Analyzing The News/Talk Format In A PPM World
by Tara Servatius
Filling in at news talk stations across the country gives you a bird?s eye view of what is going on in radio programming in a post PPM world. As far as I can tell, there are two factions in news talk radio right now ? those to whom the last two decades have been good and those who want to generalize their programming to appeal to broader audiences. In the space of a week, I?ve had one program director ask for a politics packed show and another ask for a show that kept politics to a minimum. Both were striving for ratings success at news talk stations. Both were trying to please local audiences.
The first of news talk?s two factions accepts the fact that generally speaking, news talk radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh do the best in the ratings. Rush?s ratings may be down a bit in the post-PPM era, but there aren?t many alternatives. These stations program around Rush, filling their days with syndicated conservative talkers and local mostly conservative talkers. Their strategy is the one much of talk radio has clung to for the last two decades -- to attract and keep as much of Rush?s audience across the day as possible. If they?ve built a local advertising base, the ratings outside Rush?s three-hour time block might not matter much to the management at these stations.
If these stations are struggling, they are held captive by the fact that with their limited budgets, they probably couldn?t do it better than Rush and a handful of partisan syndicated acts, so why try? On a limited budget, there really aren?t many other options for these stations. These stations are happy with a narrow, very focused audience. Then there is the second group. These stations often have more revenue to play with than the first group, but not always. They want to move beyond the Rush model of radio, but wouldn?t dare (yet) to actually drop Rush from their lineup, because that would equal ratings disaster. At some of these stations, the pendulum has swung so far that they are running Rush at noon but largely ignoring politics (or controversial issues in politics) on their local shows unless it is part of major national breaking news.
The radio host job descriptions for these stations are virtually indistinguishable from those for rock radio morning shows. News talk?s migration over to FM is driving some of this and it is a challenging line to walk. Sound too much like rock talk without the music and you won?t make it ? without the music. Sound too much like hyper-partisan news talk, and you?ll baffle the 50 percent of the FM audience that never tunes in to AM radio and has never heard that style of radio before. Other stations haven?t swung quite that far, scouting for balanced, entertaining shows that incorporate discussions of the news, politics, sports and pop culture equally. Whatever their strategy, this second group is committed to broadening their product and attracting younger audiences, something news talk radio absolutely must do to continue to thrive over the next two decades as it has over the last two. You?ll hear this repeatedly on panels at radio conferences. Younger and broader.
The challenge is that no one on these radio conference panels seems to be able to define exactly what specific demographic news talk radio should now be targeting. News talk has always had a 35+, male-heavy audience. Should the industry strive to knock that down to 25+ males with younger, edgier shows? Are we willing to forfeit some older male listeners to do that? Or should the industry broaden the audience by pulling in women, too? And which women? What are their ages? Getting 35-year-old moms to listen to and enjoy the same programming a 25-year-old male would is an order so tall that it hasn?t been accomplished much since the pre-television days when families gathered around their radios at night. Or do we stick with the demographic that has been so good to us ? 35+ males -- and simply try to attract more of them with broader programming that is still tightly focused on that group but maybe less political and partisan?
Eventually the news talk industry will figure out who it wants to target, develop a formula for doing that and then find the talent to execute it. In the meantime, we are about to enter an era of vast experimentation. All of this means you really have to do your homework when filling in on a news talk station in a way you might not have had to even five years ago as the industry answers the questions ?What exactly is news talk??, ?Who exactly should we target?? and the toughest one ?What exactly is it that they want to hear??
Tara Servatius was a drivetime News/Talk host at NewsTalk 1110 WBT in Charlotte. She was recently exiled.
Reach out to her at her website www.taraservatius.com. Twitter Tara @TaraServatius Facebook
Add a Comment Send This Story To A Friend
