hear that there are. What is Nielsen planning to do about that?

3. Is Nielsen willing to underwrite an objective study on all of the impacts of Pre-CBET, Post-Voltair and Post CBET PPM ratings by the Media Ratings Council, Council on Research Excellence or a similar body that would include format analyses with much more depth beyond average percentages?

4. What is it about the stations which were unaffected by the encoder update vs the ones that were improved in the recent test?

5. Is there any developing information that may make it worth trying some of the high loyalty formats that disappeared eight years ago like smooth jazz, new age, talk and classical again? If average quarter hours go up at least 14%, what is driving that change?

Arbitron/Nielsen certainly went to PPM measurement in good faith and with no ill intent. Radio's owners agreed that it was an improvement at the time and I certainly don't believe any broadcaster wants to go back to diaries after they've made the switch, but this new trove of before/after data has the potential to improve our understanding of our measurement methodology.

I hope Nielsen agrees and as Arbitron used to do on a regular basis, tasks an objective researcher to dig deep, reporting back publicly in the common interest of all of us.

A Candid Admission

2015-08-10T02:00:00.001-07:00

Last week, Seth Ressler in his AllAccess column hit me right between the ears.

Back when PPM first debuted, since I was long-schooled in the ways to get an unfair advantage to grab "just one more share point" that we all used in diary measurement, I was focused on the wrong thing.

I still wanted the sample size to be more random "like it used to be" and as large as the 48 different weekly samples. The share compression that resulted from the move to panel measurement seemed to confirm (to me) that I was right and all the issues of PPM would be solved by larger and larger samples.

Call me a slow learner.

The fact is that audio media simply can't afford to more than quadruple samples and of course both Arbitron and Nielsen have increased samples each time we squeaky wheels made those noises.
The fact that the cume and usage levels are at all time highs right now makes a good case that we actually already have more than enough to compete adequately against all other media as is - selling results - no matter which of the three or four cume thresholds where the majority of stations clump in every market.

Of course, as Alfred Liggins said on his investor call last week, free market competition requires constant vigilance and if everyone else in town is doing something smart that you're not, you're likely to get hurt in the short run until you catch up.

Ultimately, I worry more that Programmatic buying and selling will be a greater challenge than mysterious black boxes as agencies adopt it in order to save money, failing to consider the compelling personality, brand loyalty, database, social, narrow target and psychographic data that only a human seller can present.

When that is accomplished our sales teams have great stories which more than add powerful value to our sales proposition.

Seth, you are right that our best story is not "how many?" but WHO.

Thanks for the clear thinking and wake up call.

Keen On HD Radio

2015-08-06T06:25:00.001-07:00

I have been a fan of Robert Earl Keen's since he first attempted to promote me to play his music on a radio station named KEEN (San Jose) back in the 1980's, when I was PD.

My experience was not unlike SXSW, which became a hugely successful entertainment event by dropping its role as an Alt.Country/Americana convention and becoming more mass appeal, diverse and mainstream at the same time.

I don't know what made the South-By-Southwest organizers take that journey, but I do know that Robert Earl pioneered something that is huge in night clubs all over Texas and his many proteges that have come after him but has rarely been mass appeal enough even in the Lone Star State to draw a large enough fan base of radio users to compete successfully with country radio stations simply playing the Nashville chart hits.

Propelled by a devoted and passionate base of lovers of his powerfully-creative, eclectic, indie music style, Robert continues to provide an important voice to the music scene, which makes me want to tip my (cowboy) hat in his direction for his latest promotional effort, an endorsement of HD Radio.

iBiquity’s partnership with Robert Earl Keen will build awareness of HD Radio broadcasting and promote Robert’s new album, Happy Prisoner. The program will include radio promotions and contests, as well as a trip for two to Nashville to join Robert Earl at his July 23, 2015 performance at the historic Ryman Auditorium.

“We are excited to continue to build the HD Radio Artist spotlight program,” said Mason Hunter, Executive Director, Strategic Partnerships/Business Development at Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). “Robert Earl Keen is a stalwart for BMI and is an artist who has been consistently releasing outstanding music for over three decades. His latest release, Happy Prisoner, is no exception. We are thrilled to have a partner in iBiquity Digital who recognizes his talent and ongoing contribution to songwriting. The HD Radio Experience delivers digital quality sound, unique content, and exposure to artists like Robert in order to enhance the experience of their listeners,” continued Hunter.

“Robert Earl Keen is a unique talent with a long history of making music his way, and his fans love him for it,” said Joe D’Angelo, Senior Vice President of iBiquity Digital. “We are extremely proud to be able to work with Robert and look forward to bringing his latest project to radio fans across the country.”

OK, radio. The ball is now in your court. If you already have an HD-2 or HD-3 channel set aside for alt.country, Robert Earl Keen, BMI and iBiquity just handed you a free gift. If you aren't using all of your HD channels now, it's a great time to begin.

BUT, don't do it if you're not prepared to aggressively promote it on your main channel. Enhance your brand by appealing to the widest possible group of country fans.

Make the most of this forward-thinking move by radio's longtime friend, Robert Earl Keen!

Analysis Paralysis

2015-07-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Numbers nerds (like me!) have been blogging almost daily on Voltair.

Rather than getting smarter with each post, I feel like we all start to send contradicting and conflicting assertions.

We all have been learning less, not more.

Before I crunch anymore random PPM data, it would be nice to know who is using Voltair and who isn’t for one thing. Educated guesses have only the potential to create confusion for all of us.

Yes, A&O&B has a number of clients using the technology right now, but in spite of the perspective that has afforded us, there's a lot we simply do not know.

Like you, I read each new observation, but have ultimately come to the point of reminding myself that “liars figure and figures lie.”

Lets face it. No one is admitting anything, not because they are hiding anything. No one knows enough as yet to draw any conclusions.

Things I don’t think anyone knows.

Nielsen and Numeris don’t know who has been using Voltair. Even in Canada, where the ratings firm has asked all their subscribers to unplug their Voltair boxes, who knows if all of them actually did so?
Voltaire users don’t know what happened to their sample geography, proportionality, weighting and all the other factors which can move numbers much more than even the uptrends the manufacturer of Voltair has claimed.

Things I think I know:

PPM measurement appears to help formats with big cume.
Country, Classic Rock and Pop shares increased when PPM came into our lives.
The average age of radio users dropped by about a decade, which may mean that PPM is measuring radio use by younger listeners who didn’t fill out diaries.
Talk formats and personalities with long periods of non-music content slipped in the rankers.
Sample sizes fell precipitously.
Panel/qualitative research replaced random probability sampling.

All of this tells me that we have come to a point that we need less blogging by folks who really don’t have enough information to really know the entire picture.

It think we all can agree that Nielsen's decision to not open their webinar last week to the media was a mistake. What got reported the next day may or may not have been accurate. Transparency is the best policy.

It’s time for all Nielsen and Numeris clients to speak loudly to their ratings rep for much more openness and clarity, let alone increasing sample reliability.

It was refreshing recently to learn that Canada's analytics arm has been brainstorming with clients, for example. We need a lot more of that from Nielsen too.

All of the noise on the technology affecting fewer than 50 markets - albeit the largest ones in North America - is also obscuring an even more pressing issue: sample quality in the much more numerous diary measurement markets.

Just four years ago we were promised exciting modernizations of the long-outdated approaches being used in radio audience measurement. After all, Jim Seiler first invented a diary to measure media in 1949!

Then, Nielsen bought Arbitron and the leapfrog hasn’t croaked once since!

Let’s stop the silly number-crunching without really knowing what is behind the stats we’re all using. Nielsen and Numeris, please help us all get it right without delay.

It's long past time to focus as an industry on what really will make a huge difference: increasing sample sizes, better open communication with Nielsen and Numeris clients.

Responsiveness and less secrecy is in order so we all can have more confidence in the data driving our paychecks.

#thefutureofradioisatstake‬

2015-05-15T02:03:00.002-07:00

Fred Jacobs' latest blog post, as usual, inspired me into action, especially after I read the response to it by legendary LA GM Roy Laughlin (click the link to read that too).
I wrote:

There’s no question that Roy Laughlin is a genius and built a lasting dynasty that continues to dominate the Southland thanks to the amazing teams he managed over the years, but before we do a complete 180 lets really study how our streaming listeners use us across all our platforms.

Now that Voltair has “proven” (to me at least) that PPM technology misses a lot of usage, it is tempting to go backward to what we did before, but the industry embraced PPM because of the many flaws of the old diary, not the least of which is the move from landline phones to mobile devices.

Let’s accept that the landscape has completely changed and make use of all the tools in our kit to understand what aspects of our programming work best in each potential venue and customize our content to make the most of all the ways our target is using and will use the new and old technologies based on adoption and usage.

Just as NPR has employed Podcasting to move from their “non-commercial” crowd-source funding over the air analog model to become commercial competition for traditional radio, all of the audio business simply must be open to new business models the internet is opening up.

Since anyone who has seen minute-by-minute reports of streaming usage at local radio stations and compared them to Nielsen PPM data in the same time period know that the two track each other quite accurately, let’s hope that a new, more reliable audience measurement matrix evolves soon that can combine everything we now know about how listeners behave, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

PS: Do you "like" A&O&B on Facebook? If not, you're missing a lot.

The Best "Worst Job"

2015-04-16T08:59:00.003-07:00

You can't deny that it's true:

Careercast is getting quite a bit of PR today on their annual best/worst jobs lists and as usual they make a good case for their reasons for putting "broadcaster" down at the bottom with newspaper reporter, lumberjack and enlisted military (which actually seems like pretty good company to me!).

No doubt, if you want low risk, there are plenty of other careers for you. However, I want to place this finding in context.

It has always been thus!

I went into high school in 1957, having decided I wanted to follow in fellow-Ohioan Hugh Downs' footsteps as smart career counselors advised me that radio stations were downsizing due to the arrival of mass appeal television. Every station had staff live musicians, full time studio engineers and those positions were being eliminated everywhere and pundits called it "the death of radio."

Google that phrase and you'll learn that that prognostication comes back at least once a decade.

My first full time job in broadcasting came in 1961 and after a lot of great working years I am now enjoying a great retirement thanks to having chosen amazing business partners, I can assure anyone who today has a passion for making the most of audio technologies that it remains a wonderful, rewarding career if you're willing to be your very best.

Over more than five decades I was fortunate enough to:

Break Guinness World Records and raise funds for many deserving charities along with the help of my listeners.
Work with a terrific team of broadcasters in building an Armed Forces Network in Southeast Asia, the most rewarding two years of my working life.
Have a lot more fun at work every day than, I suspect, than actuaries and audiologists do.
Was challenged to compete in ways that mandated constantly upgrading my knowledge and skills at the highest level in recognition of how terrific the competition was.
Get to know entertainers and music business pros on a first name basis, including playing basketball with Kenny Rogers and his band, interviewing a guy who claimed to be Elvis and not dead, having "weed with Willie" and a dinner for four across the table from Taylor Swift before anyone knew her name.
Emcee a "No Show Jones" show both when he was and was not a no-show.
Along the way, I was named to a couple Hall Of Fame lists too (thank you, Nevada and CRS!).

So, don't become a broadcaster if you expect a no-risk life, but if you feel the need to passionately find the most creative and innovative "you" while working alongside some amazing people who are driven by the same energy, broadcasting is the BEST worst job you can choose!

Competition

2014-12-21T10:53:00.002-08:00

Each time a station I've worked with over the years has been directly attacked I have publicly said: "Competition makes us better."

For the listeners and the air staff, that's true.

But, generally, from a business point of view I have to privately admit it's simply not, especially in markets where media buyers generally refuse to buy two country stations at good rates.

Doubly so in PPM measurment markets where direct format competition has often driven down shares, making point levels shrink.

This was reinforced for me in September 1999 when longtime Detroit incumbant W4 Country typically had higher ratings with country than did WYCD, lack of advertiser revenue led W4 Country to switch to a classic rock format and WYCD never looked back from a revenue viewpoint.

The same thing played out a decade ago in San Diego. Local observers claimed that neither Lincoln Financial nor the company formerly known as Clear Channel made any money during a costly fight, but when it ended KSON rose back to the top of the audience and revenue rankings, where they remain today.

iHeart's K-102 and CBS' Buz'n have been going at it in a virtual tie after three years in the Twin Cities in what has been a costly battle for both companies. The last time KEEY had an attacker in this position they purchased it, leading to two decades of revenue and audience dominance. This time, BUZ'N came out just as Taylor Swift was on the upswing.

Back before PPM measured Boston a very competitive fight went on between WKLB and WBCS (Boston's Country Station) from 1993 to 1995. The victor in that battle was Greater Media. They have been extremely powerful from a revenue and ratings perspective for the 20 years since then. Fighting for format ownership in country can be lucrative, long term.

It's been almost 20 years since the last competitive assault in Orlando for country, which even included Cox's K-92 buying the attacker just before it went country. Three years later they took it out of the format, leading the market for much of the intervening time with just one country station, part of a solid cluster with broad reach.

Until now, as JVC closed on WHKQ Monday and then quickly launched 103.1 The Wolf on Friday.

Things to watch:

Is this the beginning of a new post-consolidation age in competitive format battles?
In the past, new stations launched as formats were on the upswing. Is this a good time to launch a new radio station in the country format against a strong competitor?

This I know: the listeners are going to love having a choice. The air staffs and street teams are going to have fun going at it.

The accountants, not so much.

“Woof, Woof, Woof. Bow, Wow, Wow. Arf, Bark, Arf, Bark, Woof!”

2014-12-11T16:04:00.001-08:00

Ever since dogs started barking “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Got Run Over By A Reindeer,” Christmas music has given country (and rock) format programmers and personalities a big headache.

Thanks to PPM panel measurement which can follow the same group of people’s radio usage for many months and years, we now know some things about what drives the country format’s annual fall swoon at the expense of Adult Contemporary and Christian stations going “all Christmas music.”

1. As Mike O’Malley told Inside Radio last week, studies of country listeners going back more than a decade consistently find that less than 20% of country P-1 listeners say they’d be very interested in having their country station play all Christmas music while half tell researchers they wouldn’t be interested at all, making going solid Christmas tunes a very risky tactic in a competitive country battle unless your company owns two country stations. In that case, it can benefit them both, one gaining 35+ female tuning and the other one acting as an alternative for younger and male country music fans. The more new music intensive you are, the more dangerous it can be to go more than a month without exposing and familiarizing the core with fresh music. When you go back to playing the country hits you need to refamiliarize your core with it, which can hurt familiarity scores that drive TSL and passion as the new year - and a new PPM month - begins.

2. In diary markets it has always appeared that all-Christmas helps the upper-demo contemporary get a cume boost in the first month of two of the Winter survey. Now, thanks to PPM, we know that’s more a result of top-of-mindness impacting what people write in diaries than it is real usage. Once, all-Christmas was seen as a strategy. Now, we know it’s just a tactic. In PPM, normal listening patterns resume on December 26 and don’t have any residual impact in January or February. Thus, in a PPM market any station contemplating solid Holiday music in November and December needs to pre-sell the event in advance. Diary measurement may make it appear that buying those great Christmas season ratings in January and February is a bargain, but PPM proves that would be overpaying.

3. PPM permits a microscopic view of usage patterns not possible in diary surveys as long as the sample is large enough to be reliable. As a result, aggregating multiple markets, it’s possible to uncover precisely what drives month-to-month changes in cume and average quarter hour. Most months, any sudden changes are likely driven by sample weighting alterations or households coming into or leaving the panel. As Christmas music starts to dominate one or two stations in a market, it’s now possible to dig into it directly and see exactly how each station in town’s average monthly users react. What we see appears to be more than a sample wobble. It looks “real.”

4. A&O&B has been carefully studying PPM, thanks to the help of direct marketing and rating analysis vendors, from the very first month of PPM measurement going all the way back to the first tests of the technology in Wilmington and Philadelphia many years ago. Here’s what we’ve observed, thanks to help from Arbitron and Nielsen analysts: the normal pattern of daypart and day-to-day recycling tends to continue as usual for a healthy country radio station. However, non-stop Christmas music on a station that always shares 25-30% of the country station’s audience month after month does something astounding during the Holidays. It creates NEW DAYPARTS for itself, times of the day and days of the week from that group of panelists when the country station’s average listener wasn’t even using radio in most months!

5. PPM “time spend exposed” (TSE/AMA) per hour for that country station when under attack from a 100% Christmas music competitor remains steady. Morning show, at work and weekend usage are generally more or less unchanged. Except for one group of listeners, the ones who seem to want to get into the Holiday spirit as they prepare for Christmas. They go Christmas shopping, wrap presents, decorate the house, the workplace. They host and attend parties. They plan for the family event. They continue to listen to their usual morning show, don’t listen much less than normal to their favorite 24/7365 country station, but they also find themselves using the solid Christmas music station a lot - as much as an extra day a week of their total time with radio - at lunchtime when they go out to shop, in the evening and over every weekend at home when they wrap presents, decorate the tree, write Christmas cards and organize their wardrobe for a busy Season Of Giving.

To deflect such a tactic when half the audience really doesn’t desire all-Christmas is next-to-impossible, though you can, we’ve found, at least minimize the damage — by creating your own extra special, lifestyle-driven extraordinary depart usage drivers.

The challenge, of course, is that playing 500 popular Christmas songs over and over for six weeks is relatively easy when compared to the creativity, innovation and hard work it takes to build enough of the kind of content that can compete with it in listeners’ minds for six to eight weeks every year.

Attempting to cure your first headache can make for a pretty big second one too.

May Your Stuffing Be Tasty...

2014-11-27T09:11:00.001-08:00

May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!
-- Grandpa Jones

Time For Programmers To Learn A New Language

2014-11-20T04:38:00.000-08:00

This development is not at all surprising.

As usual, they want us to cut our inventories while refusing to pay anything more when we do it, in spite of considerable data proving radio's impact.

If the only way they will pay more is when "cost per point" hits media buyer wishes and dreams, it's crucial that the people creating content fully understand which quarter hours and programming tactics have the highest potential to get target GRPs, ultimately ARPs, as high as possible.

Let's stop worrying about 6+ average quarter hour shares, replacing those with the highest payoff target points.

That's an entirely new way to approach formatic, content and programming metrics.

It's going to require a quick learning curve for most Brand Managers, but A&O&B can help make it simple and very rewarding for you to do so.

It's That Wonderful (?) Time Of The Year

2014-11-19T03:50:00.000-08:00

If you're a small indie label or a new, emerging artist, you're coming upon potentially the best time of the year at radio for your needs.

If you're a music director, it's the annual time of year to watch your mailbox for unknown names and labels you never heard of before.

Why?

As Billboard's Country Monday Update noted in listing the adds for the next few weeks it's just three weeks from the time when the vacuum of major label and star artist releases begins.

Country Aircheck made note of the same phenomenon in its pages this week as well.

Most weeks music directors find a lot more piled up in their in box than they can add to their playlists in any one week, but not December 8.

So, it's a very brief window of opportunity if you have something a bit risky or brand new.

Smart music promotion people, like my pal Kris here, know this.

The catch: if you have a new Christmas song it's going to have to compete with the very familiar and welcome sounds of years past. It has 17 days to get big or never be heard ever again.

If you have something that you hope will be a major hit in the coming year, you have a few more weeks before the superstar tracks start to come out in 2015, but it needs to be so sticky that it can achieve impact at a time of year when radio listeners are asking to hear more and more Holiday songs per hour.
At best, you've got five or six weeks to get to the point most big hits take twice that long to gain traction.

So, indie labels and new artists, bring it.

But, please make absolutely sure that what you bring is your very best

And, pardon those of us in radio if we're still a bit dubious and skeptical as we click on your newly-arrived package.

It's the time of year.

A Sense Of History

2014-11-18T03:35:00.001-08:00

As we all get ready the 39th annual Twin Cities radio meeting, I am reminded of an anonymous response back in 1996 to a "RadioIQ" (our client e-zene) report of CBS Radio President Dan Mason’s talk at the Upper Midwest Communications Conclave which continues to echo all these years later.

“Jobs on the programming side of radio will continue to be eliminated,” Mason correctly predicted back then. “For every position eliminated in programming this year, there will be three added in sales.”

Now that programmatic buying and selling is emerging, eliminating reps while making media sales more transactional and less seller-driven, I am reminded of an anonymous comment I got after that post from 18 years ago:

"…any medium which requires more effort to sell than to create is headed for a future no better than slimy posters on the brick wall of public consciousness."

I greatly respect Mason’s smarts and proven track record over the years since that Conclave speech, but I have always wished I knew who “anonymous” was.

That person may have been the smartest of us all.

Their comment remains true, now than ever.

Let Me Second That Motion

2014-11-17T03:20:00.001-08:00

The announcement from Country Radio Broadcasters that Jeff Smulyan will be given the 2015 Tom Rivers Humanitarian Award during the opening ceremonies of Country Radio Seminar 2015 is another great decision from the seminar's board.

If you want to peruse the many, many wonderful giving works Jeff has spearheaded and been involved in, click here to read the complete press release listing a lot of them.

I'd like to add a personal reflection on what Jeff has created for the people who work for and with him, which in today's corporate radio competitive environment is another level of humanitarianism. As their company website notes: "Emmis is the 9th largest radio group in the U.S (based on listeners) and has been voted the Most Respected Radio Company in a poll of industry CEOs."

Other owners wishing to establish a positive productive "family" environment for their employees would do well to go to click around Emmis.com and learn about a winning culture.

He purchased my hometown baseball team, reunited two guys named Griffey and turned a losing ball club into a winner, though it wasn't a winner for Jeff. He used radio marketing tactics and rallied a community to the team's side, getting attendance up after years of apathy by local fans. He lost money on the deal, but made baseball fun again for Puget Sound fans.

That's when I first observed that this was a guy who did the right thing first and worried about bottom line secondarily.

"Emmis" is the Hebrew word for “truth," and I first got a chance to work with the company when they purchased "KIX" (now "The Arch") in St. Louis from Zimmer.

We had a very good run and thanks to a wonderful group of people, managed to make a pretty good showing against a powerful incumbent.

In Nashville I was a fly on the wall when they made their first presentation to the Music City community after buying the now defunct KZLA, which was very impressive.

Of course, from Terre Haute, Indianapolis and many other legendary radio stations, they have shown their ability to win long term in many markets.

I brought up the no-doubt painful Mariners, KZLA and KIX situations for two reasons, having seen Emmis' greatmedia.greatpeople.greatservice^® mission in action for a very long time, even in situations where circumstances led them in the infamous "other direction."

Their people and the culture Jeff and his team have innovated show "class" even in places where it's not easy to do so, living Eleven Commandments of doing business with a humanitarian tone indeed.

Charitable works are terrific, and Jeff has performed many, but the way you live your life in all aspects is even more noteworthy.

Our entire industry is better because of the values exemplified every day by Jeff Smulyan.

One A Day

2014-11-11T02:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's list of 16 metrics A&O&B encourages you to track consistently (Programming By The Numbers) is completely overwhelming.

So, try this: put a different one of them on your day planner every other workday.

Give yourself 30 minutes the first day to update the stats on that area of your responsibilities. Set up a once-monthly meeting with anyone else who is responsible for that area. Have them track the numbers and bring them in writing to this meeting to distribute with everyone.

Don't allow it to go longer than a half hour. Look at the metrics for that one thing compared to the last few months of both your radio station and your competition.

If you're trending up, bettering the folks across the street, give pats on the back all around, award rewards and set up the next update on that one measure one month from today. The better you're doing, the fewer meetings for all.

If you're not doing as well as you'd like on that set of stats, encourage everyone who has anything to do with it to spend some time later today thinking about what we could do to improve.

Set up a one hour meeting tomorrow to brainstorm, evaluate and prioritize all of the ideas you can generate. Save the last ten minutes of the meeting to assign duties.

At the next full staff meeting report to everyone on the issue and what needs to be done by the whole team to fix it.

Get back together next month and repeat.

Do what W. Edwards Deming recommended.

If you don't know who he is, it's time to start reading.

Or, reach out. A&O&B will help adapt his principles to your specific situation.

Programming By The Numbers

2014-11-08T06:50:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Radio Ink Magazine for being the impetus for this article by Mike, Becky and me. They published it yesterday. In case you missed it:

Nielsen’s recent report that for the first time in many years the country format national average shares experienced three down months in a row combined with Mike O'Malley’s almost-simultaneous blog post highlighting the A&O&B national country music database music acceptance trends has to be at least a little concerning for Brand Managers.

My post last week in reaction to just-published NuVooDoo format perceptual data showing that country radio success tends to be more music-driven than other formats, while the highest-rated A&O&B client stations have more personality-driven appeal than our “average” client and at the same time Dan O'Day and Becky Brenner have been enumerating the traits of the very best PDs, all of which no doubt made any sharp programmer sit up and wonder what success factors most deserve their time.

Perhaps (though I doubt it) there may have been a time when a radio programmer only had to worry about how their station sounded and “sounding great” was sufficient to be a winner.

Even all the way back back to when Gordon McClendon, Todd Storz and radio’s many other creative format and research pioneers of the last six decades attacked existing ways of doing things and won, they tracked specific numbers. You could hear those stats reflected in how their radio stations sounded.

Today’s complex media, lifestyle and demographic environments create a new problem.

There are so many things you could possibly track which could help you win or lose, the key to success is prioritizing them, understanding which ones drive you to where you need to be as well as what you need to do in your programming to bring them to life:

Ratings: Share, persons, total cume audience, heavy users percentage, daily, weekly, monthly trends.
Stream audience: uniques, average active sessions, listen live tune-ins, mobile downloads, mobile streaming.
Music: how many of the songs you play most often are “favorites” for a third or more of your target? How many are rated “positively” by at least 65-70%? How many are burnt to the point that double digit percentages of your target is tired of hearing them on radio? How many of the songs you play were “never liked” by similar percentages? Who do listeners feel plays the most? The best variety according to their tastes?
Formatics: what proportion of the entire market’s radio listeners understand your unique position and consider it valuable to them? Does your content drive usage at the exact times the rating methodology requires on a consistent basis compared to the other choices available?
Personalities: how likable are they face-to-face with those on other stations? How memorable are they? What are they being remembered for? How high are their negatives versus their positive images?
Outreach: how many non-commercial appearances do you do compared to your competition? How well do you take advantage of them in turning listener contact into loyalty, giving the folks who do see you reasons to listen immediately?
Reception: what are people coming in to talk about? What questions are they asking when they phone us? How many are positive/negative on specific things we do?
Website and blogs: Visits, page views, uniques, average session length, page views per session, blogs page views, video views.
Listener phone lines: what are they requesting? Complaining about? Where are they calling from?
Branding: how does your brand make people feel? How does that compare to all other stations you compete with?
Technical: can everyone you need to listen receive you with a powerful signal? How does your station compare to other choices?
Social: Facebook likes, people talking about this, engaged users, viral reach, paid reach. Twitter followers, following, tweets. Others: what percentage of your target uses each of the others? How viable in similar stats as above are you in the ones they make use of the most?
Database: Email database compared to your competition? Loyalty club members? Response rates? New %? % in metro? Contests vs non-contest players? Active in the past 90 days? Text club members, # of texts, response rates.
On air contesting: how important is it to your usage? Do you dominate the image or are you beaten by someone else?
Info elements: weather, news, community involvement and service. How important is each to your success and how strong is your ownership of the images that matter most.
Events: what percentage of your target knows what you do? Are they motivated to participate? What other events do they attend and would like you do be involved with? Where are the best locales for our external marketing? What % of our time is being spent in those places?

Ask any radio researcher. If you have the money and listeners are willing to take the time, they can design a perceptual questionnaire that tabs all of these metrics for you and many more.

The challenge for Audio Program Director/Brand Managers today is that every one of the time-proven data points still matters a lot, but the nature of today’s changing listening patterns means that many more new numbers you must track are also crucial to understand and compare in every heritage and new media competitive environment.

Prioritizing and measuring them all while acting on what they tell you about all station activities and endeavors in fun, creative, authentic ways so that it all feels and seems “easy” is what builds a lasting winner.

That is how you get to the number which has always mattered the most: #1.

Why Consumers Enjoy Radio In LA

2014-11-06T12:18:00.003-08:00

Nielsen Harris Poll, October 15-23, 2014, wordcloud presented to SCBA:

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it:

Listen critically at all hours and every day of the week and ask yourself how well your station lives up to these listener expectations.
Finally, does your radio station do so in unique ways and all your analog and digital media channels that belong exclusively to your brand and not to every radio station in your area?

The secret is that there is no secret.

We all know what the audience wants and expects.

The key is executing it better and more consistently than our proliferating competition.

From Borrell: Much More Than #4

2014-11-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

No doubt you've seen the trade press on a webinar last week anchored by researcher Gordon Borrell celebrating the 20th anniversary of the appearance of the first banner ad.

The prognostication presentation came as a result of a survey of 2,102 Small and Medium Business managers conducted in August & September 2014 combined with an analysis of Borrell’s database of marketing expenditures covering 3,000 U.S. counties.

Borrell wanted to know:

Is the Golden Age of Advertising coming to an end?
What will the media company and ad agency of the future look like?

In spite of the fact that the "big" reason for the study had only a little to do with analog media and much more to understanding the priorities of SMB operators as it relates to digital marketing budgets, there is no denying that Gordon and his team predicted along the way:

Half of the 15,433 radio stations currently on the air will cease to exist.
“It will be the weakest stations we believe that will disappear, reemerging in the form of promotions.”
"Local advertising as we know it disappears, but it reemerges in the form of promotions,”
New dashboard technology will cause long-term listening erosion for FM/AM radio.
“Inevitability” of radio-enabled smartphones.
“All of these businesses out there have the medium at their disposal to go direct to consumers.”
Sales reps won’t sell ads but help educate local businesses on how to create and perform promotions.
95% of advertising will be bought and sold programmatically by 2024

Since A&O&B friends Mark Ramsey and Tracy Johnson have already written prescient thought-pieces on what we need to do about #4, I'd like to focus on another very positive radio story contained in Borrell's data: 24% more of these SMB executives credit radio with providing them with new customers than television does!

“Radio tends to have a very strong beat on promotions. All of these businesses out there have the medium at their disposal to go direct to consumers.” -- Gordon Borrell

My take: allowing media buyers to convince us to move away from direct local, regional and national selling person to person toward numbers-based programming buying will devalue radio.

In the short run, it may save up to 30% of gross revenues by lowering cost of sales, but if radio polishes its immediate bottom line while failing to invest in face-to-face presentations of our ROI strengths vis a vis all other competing media, it won't even take ten years for Borrell's pessimistic prognostications to become self-fulfilling.

A full analysis of the results can be found in “2014 Digital Marketing Services Outlook” on the Borrell website.

(Not So) Smart

2014-11-03T15:45:00.001-08:00

It shouldn't take many words to make my point today. Take a look at my inbox and ask yourself which one you'd move to spam before even reading:

I normally read all of the "SmartBrief" messages, because they often carry great content.

Not this time. $25 isn't enough to waste even a few seconds of my time.

And, if you're the type who needs words to understand a point, read Steve Marx's latest blog post which will explain it all to you: How to Get Your Email Opened: Subject Line Best Practices

A Willing Buyer, A Willing Seller And A Clever Idea

2014-10-31T01:09:00.000-07:00

.. but I have a few concerns before we go too much farther down this road.

Whether Colorado Broadcasters Association President/CEO Justin Sasso or a Nielsen researcher/affiliate rep came up with the concept, it's a brilliant win-win in any case, as 300+ Colorado broadcasters this week at the Doubletree in Grand Junction got a look at some of the latest information from Nielsen on the use of television, radio and other media sources.

Sasso highlighted the value of television and radio as sources that many throughout the state continue to use in receiving their news -- despite of the many newer media platforms developing online. "We're trying to get people's heads around what's happening, instead of what they're reading in newspapers that these new media sources are taking over, and they're great, but in no way replacing radio and television." - News Channel 5's Jorma Duran

Inside Radio reported yesterday: "other state associations have used presentations to reinforce the power of broadcasting, these were the first to use custom Nielsen data for a specific state. Since many broadcasters in the state’s smaller markets aren’t Nielsen subscribers, the CBA commissioned Nielsen to crunch the Colorado numbers and license the data to its members to incorporate into their own presentations for one year."

Regional presentations took place in Ft. Collins, Denver, Colorado Springs and Grand Junction to packed houses in three days, pulling off four regionally customized presentations compiled using Nielsen’s vast database.

The data was licensed from Nielsen, at the CBA’s expense, for one year. CBA members will be able to access the Nielsen data and incorporate pertinent information into their station presentations.

My take, for what it's worth:

It would be wonderful if the 49 other broadcast associations and Nielsen are able to get together to do the same thing regionally in every single state over the coming months to become a fully regional "Audio Today 2015!"

Of course, it would be a nice additional source of revenue for Nielsen, repurposing stats from a new angle that have already been paid for by subscribing radio and TV stations.

For that reason, I hope the price can be kept low and as other state broadcast groups negotiate for them with Nielsen.

I'd encourage the rating firm to use some of that "found money" from these projects to be very transparent about how they manage to merge the very different PPM, condensed market rolling average and very small sample county by county diary data which doesn't come out until the following April, in the year after it was collected.

Hopefully by going to respondent level, Nielsen can give our local clients in small markets all over the country fresh, very reliable regional usage data in as close to real time as possible.

Are You Still Programming Like It Was 2008?

2014-10-30T06:26:00.003-07:00

For eight years nearly a hundred A&O&B clients have participated in the annual online "Roadmap" study, tracking trends in music, tech, non-music elements and other aspects of usage and images.

The attitudes change every year. For example, just seven years ago the average listener ranked country leadership and giving away big contest prizes as the #1 and #2 reasons to pick a favorite. Music quantity out-rated music quality.

Eight months ago, when we tabbed the 2014 results, the most important parameters in choosing a favorite changed radically:

Is your emphasis on key images outdated?

If you're still trying to bribe listeners with prizes and music quantity promises, you may be out of synch with today's audience, which now wants the best songs, more fun, friendly authenticity and good vibes compared to what they did just a few years ago.

There Is No "Average Country Radio Station"

2014-10-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

It's never a good idea to program your radio station using "national average" research trends.

A few years ago, A&O&B asked the listeners to almost all of our client stations:

Just for fun, I went back to that study and pulled out the local data for the ten top-ranked morning shows in their local ratings. No two of them mirrored the averages.

The one with the highest "DJ's" score's audience (24.41%) gave music 13.95% and "both" 61.65%.

The one with the highest "music" score (23.89%) had 16.38% DJ's and 59.73% "both."

The one with the highest "both" score (71.56%) had 16.64 primarily "DJ's" and 11.8% "music only."

All ten of these top-rated stations' listeners rated "DJ's" as more important than the average of the total sample, however. Only one of them had "music" rate higher than the national average.

I'd say that would make the odds about nine to one that you won't win in the morning in the country radio format without great personalities who your listeners rate far better than "national average personalities," but like any good coach you need to adjust the percentages you emphasize based on the caliber and mix of talent on your lineup.

Is Country Radio Too Dependent On Music?

2014-10-27T03:02:00.000-07:00

NuVooDoo's strategic researchers have been sharing their radio format national perceptual trending on their blog for several years. Recently, they've been probing the aspects of programming which "delight" the typical format listener.

If you ask what it was that surprised them other than a song, the answers tend to be contest prizes and funny morning show bits. Well-designed contests hit the mark, as does genuinely humorous comedy. While listeners rarely cite being pleasantly surprised by station imaging, we’re certain that there are instances of that among the 37% overall who were surprised in a good way by something other than a song in the past week.
-- Leigh Jacobs

Pop CHR ranks #1 in its ability to please the audience with music and country comes in a close second in that measurement.

However, when they dug into the most pleasing non-music content, country radio ranks next to last when compared to eight other music formats.

Even worse, country's most pleasing non-music surprises come about once a month, compared to the other format listeners who get their surprises daily or at least weekly when compared to our P-1 listeners.

If the passion for country's music softens, as it historically always has about once a decade for every music style, almost all other formats are better positioned in the minds of their core in contest prizes, funny morning show bits and other program elements besides music images.

There's never a better time to measure your station-specific performance in driving usage and loyalty with non-music content than right now.

Thank You, Supreme Court

2014-10-16T15:49:00.001-07:00

There are two kinds of consulting clients and A&O&B has our share of both, thankfully.

1. Those who are aggressive and always want to know the latest tactics and strategies that will help them gain an "unfair/stealth" advantage over their competition.

2. Management who does a great job selling marketing to others but believes radio is a terrific marketing medium which doesn't require any money be spent on external marketing beyond the "free" word of mouth that can be created by great over-the-air content and social media.

We love them both and have hundreds of case studies where both groups have been very successful doing things "their way."

Both #1 and #2 tend to believe that everyone else in broadcasting is like them. #1 always wants to know what secret things their competition did to make their numbers rise and #2 tends to deny that anyone else spends the kind of money that marketing can take.

I hope both of them saw this:

So, many thanks to the highest court in the land for their decision last week.

It's great to know that calling someone and inviting them to try a new radio station is not the same as attempting to sell them anything.

As a bonus, we now have legal proof for those #2's among us that their competitive managers at the Rotary Club who deny ever doing it may not be telling them the whole truth.

(Now, if only Canada's regulators would come to a similar conclusion.

I won't hold my breath...)