The Corona Virus Edition
Mike Stern
By Mike Stern, Jacobs Media
It’s strange right now to write a column called “Programming to Win” when it’s tough to know who we’re trying to beat. Radio stations have always faced competition from down the dial. Then came online music services and now, with people working from home, even Netflix and Disney+ are competing for a share of the audience’s attention during the day when at work listening favored radio.
That’s a lot to take on every day, so let’s start by going back to basics and investigating why listeners come to your radio station. Every year in the annual Jacobs Media Techsurvey we ask radio listeners – more than 46,000 this year – to tell us why they listen to AM/FM radio. The results are telling.
After being easy to listen to in the car and radio is free, many of the reasons listeners tune in (highlighted in red above) revolve around having an emotional connection with the station; it keeps them company and gets them in a better mood.
With that in mind, let’s look at some ways to fulfill that role while the world is being turned upside down.
Talk About the Experience, Report on the Disease
One of radio’s most important roles is keeping listeners up-to-date with credible, factual, information. Hopefully, your station has a system in place for disseminating relevant information.
What most radio hosts do, though, is talk. They talk about the biggest topics that are on their audience’s mind. Right now, there is only topic. Here’s where the distinction between the situation and the virus is important.
Across the country nearly every market is dealing with some level of stay-at-home quarantine order. That is a universal experience everyone is sharing. What most radio talent are good at is finding the unique, fun, human side of stories and talking about them – content your listeners can relate to, enjoy, and expect from your station. No one is better at this type of content than radio hosts. It’s what builds that emotional connection between listeners and their favorite radio stations.
Those are the experiences radio hosts should be talking about.
Support Your Community
Because radio is so locally focused, another area the medium excels in is helping our communities in times of crisis. Here are a few groups to consider focusing on:
- Medical professionals: Doctors, nurses orderlies, and other health care workers are risking their lives during a frightening challenge. often with limited access to necessary protective gear. Find a way for your station to say thank you.
- Grocery store personnel: While many are working at home, lots are working in groceries, pharmacies, and other essential businesses, making sure we get food, prescriptions, and other necessities. They didn’t sign up to be first responders but circumstances have put them in these roles. This is another opportunity for your station to say thank you on behalf of the community.
- Delivery drivers: Whether it’s truck drivers still out on the roads hauling cargo, Amazon drivers and mail people delivering packages, or restaurant workers bringing over dinner, this is another group of people who deserve recognition.
There are also millions in need right now. Now, it’s all about COVID-19. The story starting to take precedence over the next few months will be the economy – the financial challenges people in your market are facing.
High unemployment means a strain on food banks and other services supporting the most vulnerable in your city. Look for ways to support and help charitable organizations continue to carry out their important missions.
Be A Distraction
Your listeners are scared, but they’re also bored. They are stuck inside and looking for something interesting, but not too challenging. Here is another place where radio stations can excel and build on their close relationship with listeners, by keeping them entertained.
Today more than ever, listeners are looking for a unique distraction – not just a playlist of tightly rotated, high-testing hit songs. By no means is this a suggestion to throw away the format and allow anarchy to take over your airwaves. But within limits, now is the time to bring back the type of listener interactive features stations used to be famous for.
Maybe start with the simplest form of interaction – requests, the original crowd sourced programming. Beyond that, consider taking suggestions for theme sets, top cuts from a specific album or a Facebook or website poll about which new song listeners are most interested in hearing with a payoff at a set time.
With hosts broadcasting from remote locations like their closet, executing these sorts of features can be more challenging now. But with the interactivity of social media and app messaging, there is little doubt the creative people working at stations across the country can come up with new, unique, and interesting ways to keep listeners occupied by allowing them to participate in music selection and programming.
Double-check Your Digital
Your digital assets are more valuable now than ever. With reduced commuting and many people working from home where they may not even have an actual radio, driving them to your stream on their favorite device is of utmost importance.
Yet, many stations are still providing disappointing digital experiences for their audiences. Take the time to monitor your station’s programming across all your digital channels: website stream, mobile app, and smart speakers. There’s a good chance you’ll find the experience isn’t nearly as satisfying as what’s delivered by the transmitter. Take the time to clean it up.
At the same time, go beyond the usual ways you promote your station’s digital experience. Too often, we let our hosts slide when it comes to talking about our digital assets because it’s covered via production.
It’s time to change that equation and work with talent to include authentic mentions of listening via digital options. Their endorsement of online listening could make a big difference in how much your station will get to be a part of the listeners’ lives over the coming weeks and months.
The COVID 19 pandemic is an unprecedented event in our lifetime and our industry. Everything from the best ways to stay healthy to the mood of your listeners is changing rapidly.
It’s possible that between when I write this column and its publication, something will change that makes some of this advice less useful or even more relevant. However, what won’t change is that, in good times or bad, listeners look to their favorite radio stations for companionship. Apply that filter to every programming decision you make, and you’ll always be going in the right direction.
Be safe.
