Rethinking Communication Habits Of Radio Listeners

Maybe you have gotten into this habit: I text people before I call them to ask permission, I guess, to call at a certain time.

Turns out I’m not alone. This is the “new” phone etiquette. The Washington Post advised back in 2023 that you should “text first and never leave a voicemail.”

So I’m late to the party, but it definitely feels right. This is about communicating with people the way they want to be communicated with. Calling someone out of the blue feels like an intrusion these days. You called and now I have to stop what I’m doing to talk to you? This is my time for scrolling through TikTok, please don’t interrupt me.

This gets me thinking about how we communicate with our radio audience. In recent focus groups, I was struck by how many radio listeners told me that “text to win” contests make no sense to them. Much of their radio listening is done in the car, and they are not going to text while driving (or so they say). Sure, we can explain to listeners how to ask Siri to text or call our station—but are they really going to do that? They might think of that as too much trouble.

Maybe it is time to find other ways to engage listeners in our contests. Remember the good old days when listeners could enter a contest by giving us your phone number and we would call you? Perhaps we could give someone a longer period of time to call us back—”Hey Linda Davis, when you get wherever you are going, call us before 6pm and we’ll give you $1000… and if you know Linda, text her and tell her to call us.”

Finding better ways to communicate with our audience in the manner they want to be communicated with is an exercise in what we call “Outside Thinking.” Get your head out of the conference room and start thinking like a regular person. They are busy living life and dealing with all the commitments and distractions in their world. No offense, but we aren’t the most important thing in their lives. Stop expecting listeners to “make an appointment” to listen at a time of day that is impractical for them. Make things easier for listeners, and make it match the way they use or could use your product. Eliminate the friction, the obstacles that stand in the way of greater usage.

Photo credit: Shutterstock/GaudiLab

I hear iHeart promoting the Talkback feature, an easy way for listeners to send a message to one of their shows. Offering one button to play a contest. Can we make our apps so intuitive, so fun, so easy to use, so addictive that they are the next TikTok?

Maybe becoming the next TikTok is too high of a bar, but you get the idea. By now you might be asking this question: Why is he obsessing over text to win contests at a time when we have much bigger problems in attracting and retaining listeners? That’s fair. Jon Coleman would call this a “right of the decimal point” issue—meaning it only has the ability to generate small changes in ratings outcome, not like bigger “left of the decimal point” actions. But if we can take this “Outside Thinking” exercise a step further and apply it to almost everything we do, maybe we can move the needle in a bigger way.

For example, think about what your listeners are doing around dinnertime. They are probably looking for something good to eat. How about a quick feature on the best local Uber Eats or restaurants? After dinner, they are likely hunting around looking for something to watch on Netflix. How about a nightly feature about what’s good on Netflix right now?

I’m not saying these are the left of the decimal point solutions we are looking for. But it is time to start the process of thinking like this. Wanna talk about it, call me. Wait—text me first to set up a time!