3-23-2013
I'm always amazed at the number of talents who envision their audience as a group of avid fans who listen to their show in its entirety. Morning talents who say ?I did that in the 6 a.m. hour? don?t understand how many different audience groups rotate through their show.
You can do a bit or feature in the 6:00 a.m. hour, then recycle it again in the 8:00 a.m. The people who heard it at 6 are gone. Ratings reviews show us that a typical four-hour show may have four to eight audience groups. The audience really turns over that many times, and this impacts the packaging of the show.
Knowing your audience?s commute times provides a way to package on-air information and even commercial breaks.
In Arbitron diary hard-copy book markets, look to the turnover report to see how many audience groups you have in a daypart. You can compute turnover by dividing daily cume by daily AQH.
Talk formats operate on a 10-minute cycle that restarts the show constantly. That helps avoid recent tune-ins being left out of the program.
PPM-metered ratings show the audience arrives and leaves every minute. As you listen to your stations, regardless of format, how long does it take a random tune-in to become familiar and ?invited??
Know what your competitor is up to on their morning show. Monitor your top morning show competitors and understand what they do, and why.
Programming Crisis: Slow the Audience Turnover?
Common comment from GM: The morning show doesn?t work ? not local, not fun, not funny, not entertaining.
If the morning show doesn?t relate, fix it now before the fall ratings sweep begins in less than a month (September 12). If you?re not sounding local with lots of relatable content, you?re no better than XM. Stations need more than a jukebox. It's about being live, local, relevant, and part of the community 24/7.
Reach out to Tom Watson at 310 - 498-5990 or Jtwatson225@yahoo.com
(8/24/2013 11:42:08 AM)
Tom's comments - like so many other PD's and consultants - presumes the talent is speaking directly TO an audience member or a segment of the overall audience. (This, logically, also EXCLUDES a lot of folks during any given break.)
Not only is this not true, it will never be true. Not in a one-on-unspecified medium like radio.
Further, presuming that such a position is accurate will accomplish only one thing: It will make the talent and the programmers stone-cold nuts.
While Tom's generalizations about improvement are pertinent, I believe any attempts to go beyond those by using the traditional approaches and strategies radio now applies are behaviors that will only guarantee fittings for "rubber room" garb.
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