Richard Harker
by Richard Harker
One thing the record and radio industries have in common is the need to reflect popular culture. We both want to sell what is hot. For the record industry it translates into greater sales, for the radio industry it translates into better ratings. To identify and exploit the next Big Thing, every major company organizes elaborate planning meetings where futurists are consulted, trends and patterns dissected, and long-term strategies laboriously crafted. Yet, despite all the energy and expense put into the process, few companies successfully anticipate the next Big Thing. Too often it appears from a totally unexpected direction, unanticipated and poorly prepared for.
The truth is that the future cannot be accurately predicted. The safest prediction one can make about the future is that it probably won’t turn out like we think it will. Whether it is the weather, stock prices, or the next Big Thing, there is no way to determine what it will be, let alone know how to exploit it. That means that most long-term strategies will ultimately fail. A long-term strategy is only as accurate as the predictions within in it, and if most predictions are wrong, so are most strategies.
This is particularly true with radio. Radio prides itself on the ability to launch an entirely new format over a three-day weekend. Formats come and go with dizzying speed. It is unlikely that at the end of the year you will be competing against the same set of stations that you competed against at the beginning of the year. Even within formats, stations are hard pressed to keep up with music tastes. What is fashionable one moment becomes unfashionable the next.
Unpredictable change is not limited to music and music formats. Who could have predicted that a thoughtless aside would doom Imus’s career – and the ratings of numerous morning shows? And who could have predicted that several other morning shows would end similarly when caught in the downdraft. While it is easy to plan for the predictable, it is always the unpredictable that is the greater threat and the most costly to deal with.
Louis Pasteur once wrote, “chance only favors the prepared mind.” Pasteur realized that there are going to be unpredictable and unexpected events that unfold before us. No one can anticipate these events, but those who are best prepared for them will triumph over those who are not.
With the future so uncertain and the unanticipated more dangerous than the anticipated, does long term strategic planning make sense? Not really. A plan based on the belief that we know what is going to happen probably won’t succeed. Adhering to a rigid plan outlining what the station is going to do in the coming year is a prescription for failure. Rather than plan, prepare. Accept the inevitability of the unpredictable and unanticipated and prepare for it.
The critical difference between planning and preparing was dramatically demonstrated by radio’s response to 9/11. The terrorist attacks created a dramatic increase in the demand for news. The problem is that few music stations were in a position to deliver news. News had been eliminated from most music stations and the stations lacked even the most basic alliances to deliver news generated from other sources. As a result, AM news stations attracted record numbers of listeners. Long range planning assumes that things will continue as they have, so no long-range plan would include news on a music station that long ago abandoned news. Preparing assumes that something extraordinary might happen to dramatically increase interest in news so there should be a contingency to deliver news.
While the everyday decisions at a radio station pale by comparison to the aftermath of September 11th, the everyday decisions are no less unpredictable. Listeners flock to a format or sound for a time, and then without warning abandon it for another. Music tastes are constantly changing and evolving.
Inertia is a radio station’s worst enemy. Assuming that things will continue as they have and that only incremental change is enough to stay on top of things traps a station into planning for no change. Instead, develop a bias for action. Assume that in an unpredictable future, things will be different than they are today. What is hot today will soon be cold, and what is working today will probably not work in the future. Instead of defending today’s strategy, look towards changing the way things are done.
If the future is unpredictable and planning useless, then how does one prepare? To prepare for the future, we must understand today, and tomorrow, and the day after. The best preparation is to understand the marketplace and your listeners better than your competition. Once we understand the inevitability of change, we develop a willingness to make adjustments to constantly realign the station with its listeners. That does not mean we are any closer to figuring out what the next big thing is, we’re just in a better position to capitalize on it.
Research is our most important tool in this process. Research provides us a systematic mechanism to get feedback from our listeners and gain insight into listener behavior. Research tells us how the tectonic plates of fashion and pop culture are shifting, and what we need to do to benefit from these shifts. But it is only of value if the research is fresh, current, and timely.
Too much traditional radio research is built around the yearly strategic plan–the one strategic study that will guide us in the coming year. Does this make sense if the unpredictable and unknown is more important than what we can anticipate? No, in today’s rapidly changing environment, the traditional yearly research study is of little value. It tells us much about the past, but knowing the past does not help us understand the future. No matter how comprehensive, no matter how sophisticated, it becomes obsolete the moment a station changes format or a music trend reverses itself. Research must be ongoing and constantly monitoring the station, its listeners, and its competitors.
A traditional radio research project might be a hundred questions covering everything from music to personalities, to advertising. It tells us a little bit about many aspects of the station. The problem with this approach is that it is exploring the known. The morning show is known. Our music is known (we are testing our music, aren’t we?), and so on. We can’t ask about the unknown because it is exactly that–unknown. Since we don’t know what to ask about the future, it is better to ask the listener about herself. How does she use radio? Ask about the new things she’s discovering–even if they aren’t directly related to radio. Explore her life and how radio intersects with various parts of it.
To help a station, this can’t be done just once, or even once a year. It needs to be a continual process, because once we establish a baseline, what we are looking for are signs of change. What is changing about this listener that will impact her listening to you and your competitors? You may still not be able to predict the future, but you will be in a better position to prepare for it.
Now radio faces a brand new unknown – electronic measurement. With diary measurement, we could cater to a handful of “loyal” P-1s to deliver our quarter-hours. We didn’t care about how people actually listened to radio, because the diary had nothing to do with behavior and everything to do with recall and reconstructed listening. Now, for the first time, we are going to get a look at actual radio listening behavior.
Electronic measurement will force us to reexamine everything we do. We will have to rethink many of the ingrained beliefs that guide radio programming and marketing. What better time to realize that we can’t predict the future. We can’t plan for the future, but we can prepare!
Richard Harker is President of Harker Research, a company providing a wide range of research services to radio stations in North America and Europe. Twenty-years of research experience combined with Richard’s 15 years as a programmer and general manager helps Harker Research provide practical actionable solutions to ratings problems. Visit www.harkerresearch or contact Richard at (919) 954-8300.
