Coleman Insights has found that programming features on music radio stations contribute more to long-term brand development than to instantaneous audience building. This is the major conclusion of the “What Happens When Features Come On” study, in which Coleman Insights analyzed the performances of 15 programming features that ran on Philadelphia music stations, based on audience data from Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM) service. In addition, Coleman Insights compared these PPM-based results with listener evaluations of these same features collected in a 600-person, telephone-based perceptual study.
“What our findings are telling us is that stations should view features as tools for building their brands and developing their personalities and not as something that will give them an immediately bump in PPM-based listening levels,” said Coleman Insights president Jon Coleman. “When a feature truly succeeds, the audience growth happens over weeks and months and cannot usually be seen in a single airing.”
Coleman continued, “We reach this conclusion because audience tune-in specifically for features is inconsistent and not dramatic when it does occur. The reality is that few programming features truly move the needle and only the strongest performers have a real impact on audience behavior.”
Key findings of the study include:
1. Features on music stations have a wide range of impacts on immediate audience levels. The features examined range from one that outperformed its station’s average audience level in the same hour by 26% to one that had an average audience level of only 73% its station’s average audience.
2. Average audience levels during many features are often lower than those during previous non-feature content. Most of the features examined generated lower average audience levels than the levels their stations achieved during the programming content that ran before the features aired.
3. Features cause minimal extraordinary tune-in compared to normal programming. Tune-in levels in the opening minutes of features are only 7% higher than the typical tune-in that occurs during other programming content. Furthermore, tune-out levels in these same opening minutes are 9% higher than is typical.
4. Music features tend to perform better than talk features. Features based in music have average audience levels that are 101% of their stations’ averages during the programming content that precede them. For talk features, the comparable figure is a much lower 88%. Despite this finding, Coleman Insights was able to observe talk features that increased audience and music features that resulted in decreased audience levels.
5. Individual feature performance varies widely day-by-day. For both weak and strong features, performance is highly variable. For example, one feature examined attracted nearly ten times as many listeners on one day as it did on another day.
6. Well-known features perform better than those with lower Familiarity. Features that achieved the highest Familiarity levels in perceptual research have average audience levels that are 101% of their stations’ levels during the programming content that precede them. The least familiar features achieve 88% of their stations’ preceding programming content audience levels.
7. Highly evaluated features perform better than those with lower popularity scores. The features most likely to be rated as “excellent” by their stations’ Cume listeners achieve average audience levels that are 97% of their stations’ averages during the programming content that precede them. For poorly evaluated features, this figure is 87%.
8. Stations retain P1 listeners when they air features at a higher rate than they retain non-P1 listeners. Among P1 listeners, stations achieve audience levels during features that are 92% of the average audience during the programming content that precede them. This figure drops to 84% among a station’s non-P1 listeners.
9. Audience levels at the beginning of features are lower than in the immediately preceding programming. The greater tune-out than tune-in observed in the first minutes of features causes audience levels to drop universally, even for features that achieve high average listening levels overall.
10. Features that immediately follow commercial breaks start worse than those that do not follow breaks. Those that air immediately following commercial breaks achieve only 81% of their station’s audience levels during the preceding content. By comparison, features that do not follow commercial breaks achieve 89% of the station’s in-content audience levels.
This is the first study in “The Coleman Insights PPM Series: Mapping the DNA of PPM,” an ongoing series that takes a comprehensive look at how PPM reports the responses of radio audiences to different programming elements. Several additional major studies will be released throughout 2008.
The full report is available for download at http://www.ColemanInsights.com/PPMfeatures.htm.
Coleman Insights, headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina with offices in Los Angeles and Hamburg, Germany, is a media research firm that has provided its clients with deeper insights into music trends and branding opportunities since 1978. Its clients include hundreds of radio stations in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, including those owned by CBS Radio, Emmis Communications, Lincoln Financial Media, Spanish Broadcasting System, Citadel Communications, Entercom Communications Corporation, Grupo Radio Centro, Bonneville International Corporation, Sandusky Radio, Lagardère International, Radio One, Beasley Broadcast Group, Inner City Broadcasting, Grupo Prisa, Mid-West Family Broadcast Group, The Mondadori Group, Connoisseur Media, Corporación Radial del Perú, South Central Communications, SBS Broadcasting, Maverick Media, Entertainment Network (India) Limited and Hubbard Broadcasting.
