For all the talk about the impact of the PPM on radio, the meters are only in use in 48 of the top 50 markets. This means the majority of radio stations in the country are using diary measurements. For this week’s Programming To Win column, Pat Welsh asks what can diary market stations learn from the new PPM playbook? Welsh gives five programming tactics that diary markets can learn from PPM stations, as part of his look at the lessons the industry has learned from this new measurement reality.
By: Pat Welsh
Pat Welsh
As of November 2010, 48 of the top 50 markets in the U.S. are using the PPM. That means that radio stations serving over 70% of the population are measured electronically. But while a majority of the population listens to PPM-measured stations, a majority of stations are still measured the old fashioned way.
One natural question for programmers of stations below the top 50 markets is, how much should PPM tactics influence what they do? Programmers in the top 50 talk about PPM tactics and playbooks, but how should these things be handled in smaller markets? My answer is that virtually everything in the PPM programmer’s arsenal is just as applicable in the diary markets. I believe that implementing the vast majority of PPM-friendly tactics in diary market will help, not hurt, your ratings.
I’ve called the PPM the largest research project in the history of radio. PPM, while far from perfect, gives a truer picture of real listening, not reported listening as the diary methodology does. PPM had its own problems with respect to the sample, but the basic lessons apply across the board. I believe that by looking at the big picture in PPM about how people listen to the radio, diary market PDs (and those in territories that use other recall-based methodologies) can make their stations much easier to listen to, which will pay off in improved ratings.
If you agree with my premise, you must agree that actual listening has an effect on reported listening, but the reverse is not necessarily true. In other words, if you align your programming in such a way that more people actually listen, or that your existing listeners will actually listen more, reported listening should also increase.
The more these people actually listen to your station (because of improved music or improved tactics) the more loyal they should become. Also, the more that they are exposed to your station identifier and positioning, the easier it will be for them to recall your station.
The results that we see with the PPM are different – sometime substantially so – than what we were used to seeing in the diary. But the key is to remember that these new patterns that we see in the PPM are how people really listen to the radio. Learning more about how people really listen – and applying it in everyday programming – can’t help but improve a station’s performance.
As a reminder, here are some of the key changes in the listening patterns in PPM:
· Cumes are much larger than the diaries show – Your cume is really double – perhaps even triple – the cume that the diary results show. This is because there’s no more phantom cume, the difference between the people who know they listen to a station and those that forget to mention it.
· TSL is miniscule – Overall TSL is substantially lower than we see in the diary
· Listen occasions increase – Paradoxically, while overall TSL is lower, the number of listening occasions is higher according to the PPM.
· P-1’s make up a smaller portion of your audience – This makes sense if cumes are larger. However, this doesn’t mean that P-1s are less important; they’re still vital to the health of a successful station.
Consequently, here are 5 key PPM programming tactics that stations in diary markets should implement:
- Focus on a big cume strategy – The stations and formats that win are the ones with the largest cume potential. With few exceptions, attracting a larger cume is the quickest route to increasing share.
- Shorten and sharpen imaging – The dirty little secret of programming for decades has been that many imaging pieces (and spots) are too long. Listeners don’t absorb a long laundry list of details. Your job is to get them hooked on the benefits. Later, they can get the details from our website. Attention spans are short. If you want people to keep listening give them relevant information in short bursts.
- Make appointments with your listeners – The best way to increase TSL in diary markets (or AWTE as they call it in the PPM) is to create more tune-in occasions, not longer tune-in occasions. This has always been true in the diary. Getting listeners to come back more often is how you build TSL.
- Focus on converting casual listeners to P-1 listeners – While P-1s make up a smaller percentage of listeners in the PPM world (in both cume and QHs) than they do in the diary world, they are still vitally important to building a successful station.
- Break twice an hour with the breaks evenly spaced – The answer to the age-old programming dilemma of where and how often to break for spots came straight from Arbitron last year. Their analysis of successful stations in PPM markets showed two things: 1) breaking fewer times per hour is better than breaking more frequently for shorter durations and 2) all quarter hours are equal with respect to the amount of listening. Thus, the recommendation that you should spread the pain around by breaking across the top and bottom of the hour, or across the quarters.
Fewer breaks is a better approach since any break is an interruption and listeners penalize stations for more interruptions. Assuming 6-minute breaks, breaking between :57-:02 and :27-:32 (or from :12-;18 and :42-:48) means that each quarter hour would have 12 minutes of music and 3 minutes of talk. There’s no need to leave the first quarter clean; we now know that the illusion that more listening takes place in the first quarter hour is an artifact of the recall methodology.
And which accepted PPM tactics do not make sense in diary markets? Well, there’s really only one thing that I’ve hear on PPM stations that I would not recommend for diary markets: dropping station identifiers for segues. Many music stations in the PPM routinely segue two or even three songs without station identification, on the theory that this reduces potential tune out.
I’m not sure that I buy this even in PPM markets. I’m still a little uneasy when I hear a lot of segues. First, if the station ID is brief, it shouldn’t be an interruption. Second, top of mind does count in the PPM. Your station has to be top of mind to be one of the stations that a listener will select. There may no longer be phantom cume, but you still want to be one on the first couple of stations chosen, not the fifth or sixth.
The key PPM tactics are backwards compatible. They’re based on overwhelming evidence about how people really listen to the radio. And a positive impact on real listening will also have a positive impact on recall also. PPM-friendly tactics make it easier for people to listen to your station. It gives listeners more of what they want, in the way that they want to listen to it. This can’t help but improve any station’s performance.
Pat Welsh
SVP Digital Content
Pollack Media Group
Pat Welsh, Senior Vice President/Digital Content, Pollack Media Group, can be reached at 310 459-8556, fax: 310-454-5046, or at pat@pollackmedia.com.
