IS SPORTS TALK A THROWAWAY FORMAT IN YOUR CLUSTER?

HOW TO AVOID GIVING UP ON A SIGNAL AND JUST TURNING UP THE SATELLITE FADER

It’s a familiar scenario. You run a cluster; in there somewhere is that lower-powered AM at 13-something on the dial. It’s problem? Transmitter’s on but ain’t nobody home. Its format and/or signal cannot compete for audience or revenue. So you make the decision: Flip the switch and take that sad little tea kettle all-sports. Presto: No jocks, no local hosts, maybe no program director. Just 24/7 sports yak from the network. Excellent – except that you may be throwing away a valuable radio station.

There are many more stations in most markets than can ever hope to be competitive. The audience pie is sliced thin, which makes mining for revenue tougher than ever. Radio station owners and managers feel that to survive and thrive, they must concentrate their resources on their major players: the FM music stations and, occasionally, AM talk monsters that pay the bills. What to do with the “leftovers”, the anemic little stations that were included in the deals that brought the bigger, better signals into the group?

“Niche formats” are often the answer. These include Hispanic, religion, bartered programming – and all-sports. Some broadcasters decry the all-sports format but they miss an important point: It works because it provides its listeners with EXACTLY what they want to hear: all sports and access to important guests. Some listeners can actually get on the air on these national shows, which puts them on the same footing as any other listener, regardless of market size.

The major all-sports radio networks (ESPN Radio, Sporting News Radio, Fox and the others) provide solid, big-time programming at all hours of the day and night. What they DON’T provide is the only thing that truly keeps radio local, the one thing listeners can’t find on TV sports shows and the Internet, either: LOCAL CONTENT.

Addressing The Local Content Challenge

Fine, you say, that’s why we have these two funny guys in the afternoon. One goes by his first two initials and the other is called The Coach. They talk about the local stuff after Cowherd or Patrick or Rome or the others. So. Local.

Please.

Isn’t anything other than sports going on in your market? Do you seriously believe you will build an audience of any size that will attract significant revenue by talking only about point spreads on NFL games and what LeBron could have been thinking?

Or do you just want some reason to justify the transmitter's electricity bill?

The challenge is that you jumped into all-sports in order to save money. How can you provide local content without going back to a full staff again and embarking on that vicious cycle of too-much-expense and too-little-revenue?

You already have a terrific set of resources in place to help: the other stations in your group.

Rallying the Reinforcements

Let’s start with local news. You do have at least one person among your “brands” covering local news, don’t you? No, not the “giggle girl” who updates us on traffic and celebrity gossip on the morning show. An actual news person. No? Then it’s time to draft a voice from your roster to take care of news on the sports station.

That’s because the predominantly male, 35+ demographic of your all-sports audience lives in the real world of housing issues, unemployment, taxes, health matters and crime. They don’t just tune in the six o’clock TV news to watch the sports segment. They watch the whole banana. Which makes it absurd to think that just because they want to whine about Brett Favre doesn’t mean they don’t care what happens at city hall or who shot a cop on the west side last night.

And no, your local sports updates don’t count as news. They’re scores. News is news and there’s somewhere to insert it, even if only in one-minute blurbs.

Also somewhere in your jolly band of jocks is a DJ who loves sports, is incredibly knowledgeable about local sports issues and would be a great addition to your lineup, even in short segments. If you’re really lucky, that person might even be one of your female personalities.

Don’t Walk Away From Your Sports Station – Jump In!

When you add local elements such as real news and participation by personalities from your other stations, you vastly increase not only the value of your all-sports station to listeners but to advertisers. That’s because your salespeople now have something to sell that’s local and involved. Which is far more attractive to advertisers’ messages than national sports blab with a few local score and story updates.

Wouldn’t it be cool if, in 2011, your sales force could get away from calling only on sports bars and car dealers and be able to walk into almost any client or prospect with compelling reasons to buy your plucky little all-sports AM?

Why yes. I believe it would.

FRIDAY: A New Year’s Eve when a radio account executive and his client made a big difference to a lonely late-night DJ.

PPM RE-BAKES THE FORMAT PIE

PPM UPDATE, PART 2: RATINGS METHODOLOGY CREATES COSMIC SHIFTS IN HOW WE PROGRAM AN HOUR

An hour of almost any radio format is beginning to look a lot different than it has for the past sixty years. That’s because Arbitron’s PPM is revealing facts about how listeners use radio that would have astonished most programmers even a few years ago. The challenge for radio station managers and program directors alike isn’t to understand what’s being revealed but to make changes in format metrics that may be uncomfortable.

What we’re learning creates something of an Alice In Wonderland riddle: In which direction do a clock’s hands turn?

Well, duh, you might say: Clockwise.

Well, duh, the clock might answer: Not if you’re the clock.

In other words, some long-sacred – and previously obvious –  basics of the hourly program clock and its pie-shaped elements need searching and immediate updating.

Don’t Load Up the First Quarter-Hour

If your program director or consultant still insists on stuffing the first fifteen minutes  with the hottest songs and best promos, it’s time to bring up what PPM is reporting: listening is actually spread evenly throughout the hour. The glass-is-half-full view of this is that you actually have more opportunities to appeal to listeners and anchor your P1 listeners; the reverse, of course, is that you also have more chances to drive them away.

But wait, the good old ARB paper diaries indicated the first quarter-hour was the big palooka. Yes but they were based on recall. PPM captures it all. The paper diaries were wrong.

7:20 AM: Ah, the Good Old Days (Last Year)

Remember when twenty minutes past seven was the apex of morning drive? The big listening appointment that everything led up to? That’s when you welcomed the celebrity guest, gave away the money, made the big announcement. Ah, yes: 7:20 AM.

So last year.

A big revelation of PPM measurement is that cume has doubled. That’s not a ground-swell of new listeners, just a new way of measuring what was already there. Which means your station should be making listening appointments all day long. They don’t have to be for money or big prizes, just for unique, compelling content that only you can provide.

Giant Nuggets Mined From the PPM Numbers

Several other major revelations are coming out of the PPM reports. Radio station managers need to be aware of every one of them because this is too important a sea change to be left to program directors and consultants.

Here’s what we’re discovering from PPM that we didn’t necessarily know before:

• Cume is up and TSL is down – formats that benefit from cume seem to be doing better, although this is still in flux

• Monday is a big day – the paper diaries indicated it was Thursday but now there’s no need to hold off important programming or content until the week is well along

• More segues aren’t necessarily the answer for music stations – too many long sets without announcer input that really connects with listeners (which is not reading liners) can drive the strays straight to talk radio or satellite/Internet music providers

• Content separates your stations from everyone else – including the above-mentioned non-broadcast interlopers

Still In Flux

Plenty of questions remain. A big one concerns stopsets, how long they should be and where in various hours they should appear. A number of stations are already tinkering with their format clocks on this element alone. More time with the technology and its results will produce more precise answers.

By the way, PPM isn’t going away. Arbitron is once again alone in the big league of American radio radio audience measurement after Neilsen – stung by the defections of Clear Channel and Cumulus back to Arbitron – announced Monday that it is exiting the radio business in North America.

THURSDAY: Don't even think about planning Q1 and Q2 promotions and remotes until you do this!