Pat Welsh
by Pat Welsh, VP Music & New Media, Pollack Media Group
2007 is the year when the world’s last analog entertainment medium makes a big leap into the digital world. I’m not talking about HD radio, but a more immediate technological change: electronic audience measurement through the PPM. Electronic measurement is inevitable, with agencies and advertisers demanding it. It’s already used for television and Internet, so radio is going to have to adopt and adapt.
Arbitron put the Portable People Meter on the fast track a while ago, but they’re officially rolling out PPM-based ratings in Philadelphia for the Winter. Even the most optimistic projections show that it will take a few years for electronic measurement to take over, but now is the time to start thinking about what it means for programming.
What we know so far
There’s been a lot of interesting information coming from the PPM trials. Studying these results will help us understand how things may change.
You’ve got more listeners than you think – They just aren’t listening as long as you think they are. All the PPM trials show cumes up and TSL down. In fact, the key will be how much lower TSL really is. Colleagues overseas tell me that tests in some other countries, with various electronic measuring technologies, have shown an alarmingly large TSL drop, leading to lower overall listening levels. What remains to be seen is if we will be able to use the knowledge we gain from “real” listening data to increase TSL.
We know when and where they’re going, we just don’t know why – One of the most exciting (or frightening, depending on your point of view) aspects of electronic measurement is that listener behavior can be tracked minute by minute. We’ll be able to see when listeners tune out and where they go, but we won’t know why.
What causes tune out? Was it a bad song, or did the person have to go to a meeting? Did Mom, driving her 8 year-old to school, turn off that morning show bit because it was offensive, or was it just distracting? The information that we get will tell only part of the story. It will take some patience and forethought to interpret the changes in behavior.
Real-time music testing? – Will stations take their music test budgets and instead plow that money into Arbitron’s tools to analyze minute by minute audience turnover? Many PDs are anxious to be able to overlay audience flow data with their music logs to determine which songs or styles cause the most tune out. But again, we have to remember that human behavior is not so cut and dried.
One of the most interesting studies (“What the PPM Can Tell Programmers About Their Music Choices,” available on the Arbitron web site) showed, among other things, that the panel’s behavior changes over time. Some hit songs, in the early stages, caused people to tune out in droves. Later, when the song had more exposure, listeners were willing to stick around. What would have happened if the PDs looked at the initial data and dropped the song? Again, we can see when people tune away, but we won’t know why. Also, the PPM won’t tell us anything about when someone cranks up a song.
Long-term effects of programming changes – The PPM uses a panel that will keep the device for 6 months at a time, as compared with diarykeepers who keep a diary for just 7 days. As it stands now, when we try to track the affect of a particular programming feature or stunt, we’re just guessing. Looking at week-to-week, month-to-month or trend-to-trend results is a joke. Besides the small sample size, you’re looking at a different group of people each week. It’s comparing apples to oranges.
Recommendations
There are a lot more questions than answers at this point, but here are a few things to think about as we move into this brave new world:
Reevaluate everything – We have to reevaluate all long-held programming principles to decide if they are artifacts of the flawed recall methodology, or if indeed they do have an impact on maintaining an audience. For example, trial results show us that the 1st quarter hour is not the most important quarter hour; all 4 are equal in importance. Also, the data shows that morning drive is not the biggest daypart. What other long-held beliefs will we have to change?
Search for benchmarks – The biggest risk in having minute-by-minute data is overreaction. It’s going to take some time before we know what we’re looking at. What is a good audience flow? What’s the “right” number for tune out when a new song comes on? How many people should we expect to lose when spots come on? Will that change by daypart? How much more likely are people in cars to push buttons than people who are at work? Fewer break with more spots or more breaks with fewer spots? What’s the listener tolerance for DJ talk?
Think cume for strategy and TSL for tactics – In general, we’ll need to program for a broader audience, not a narrower one, due to the overall cume increases. I suspect that we’ll see a lot more attention being paid to threading core and cume appeal music into the mix to ensure the widest cume appeal without boring the P-1s.
Meanwhile, the definition of TSL will change fundamentally. With diaries, TSL is more a function of the number of tune-in occasions, not the length of each listening occasions. The PPM will mean that we have to change that definition. Yes, a certain percentage of TSL will still be just a matter of how much available time a person has, but we’ll eventually get hard data on what causes people to push buttons.
The biggest taboo? – Over the years the topic of what commercials cause tune out has been taboo. Most stations didn’t want to touch this and risk losing business. But that’s about to change with the PPM. It shouldn’t take long before we can find out that certain spots do cause listeners to tune out. But, what do we do with this? How do you tell an advertiser that his (commercial) baby is ugly? Does this open Pandora’s Box if we let advertisers see how often people tune out?
Top of mind still counts – The idea that you won’t need to market or do promotions is wrong. The leading brand is the top of mind brand. Hiring someone to drive around your market with really huge speakers blasting your station will not be enough.
Summary
Not everyone is happy about making this move, but we’re going to have to get used to it. Inevitably, certain aspects of the PPM methodology and technology will change to meet everyone’s needs, but the move towards “verifiable” ratings can’t be stopped. This is an exciting time to be a programmer and we all need to get out in front of it. To get informed, there’s a wealth of information on the Arbitron web site.
– See more at: http://www.fmqb.com//article.asp?id=332110#sthash.oQfnHPsi.dpuf
