Rich Van Slyke
by Rich Van Slyke
“Here’s $20,000 a month to promote the morning show!” That’s what your GM just said and you can’t believe it! 20 grand a month! Just imagine how much it’s going to help your ratings! Stop! Put your pants back on. Your GM is not giving you an extra 20 grand. But you don’t need it to raise ratings. The truth is, you already have 20 grand a month or more to promote the morning show. With promos and imaging on your station. Here’s the math. Let’s say the average rate on your station is $50 per spot. And you run 14 morning show promos a day, 7 days a week. That’s 91 spots x $50 a spot. $4,900 a week. WOW!
So, let me ask you. Does your morning show do a daily promo? When the morning show goes to do the daily promo, do they realize the station is spending 20 grand a month to promote the show? If they knew, would they try harder to produce good promos? Do you want to get the most for your money? If your morning wants to get the most bang for the buck, they should be teasing the audience and making specific listening appointments on each promo. “What is the simple secret to better sex? We’ll tell you tomorrow morning at 7:30. Set your car radio to 93.9 so you won’t miss it on your way to work.”
Now I know what you’re thinking. Promos only speak to regular listeners. Our P1s. These are the people that are already listening. We need to reach people who are not listening. You can’t do that with promos. You need expensive TV spots and billboards. Not really.
On the Arbitron Web site, there’s a study of Top Performers. Radio stations that get great ratings book after book. Top Performers have higher Time Spent Listening than average stations. TSL is calculated by multiplying occasions of listening or “Tunes Ins Per Week” X “Time Spent Per Tune In.” Everybody knows if you boost TSL, you will get higher ratings. To boost your total TSL, you must boost your “tune ins” and boost time spent per occasion of listening, know as “time spent per tune in”.
Top performing stations have higher number of tune ins per week than average stations. 32% higher. But Time Spent Per Tune In is only 9% higher than the national average. It’s the NUMBER OF TUNE INS that makes the big difference! How are Tune Ins driven? Contests and Appointment Listening! What’s more, top performing stations get most of their TSL from P1s. That’s the people that are already listening! WOW! You can boost your ratings by getting the people who already love your station to listen on more occasions. How? One way is to make morning show promos that tease listeners to come back and listen tomorrow.
Jerry Tarrants, PD at WGRD in Grand Rapids, home base of the Free Beer and Hot Wings Morning Show, describes how ’GRD promotes the morning show with station imaging. “For the promos we do a short (usually hilarious) show blurb, followed by a tease for the upcoming show. I also include the morning show in other station imaging as: well… see the video where Producer Joe gets pelted with paintballs… in our Web site Promo. The plan for 2007 is for ’GRD to lift Free Beer and Hot Wings catch phrases (and there are a lot), and incorporate them into regular station imaging throughout the day to strengthen the brand outside of mornings. We also use show blurbs for promoting for Saturday Morning ‘best of’ shows.”
So next time your morning show bitches about having to do a daily promo, tell them what a great opportunity promos are to raise ratings! If you don’t do a promo that teases your next show, you are throwing money down the drain!
What are the elements of a great morning show promo? According to Media Consultant Ed Shane: “I think the ‘here’s what you missed’ promos can only do so much — although they’re good at offering a sample of the morning show’s style. I like to pre-sell content and specific tune in times. “Think of the word ‘Nude.’ You’ll need it for tomorrow morning’s Brain Buster Trivia Challenge at 8:20. Or, if there’s an interview pre-recorded, use a clip. (Clip: “And I think it really sucks!”) Host: “Who said that? You’ll know tomorrow morning at 7:25.” Or even more specific. (Clip: “I’ll never do it again.”) Announcer: “What is it Justin Timberlake refuses to do? Find out tomorrow morning at 7:45 when he spills it all to the Morning Flakes.”
Television is great at teasing. Very often you see a TV promo for a show that suggests there will be bodily injury. “Whoa, that’s my favorite show and somebody gets nailed? I gotta watch it!” Then, of course, when you see the show there is no injury. But you were convinced to tune in by a great promo. Doing great TV teases takes extra effort, but a :30 TV promo is worth thousands of dollars! The extra effort must be effective. It must pay off or they wouldn’t do it. The networks are not in the habit of throwing away money, so they take the time to make a great tease.
And you should too!
Beyond promos, regular liners are the essential way to promote the show. All that is needed is to say the name of the show. They can be very short. What your going for is a high frequency of mentions. It’s the constant repetition that makes morning show liners, and all advertising for that matter, effective. They’re so short you can use them over and over. Produce a boatload and run the shit out of them! Here’s a couple of my favorites:
* Comforting the disturbed, disturbing the comfortable! (show) Tomorrow on the way to work. (station)
* Where uncontrolled behavior… is encouraged! (show) Tomorrow on the way to work. (station)
* If you want to find more lines like this, google “bumper stickers” or “one liners.”
Promoting the morning show with imaging comes down to three main things.
1. Producing daily morning show teasers that ask people to listen the next morning.
2. Including elements of the morning show into other imaging like web promos.
3. Running short clever liners that mention the name of the show and when to listen.
Can you mention the morning show too often? Never! Does all the imaging have to be funny? No. Will it pay off? Absolutely! Remember, the easiest way to increase ratings is to get the P1s to listen on one more occasion. To boost TSL. Don’t let your 20 grand a month go down the drain. Instead, put it in your pocket!
Rich VanSlyke is a Voice Guy on 40 stations including KQQL, KDKA, WNOR, WBUZ, WKLR, WKQZ, WKZQ, WRXW, WIXO, KCBL, KKPL and KZOZ! His new website is www.richvanslyke.com. Email richvs@bellsouth.net
