In this week’s Programming To Win column, Nielsen Audio’s Jon Miller examines the best practices that can put your station in the best position to succceed. Miller says all great radio stations are a blend of good execution and a strong position.
By Jon Miller, Director of Programming Services, Nielsen Audio
Jon.miller@nielsen.com
It’s hard to believe that more than a decade has passed since Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio) first started using the PPM to measure audio consumption electronically across the country. As we are re-branding into Nielsen Audio, I was looking back over the history of our measurement and noted that it was actually the early 1990s when the PPM first began the development process. Much has changed since then. We now know more about how people use and consume audio than ever before. At the same time the lineup of competing sources that battle for audience’s finite hours of media consumption has never been more crowded.
That has led to a huge amount of time and energy being invested by programmers, researchers, consultants, and even folks from Nielsen Audio like myself in the effort to decipher the keys to ratings success in the world of electronic measurement. One informal study after another has attempted to quantify the impact of commercial loads, where to run your stop sets and how to structure your clocks. Meanwhile there were endless debates about what the talk to songs ratio should be.
And while we’ve learned a great deal about how to put together a great radio station by using the right tactics, the truth is we’re never going to find a definitive, one-size-fits-all map to success, because it doesn’t exist. There are best practices that can put your station in the best position to succeed, but every market and every competitive situation is different which means there is no single silver bullet. That’s because all great radio stations are a blend of two things: good execution (everything just mentioned above) and a strong position.
Striking a Balance
A simple way to think about this concept is to imagine a 4-share station as a pyramid. A quarter of that share is due to the execution, while three-quarters is a product of the station’s position in the minds of the listeners.
Right off the bat, this concept can be hard to swallow for many of us in the programming world simply because we are trained to focus on the execution part of the ratings pyramid. Electronic measurement has only sharpened the industry’s concentration on that part of the equation, but more and more I’m beginning to see a common theme amongst many highly successful stations across all formats and markets: long-term ratings success is achieved through a balance of execution and position.
Winning the Off, to win the On
The challenge is how to put this concept, that position is at least as important if not more so, than execution, into actionable steps. One way is consider the idea of what we’ve come to call at Nielsen Audio, “winning the off to win the on.”
The ‘on’ part of the equation is where the execution means the most. In other words, once your listeners have tuned in, all of the things that go into what we define as execution come to bear: playing the right music, breaking at the right times, promoting upcoming content in the best way possible, etc.
The ‘off’ part is farther outside of your direct control. Winning it is really about figuring out why your audience tunes in your station as opposed to a competitor or another medium altogether. At 7:45 a.m. when one of your key listeners is getting into the car to begin their commutethey are faced with a moment of truth when it comes to entertainment; what to listen to on the drive to work. There’s a lot of competition for these moments: your morning show, the competing morning show, NPR, streaming radio through their smartphone, and many others.
At that point, your execution has little bearing on what’s going to happen next (they haven’t even turned on the radio yet!). Instead, how your listener feels about your station and where it ranks in their mind compared to all of the other media choices staring them in the face is what will make the difference. We call that ‘winning the off’ and it’s where everything youdoto build a brand and become part of that listener’s daily lifestyle will hopefully pay off with a tune-in.
The Art of Storytelling
There are many elements that go into having a strong enough brand to ‘win the off.’ One factor that is consistent across all mediums that plays a role in ‘winning the off’ is the ability to tell a great story that listeners can relate to. Look no farther than cable, where one of the highest rated show is about zombies. Well, it’s not really about zombies, they just happen to be the backdrop. What makes AMC’s The Walking Dead successful is the core storylines are about love, loyalty, and overcoming loss, things that we can all relate to even if we don’t have flesh-eating walkers chasing us around every corner.
Keep that in mind the next time you’re choosing what material to talk about or what promotions to undertake. You can never go wrong by dialing it back, keeping it simple, and talking about things we can all relate to. Doing so will establish your station’s position as a reliable source for the most entertaining and engaging content, and help you win just as many offs, as you do ons.
To learn more about winning the off and, in particular, the art of using great storytelling to build your brand, join me at the Nielsen Audio Client Conference & Jacobs Media Summit in Baltimore December 11-12 where we will be hearing from an all-star lineup about how to create content that cuts through.
Reach the Nielsen Programming Services Team at NielsenAudioProgramming@nielsen.com or at www.arbitron.com/programming
