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Your Brand’s Strength Or Weakness? It’s A Matter Of Perspective.

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“Your greatest strength begets your greatest weakness” is a quote typically attributed to William Shakespeare. The idea is that excelling in one dimension may reveal a vulnerability in another. For example, the military that develops overwhelming superiority on its northern flank may find itself under-prepared for an attack on its southern flank.

While one may think of this theme as a linear pathway from greatness to decline (e.g., your strength exposes a weakness, that weakness is exploited, game over), it’s often more complicated than that. In many cases, your strength and your weakness are ever-present, and the latter does not completely counteract the former. The restaurant that is great for breakfast may have a hard time convincing people that it’s also great for dinner, and the restaurant that has a line out the door in the evening may not get much traffic in the morning—but each restaurant may thrive because of, not in spite of, its area of specialization.

In the audio entertainment space, competition from online streaming services and podcasts has disrupted the local radio business. For radio, curating a shared experience is both a strength and a weakness. Successful radio stations are really good at programming a compelling flow of music and/or talk content for a mass audience. But, when your job is to curate for many, you inevitably cannot satisfy all. Online streaming services and podcasts can swoop in and fill a need that radio cannot, giving consumers exactly what they want when they want it. Do you want to listen to the latest Zach Bryan release ten times in a row? No problem. Do you want to listen to a year-old SmartLess episode from start to finish, off and on over the course of your day? Done.

Most radio stations don’t play Zach Bryan, but streaming offers endless listens. (Photo credit: Blake Harbison/Unsplash)

Yet, our consumer research reminds me of the fine line between weakness and strength. Mass-appeal curation makes radio vulnerable to on-demand competition, but mass-appeal curation nonetheless remains a perceived benefit of radio. For example, here is a selection of music-related comments from recent studies in which we’ve asked people to describe why they sometimes choose radio over other options:

“It’s fun to just listen to a radio station and not think about what song to play next.”

“I like to hear new things instead of my same old playlists.”

“Sometimes I would rather be surprised by what’s going to come up next rather than use music I choose.”

“They play songs I forgot about that I like.”

“I like how music just comes up, and I don’t have to figure out a playlist.”

“Sometimes I want to hear new songs that are popular, or something I haven’t discovered yet.”

“Because I get bored of my music and don’t know what to put on”

“I like to be able to just turn on the radio and let it play without having to choose a song.”

A key perceived strength of radio is that the songs are picked for you. (Photo credit: Fast-Stock/Shutterstock.com)

“When I want to be surprised by what I listen to”

“Sometimes I can’t decide on what I want to listen to, and I end up spending 20 minutes going through the song library trying to pick something out. If I throw on the radio, I’ll hear something I wanna hear.”

Are you a radio executive who spends a lot of time worrying about the downside of curation versus on-demand? I challenge you to refocus some of that energy toward considering how to best demonstrate and promote the upside. It may be more fruitful than you think. After all, your weakness and your strength are often two sides of the same coin.

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Your Radio Station No Longer Needs To Follow The Herd For Music Decisions

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More than 20 years ago, I was the Program Director of a Hot AC station in Missoula, MT. KMSO-FM was, and still is an independently owned broadcaster. When you’re in a position like that, you don’t have a lot of time to think about much of anything. You’re being pulled in a million different directions—morning show air shift, production, imaging, promotions, music scheduling, and so on. Every Monday, I would receive a list of songs from my consultant that I should consider playing. And, once or twice a year I would receive an updated list of recommended gold titles. I didn’t have access to Mediabase. It would not have been much help as none of my competitors were monitored. My market was too small for Jon Coleman and the team to conduct a FACT Strategic Music Test, and the budget would have been challenging. And callout? Forget it. All I had was a list of songs, my gut, and the opinions of everyone in the building, most of whom were not in the demo. I would have given anything to have access to some kind of music testing data to help me make my decisions and to tell the sales staff, “No, you’re wrong, this song tests.”

Programming a music radio station is truly a unique blend of art and science, yet the “science” was not accessible to many for too long. While local research using your own listeners is optimal, we knew there had to be a middle ground when that option isn’t available.

Over the past several months, Coleman Insights rolled out FACT USA, a series of reasonably priced music tests available for Mainstream AC, Hot AC, Country, Alternative, Classic Hits, Classic Rock, and R&B. The sample for each study includes 300 respondents, recruited nationally, with quotas set for age, gender, ethnicity, and region.

Logo for FACT USA National Music Test

For contemporary music-focused formats, CHR, Hot AC, Country, and Alternative, we offer Integr8 USA, a nationally recruited “callout” service, and like FACT USA, it has all the data quality reviews and procedures that Coleman Insights has developed in 10+ years of online music testing.

Integr8 USA Transparent Logo

What does this mean for you? No more guessing. No more following the herd.

Photo credit: Meiqiu.Photography / Shutterstock.com

Mediabase is a great tool for programmers. It can give you an overall sense of what is happening in your format. But have you ever thought about all the “behind the scenes” factors that influence those spin counts? How many of the stations in the panel that you’re reviewing have conducted a recent music test or have access to callout data? Do they have the same competitive situation as you? Does their strategy match yours? Is a song receiving extraordinary spins because the artist is coming to town or the record label is pushing it? You may be looking at streaming data, but some songs get a big jump in streaming that isn’t sustained and may not be great choices for the radio.

If you have the budget to conduct a market-level music test and/or callout research with your listeners, do it! There is nothing better than making decisions based on the opinions of your listeners. But, if you don’t have the resources to do that, we believe FACT USA and Integr8 USA are outstanding options to consider. You can best interpret and filter the results as it pertains to your station’s strategy.

Don’t be like me 20 years ago, following the herd with all art and “hopeful” science, hoping that other stations have it right. It’s time to select the songs you play with confidence.

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Why Does My Radio Station Need Callout Research?

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Today’s Tuesdays With Coleman blog first appeared in The Sands Report, the Alternative music newsletter written and published by Richard Sands.

At Coleman Insights, we think of callout research and streaming consumption data as valuable, and complementary, tools for those making decisions about which songs to add, drop, or change in rotation. Our goal is to provide a little primer on callout research and help explain why many successful programmers consider it an essential resource.

What is callout research?

For those unfamiliar with it, callout is a form of consumer research that routinely measures your target audience’s opinions on the new, current, and recurrent titles you are playing or are considering playing on your station. Typically conducted on a weekly or biweekly basis, each survey measures the familiarity and popularity of 30 to 40 songs. We want to learn if the listener is familiar with the song, and if they are, we then want to learn how much they like or dislike it. We can look at different segments of the audience, and we can track and trend these data over time. Additionally, metrics such as Hitcyle®, Burn, and Fit may be used to gain deeper insights on the titles being tested. Though this form of research is still commonly called “callout,” at firms such as ours, there is no longer any calling being done; instead, the surveys are conducted online.

Understanding the “whys” of behavior

As mentioned earlier, callout research data and streaming consumption data complement one another. In general, think of consumer research, such as callout, as a tool that helps you understand the motivations that drive consumption. I like to say that consumer research helps us understand the “whys” of behavior.

For example, Nielsen data may show that a radio station’s audience is smaller than desired, but why is that? Is the station off the radar screens of potential listeners? Is the format lane too limited in its appeal? Is the music recipe off in some way? Consumer research can answer these questions.

Photo credit: Shutterstock/fizkes

Along these lines, streaming consumption data may indicate that a song does not have much traction, but why is that? Do people not know the song? Do people know the song, but feel kind of “meh” about it? Do people know the song, but completely dislike it? Callout research can provide clarity.

Callout research is designed to generate success in radio

Of course, it is valuable to know which songs are being heavily consumed in streaming, just as it was once valuable to know which songs were being heavily purchased in physical, and then digital, form. That said, it is important to keep in mind that the songs that are most successful in streaming, like the songs that were most successful in sales, are not necessarily the songs that will be most successful for your radio station. It’s not that one system has it “right” and another has it “wrong”—they’re just different.

With the on-demand streaming chart, we’re essentially looking at the positive votes of those who have chosen to hear a song. Evident at the top, for example, may be the enthusiastic streaming of a popular artist’s new release.

But in radio, the full range of opinion matters because everyone listening to your station gets a vote. They vote by turning on and sticking with your station, or they vote by turning off or changing away from your station. And it’s impossible to give everyone exactly what they want. Thus, successful programmers are skilled in the art of coalition-building, creating an appealing shared experience for a large community of listeners.

In this radio paradigm, one can see how tremendously helpful callout research can be. When curating a radio station’s recipe, it is essential to understand both the positive and negative values that each song brings to the table. If, for example, you have two songs with equally passionate fan bases, but the first is disliked by 5% of listeners while the second is disliked by 25% of listeners, the latter would be a riskier choice that you would want to handle more carefully.

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi

Callout also helps you identify up-and-coming songs with low familiarity, but high evaluations among those who know them, giving you the confidence to get behind them and help build their familiarity. And on the other side of the lifecycle, some callout services have measurements such as Hitcycle or Burn that help you determine when it’s time to slow down the rotation of a song.

Additionally, a key benefit of local callout research is that it can be precisely focused on the audience you choose to target. Your market, your demographic criteria, your listeners, your competitors’ listeners—whatever parameters best align with your strategic needs. (While local callout research may be the gold standard, I should note that we also provide a national callout service, Integr8 USA, as a more budget-friendly option for high-quality callout data.)

In closing…

While callout has been the topic of the day here, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that callout is the only tool that matters when it comes to making decisions related to new music—but it’s certainly one that I’d want to have in my toolbox.

 

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20 Different Radio Formats with Top 5 Success

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One of the things I love about my job is the broad perspective gained from helping a diverse array of clients in a diverse array of situations: different places, different demographics, different content types, different platforms. We’ve always felt that such a variety of experiences allows us to better serve our clients, as learnings build upon one another, sometimes in surprising ways.

Our work in radio takes us to many markets, and while there are certainly themes and trends that are widely evident, it’s also fascinating to see how different the successful brands of one community can be from the successful brands of another. If you think there’s a one-size-fits-all profile of winning in radio, let’s go ahead and debunk that theory with a year-end review of Nielsen Audio ratings. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s define “successful” as being a Top 5 station among 18- to 54-year-old persons, Monday-Sunday 6a-12m, across the average of January 2023 through December 2023*.

Looking at 15 of the largest markets in the U.S., we find no fewer than 20 different formats represented among the Top 5 stations in these markets. There are CHR, Hot AC, Mainstream AC, and Soft AC stations. There are Urban Contemporary, Urban AC, and Rhythmic/Throwback stations. Classic Hits and Adult Hits are represented, as are Classic Rock, Active Rock, Alternative, and AAA. Also included are Spanish Contemporary, Regional Mexican, and Tropical, plus Country, Contemporary Christian, News/Talk, and Sports. In almost any format, if you’re looking for a success story, you can find one somewhere out there.

The format path to Top 5 radio success doesn’t point in one direction. (Source: Shutterstock/StunningArt)

Of course, this doesn’t mean that any format will work in any situation. Market demographics (e.g., age, ethnicity) and culture (e.g., sports teams, music history) play a role, as do competitive dynamics (e.g., others in the format, others in adjacent formats). Moreover, even when you’ve got a format with high potential, success can hinge on the proper execution of day-to-day programming and marketing.

It’s not easy to get into the top tier of performance, but isn’t it kind of encouraging to know that there are many different ways to potentially get there?

*Source: Nielsen, Average Persons 18-54, January-December 2023, Monday-Sunday 6a-Mid

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Advertising is More Valuable Than Premium Subscribers?

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I read an article recently that surprised me. It explained that Netflix’s “Basic With Ads” subscribers are more valuable to Netflix than ad-free subscribers who pay $15.49 a month. I always thought the streaming business model depended on us all paying higher and higher subscription fees. Turns out, all these services want us to watch ads instead of paying higher fees.

Why? Because these companies learned that getting us to watch “premium ads” generates more revenue than monthly fees.

Photo credit: Koshiro K/Shutterstock

I personally love the ads. They give me a chance to get another drink, explain the show to my father-in-law, and use the bathroom. Plus, I’m learning about all kinds of new medicines that I didn’t even know I needed.

Now let’s consider the radio industry, which continues to rely on the ad model DSPs find so valuable, yet we seem to despise so much.

An unhappy program director may say “The commercials are killing the station!” But do listeners really feel that way?

We can argue another time about the legitimate issue regarding the quantity of commercials, but I have learned that commercials are expected on the radio—and maybe even quietly enjoyed by people like me.

So, what if we embraced the commercials? Worked hard at making them premium. And recognize that they are more valuable than any “subscription fee” we might someday be able to extract from an audience through our apps or other means.

When launching a new station, one of my mentors would include dummy commercials, mainly for concerts and new releases. He did this for two reasons: first, it gave the station credibility. Second, it created an expectation for commercials. Premium ones at that. Of course, he controlled the production and spent the time making them sound great.

I’m not the world’s biggest sports fan, but I have been enjoying the commercials I see during the baseball playoffs. Who doesn’t love a winged talking/singing Buffalo with his hooves on the bar? And it won’t be long until we have another round of Super Bowl ads to talk about.

There will always be advertising that radio stations are asked to run that is out of their control. But there are plenty that are within their control. Rather than focusing on how to not run them, maybe the focus should be on how to run and present them in a more appealing way.

Ads can be great if we make them great. And, as streaming services have learned, with the right ad structure there is real value to the bottom line.

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Thank You and (Mostly) Goodbye, All Access

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April 1989. The Gavin Report, a music industry trade magazine, is holding its annual convention at the St. Francis Hotel in my hometown of San Francisco. Milli Vanilli’s “Baby, Don’t Forget My Number” is going for adds in the newest issue of the publication, which features several testimonials to make you smile, including a quote from the acting PD of Emmis’s CHR KXXX/San Francisco (X100), Gene Baxter. One year later, Gene would become better known as “Bean” on what would become the iconic Kevin & Bean show on KROQ in Los Angeles.

I was 16 years old at the time, living the dream. I started as an intern at X100 the previous summer, and by this point, I was board-opping the respective countdown shows hosted by Casey Kasem, Rick Dees, and San Francisco legend “The Duke” Dave Sholin. I worked with the promotion team at remotes around the Bay Area, answered the request lines each afternoon for Chuck Geiger, and when I wasn’t working, made mock airchecks in the production room.

When the Gavin Convention came around, X100 had a suite and you didn’t need a ticket to access it. No more than 15 minutes following my arrival in the suite on the first day of the event, Jane Child (who had a song rising up the charts called “Don’t Wanna Fall In Love”) was sitting on this teenager’s lap.

Life was pretty good.

It got better. My entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, as I noticed attendees had either a badge or what looked like a wristband you’d see a hospital patient wear. I had neither, only access to our suite. The next afternoon, a friend and I drove to hospitals around the Bay Area searching for the perfectly colored and shaped wristband using the cover story with nurses that we needed it for a high school project. Our plan worked. We got into every single Gavin party the next night.

I already knew I wanted to work in radio, but that sealed the deal.

The Gavin Report went out of business in 2002, with Radio & Records following in 2006. But All Access, which started as the early adopter of online music industry journalism in 1995, was always there throughout my career. I started programming radio stations in 1995, and All Access has been my daily companion ever since (with the same username and password for the entire 28 years!) I read Net News every day the way some people play Wordle. It’s just a fabric of the routine.

There are simply so many moments All Access has been a part of. It proclaimed my “Leap of the Week” when I jumped from market #69 (at the time), Syracuse to market #4, San Francisco. During the three years during which I left the industry and wrote a book, Joel Denver didn’t hesitate when I asked if he’d promote it in All Access. Of course, he did. It was never a question.

I sing in a radio industry band that was formed at a Radio & Records convention what seems like a lifetime ago, led by record label executive Danny Buch, who spent most of his career at Atlantic Records. The band would play off and on at conventions, sometimes at off-campus sites like Tipitina’s in New Orleans and House of Blues in Los Angeles. If you were a band member, you would inevitably get a call from Danny every few years reenacting the classic Blues Brothers scene: “Jay, we’re getting the band back together.”

The radio industry band at its last performance, at All Access Audio Summit in 2019. Also the last time I would see Tony Banks from iHeartMedia, who passed away in 2021, bottom left.

In later years, the inconsistency of the band morphed into consistent annual appearances at All Access’s Worldwide Radio Summit, later renamed the All Access Audio Summit. It was understandable but heartbreaking when the conference went virtual due to the pandemic. Not just because the band didn’t play of course, but because radio conventions are a metaphor and mirror image of what’s so special about the industry and why we love it so darn much. It is best when it is live, in person, intimate, and fun. Over the years, I reconnected with former colleagues that I’d lost touch with and made new friends and deep connections. All Access did a tremendous service by hosting these events.

All Access Audio Summit was the inspiration for our Contemporary Music SuperStudy, a large-scale music test that tracked contemporary music tastes across the United States and Canada, which Coleman Insights produced for four years. We knew we wanted something special and actionable that we could debut at the event because it was worthy of the time and investment.

Contemporary Music SuperStudy

Anytime I’ve ever sent the All Access Net News team Coleman Insights stories, I’d almost always get an email back from Joel, in all bold font, usually within about five minutes, proclaiming that it will be featured in First Alert. I’ll miss that.

I think all of us at Coleman feel some semblance of kinship with All Access because of how we’re structured. In the case of All Access, it has competed with other solid trade publications that usually have a much smaller staff roster. All Access was always committed to hiring multiple professionals covering multiple formats. We too, have a significant team of professionals devoted to providing outstanding service to the industry amongst competitors that often have a fraction of the people. We believe it’s important and Joel has always believed this.

Although today is essentially its last day, I was pleased to read that All Access won’t be going away completely and will continue providing limited services. We all know it won’t be the same, but we also collectively appreciate the gesture.

So thank you, and (mostly) goodbye, All Access.

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Will Radio Take Big Swings Like Major League Baseball?

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Our company has season tickets to the Durham Bulls, the iconic minor league baseball franchise fictionalized in the 1988 box office smash “Bull Durham”. The team, the AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, is almost always good. They’ve won the division in three of the past five years, six of the past ten years, and 12 of the past 20 years. They’ve claimed the league championship in four of the past six years. It’s a great team that plays in a great ballpark.

And yet, every single year, when I’m picking out which games to attend, I end up having versions of the same conversation with members of my family and several friends.

“I like going to the ballpark and having a hot dog and a beer, but baseball is so boring.”

Major League Baseball was clearly aware of this perception. What’s somewhat startling is that they did something about it. They did something big.

The most dramatic of baseball’s changes for the 2023 season was the universal adoption of a pitch clock. When there are no runners on base, pitchers have only 15 seconds between pitches to throw the next one, 20 seconds with runners on base, and 30 seconds between batters. In the past, it wasn’t unusual to see pitchers touch their cap, kick some dirt, chat with the catcher…pretty much take their grand ol’ time. Now by attaching penalties to pitch clock violations, the game should, in theory, move much faster.

And it is.

The average game time is 2 hours and 39 minutes, about a half hour shorter than last year. The games aren’t just shorter, they move faster. As a fan, your mind has less time to drift to…oh, I don’t know…your phone? You’re more engaged in the action. And though one might think baseball was always exceptionally slow, game lengths are more in line with where they were in the 1980s.

The pitch clock isn’t the only major rule change. The bases are larger, meaning the edges of first and second base are closer, meaning there’s more stolen bases and better odds of making it without getting thrown out. The number of stolen bases per game is the highest since 1999. A ban on crowding infielders on one side of second base has increased the batting average for balls in play for left-handed hitters. More hits=more exciting, right?

This is a lot of change at once for an organization (Major League Baseball) that was founded as the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1876 and has a lot of tradition.

Although it’s early to be making profound proclamations, attendance and viewership are up.

It took Major League Baseball a very long time to take a good hard look at what likely was coming up in its perceptual research: “Baseball is boring.” As we often say, images are like icebergs. Slow to develop, slow to erode. The only way to change an ingrained negative image is to take big, bold swings that everyone will notice. Small fixes will not move the needle.

Baseball won’t fix the boring image overnight, and they may never do so. They’ve taken the big swings and made the changes, but now they must tell everyone about it or only the loyalists will notice. At least they’ve now got a fighting chance.

Just two years before Major League Baseball was incorporated, Gugliemo Marconi invented the “wireless telegraph” in his parent’s attic, an invention we all know led to what we now know as radio.

A form of entertainment with deeply ingrained perceptions, many of them negative, steeped in tradition, with new entertainment options swirling all around.

Taking a deep dive into perceptions of the medium would be a great first step.

Then, take big swings and tell everyone about it.

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Does Radio Give You Goosebumps?

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One of the best feel-good stories of the year originated in one of my favorite places I’ve ever lived and worked, Buffalo, New York.

You may recall Buffalo was blitzed with a snowstorm this past Christmastime that was massive even by Buffalo standards. When it was all said and done, the city absorbed 51.9 inches of snow in four days amongst hurricane-force winds. 36 of the 51.9 inches fell in a 24-hour period.

It was during this storm that Alexander and Andrea Campagna got a knock on their door and discovered 10 stranded South Korean tourists whose van was stuck in the snow outside their house. At first, they asked for shovels, but quickly realized there was no way to dig the van out. They called a towing company, the police, and the fire department, but nobody was going to be able to get there to help.

What followed was a beautiful act of generosity. The Campagnas invited the group to stay over two nights in sleeping bags, air mattresses, and in the spare bedroom. They cooked meals together (turned out the Campagnas were huge fans of Korean food and had many Korean ingredients and a rice cooker on hand). They watched an NFL game on Christmas Eve. They shared the unexpected experience together until the group could be picked up on Christmas Day.

A few weeks ago, the Campagnas were invited to Seoul as guests of the Korea Tourism Organization, where they were treated like heroes, receiving a 10-day all-expenses-paid vacation to thank them for their generosity.

Thinking about this story gives me goosebumps. And it got me thinking about the role radio stations can play in giving people this feeling.

We know from our research that attributes like “picks you up and makes you feel good” are often strongly desired by listeners. It’s not unusual to see attributes like this have some of the most mass-appeal measures, across age groups, genders, and ethnicities.

You may hear radio stations sharing feel-good stories every so often, perhaps in morning or afternoon show segments like “Tell Me Something Good”. But which radio stations or shows are making feel-good stories?

In a world with its share of negative news and a desire for feeling good and deeper connections, I’d love to hear about shows and stations that regularly facilitate feel-good stories in their community in different ways, from reuniting family members to supporting a local business that’s in trouble.

Let’s celebrate the power radio has to give us goosebumps. Share the stations and shows we should acknowledge in the comments.

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Radio Needs to Shift the Overton Window

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Coleman Insights Senior Consultant John Boyne and I first heard of the term “Overton Window” around 2006, and the person who taught us about it was Glenn Beck. We were doing work for Beck when he was on Headline News. Beck explained how the Overton Window changes and redefines perceptions of what is acceptable content, and how that changes as creators push for an edge. He noted that if the “acceptable” is never challenged, the content becomes bland. The show eventually loses its edge and becomes vulnerable to new content creators. He was committed to not letting that happen to himself.  He was intentionally moving the Overton Window, shifting expectations of political talk. Glenn Beck predicted the Overton Window would continue to move, making certain things that seem shocking, out of place, or off-brand become in-brand because the Overton Window has moved.

The shifting of the Overton Window in political talk began with the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. The FCC Fairness Doctrine, which began in 1949, required holders of broadcast licenses to present opposing sides of controversial issues of public importance. With the 1987 debut of The Rush Limbaugh Show at KFBK-AM in Sacramento, the Overton Window began its shift. Before Limbaugh, listeners expected purely unbiased information on radio talk shows. For some time after the end of the doctrine, talk stations generally featured guests from both sides, even if not required to.

When moving the Overton Window, you must do it in little increments. If you go too far, the whole thing blows up and it doesn’t work. By focusing on an incremental shift, you change perceptions over time and it’s not as controversial or startling to the audience.

Notice how TikTok has moved the Overton Window for social media while Instagram and Facebook have lost their luster. It is difficult for brands to remain relevant when things are changing all the time.

Radio had a 60- or 70-year advantage of nobody moving the Overton Window in any significant way, though individual stations have done things to change perceptions individually. But with no one dramatically changing expectations, stations often got caught being stagnant.

Radio as a medium also has an expectation or image with consumers. For years, radio was the place for “my favorite” music, for entertaining talk, news, political talk, and more. But, because of a lack of dramatic change in individual stations, the Overton Window in which the medium lived (consumer expectations for how and where to consume music, entertaining talk, political talk, etc.) was not changing either.

New innovations and platforms have shifted the perceptions of music media. But radio is not part of the discussion often enough because it has not been a part of the changing of the Overton Window’s expectation set for music and talk. Radio as a medium is no longer offering what many consumers expect for radio’s type of content. It has allowed other media and their offerings to move the window.

For radio to change the Overton Window, it must do things that are dramatically new and maybe even risky. It must do things that podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok either cannot do or are not expected to do. And yes, live and local is important, but it’s not nearly enough on its own.

It needs to be game-changing.

The Overton Window of the medium’s expectation will only change when enough stations in enough markets are doing something different. Noticeably different.

Look how the Overton Window is changing television. The expectation has shifted so far away from linear TV to on-demand content, it has left broadcast TV in a hugely precarious position. Networks get incremental success with certain shows, but they don’t change the expectation of what broadcast TV can do.

Here’s Apple changing the expectation of what a smartwatch can do. It’s changing the Overton Window of the product.

So how does radio move the Overton Window?

For starters, every radio talent needs to be an expert at triggering emotional connections. If radio is to reach younger consumers, it needs to be live during times when teenagers at least have the chance to be listening.

And it needs game-changing content.

By all accounts, putting an NSFW show about medical and relationship advice for teenagers and young adults on an FM Alternative station sounds like lunacy. But Loveline, which aired on KROQ in Los Angeles from 1983-2018, attracted new young listeners and shifted the Overton Window for the station and format as it spread in syndication.

We’re talking about changing the expectation of an entire medium. It’s not easy, and may not be possible. It will require some very big thinking.

But picture a radio medium that significantly changes its value proposition. Then, picture someone outside of the business, a well-known celebrity with significant credibility with younger demos talking about their love and passion for radio and changing expectations of what to expect from the medium.

That’s how to get the Overton Window to shift. It is the way forward.

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Rethinking Radio Bonuses

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Every program director and air talent at a radio station is well-versed in how bonuses work. Get good ratings, you get a bonus. Get bad ratings, you don’t get a bonus (and perhaps get shown the door). There are many reasons why we should rethink the way radio rewards its employees, not the least of which being the sample challenges and wobbles of Nielsen ratings. But there’s also a more important philosophical reason to reevaluate radio’s bonus system: it’s rewarding the wrong thing.

Evidence from other businesses suggests that bonuses based on institutionalizing certain behaviors will achieve better consumer response than just focusing on the ultimate goal of more customers or more profit. For radio, that means focusing on a show’s behaviors, not ratings. To achieve ratings goals a show needs to have a well-thought-out process and perform behaviors that are proven to achieve a better show, and then better ratings will follow. Management should consider rewarding those processes and behaviors.

It’s no secret that we’re big believers in playing the long game. Building strong brands takes time and patience, but big brands are well rewarded. Weaker brands can manipulate ratings in the short-term with things like tactical contesting, but that takes substantial budget allocation. There’s one problem with tying the bonus of a PD or air talent to ratings–they usually can’t count on the budget being there, and they don’t get to make that decision. And yet, they’re penalized for it when it’s not.

The San Francisco Giants generated some buzz in the baseball world in 2021, when it focused on process and behavior over results, and the team notably overperformed expectations.

If the Giants treated their players like radio treats its talent, it would focus only on statistics like Batting Average and Earned Run Average the same way radio focuses on ratings. But rather, the team intensely focuses on the things that can truly affect positive change.

In other words, because batters were taught to more carefully select which pitches to swing at, they struck out less and walked more. This resulted in more runs scored because there were more players on base.

Rather than trying to find traditionally strong home run hitters, players were taught to focus on the specific launch angle of the ball off the bat (hitting the ball at specific angles was proven to be the sweet spot for hitting home runs) rather than randomly swinging away trying to get their bonus by hitting more home runs. When the Giants focused their players on launch angle, not on the number of home runs hit, the number of home runs went way up. They were the MLB leader last year in that category (and in one of the hardest ballparks to hit home runs).

What if, instead of bonusing morning shows on ratings, you bonused them on the process? Here are a few thought starters on what behaviors could be rewarded:

  • The process followed for planning and generating content for the show, rather than just saying “get better ratings” or “get a 5 share” (the equivalent of pushing for them to hit more home runs.
  • The number of meetings team members had in a week with the belief that more meetings mean more and better communication.
  • The subjective quality of the show as rated by the team themselves. Let them set their own level of show expectations.
  • Their willingness and expression of building the station brand versus just focusing on their own show.
  • Their ability and discipline in following a strategic plan.

Great shows wouldn’t be demoralized when a bad ratings book hits because they’d know they were doing the job that was expected of them. Management would be supporting them, rather than only focusing on ratings.  If building the station and show brand and ratings is truly a long-term game, support the morning show and keep them focused on the longer term.

Should bonuses be focused on behaviors rather than ratings?

What if morning shows were more involved in the strategic process rather than just being the domain of management? What if a station allowed the show to do their own research as a signal that you have their back? Would they accept and respond better to consumer feedback if they participated in it? What if they designed and conducted a study like a mediaEKG Deep Dive to test specific pieces of content? And, to the point of this blog, what if they were bonused based on how they responded and adjusted the show based on what was learned?

Radio thrives when it rethinks the way it’s done things. Maybe it’s time to rethink bonuses.