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Remember those American Police TV drama shows that used to open with a deep male voice of doom booming out the words “what you’re about to see is based on true files from police homicide departments. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”
Well, standby here are a couple of home truths, from radio listeners. Listeners have what we believe is an unusual perspective on the way in which we program and market our stations. From the listener’s perspective, they can’t understand how easy it is in their minds, for radio stations to get it right. In other words, provide them fairly simple solutions to what they actually want and need. So misunderstood can these listeners be that I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard programmers mutter phrases like “if only the listeners could understand that’s a great song, then we’d get more feedback from them.” Or “ we really deserved better ratings – that was one of the best contests we ever ran” as if contesting as a stand alone element pushes ratings through the roof.
Nova’s innovation of “Never more than 2 Ads in a row” started to break the paradigm listeners had of radio playing too many ads and interrupting their favourite songs with commercial messages that creatively, had no relevance to them. Okay it was a brave business decision on DMG’s part, but in the listener’s world, it wasn’t that hard to work out that’s what they wanted and were waiting for.
Now onto those “Living in the Listener’s World” reality checks. What you are about to read are based on true statements from listeners. Only the names and markets have been changed to protect the innocent. In other words, here are some home truths about radio via a different reality show we’ll call “Living in the listeners’ World”:
- What’s socially acceptable - "Why don’t radio stations understand there are times when I’m driving my kids around that I don’t want to have to explain the meaning of some of the crude words they use?”
Implication: This of course depends on the programming policy of the station, but sometimes pushing the envelope means your listener ends up pushing the scan button.
- Commercials – “50 minute music hours only mean they play 10 minutes of ads”
Implication: Listeners can add up too !
- Names of Songs "Why don’t they tell us the names of the songs?"
Implication: If music is so important (after all we sell its quality and quantity per hour) why can’t we provide details on air of what we are playing? It makes up the greater majority of content each hour on a music station doesn’t it?
- Traffic information – “tell me short cuts I can take – don’t tell me about the obvious delays.”
Implication: reporting on regular traffic trouble spots falls into the “statement of fact” file. Provide a real benefit – alternative routes to avoid the regular trouble spots.
- Best of breakfast bits – “if that’s supposed to be the best of what I missed this morning – no wonder I didn’t listen!”
Implication: ouch – this one really hurts, after all everyone inside the station thinks it was funny ! No further comment required.
- Repetition – “How come they report the same news, word for word, hour after hour?”
Implication: Copy that’s not updated and stories that are not given differing angles throughout the day add to the perception of repetition. It’s not just music that is the criminal here.
The list could go on, but space does not allow us to detail each and every comment. In fact I’m sure you have a few extras we could add to the list ( maybe like the listener who this week rang a client station and asked whether we could put Stan Zemanek back on air – this is a 100% true story!! I’m sure even Stan is watching over us having a laugh.)
One of the toughest parts of being an objective programmer is being able to step outside of the radio station and view the listener’s world as it is – not focused on the features of radio, but delivering on the benefits listeners potentially derive from listening. Think about this if you’re still not convinced - all of the above quotes impact our ability to increase Time Spent Listening, and that’s what significantly contributes towards increasing station share.
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