It’s no surprise that Ross on Radio readers love the “Lost Factor” columns about how and whether songs endure that I’ve been sharing for the last two years. It’s also an easy guess that they love stories about heritage stations like KROQ Los Angeles or WHTZ (Z100) and WCBS-FM New York. But your other favorite ROR stories this year also included an article on radio formatics (specifically recurrents), a challenging article on “Radio and the National Mood,” and stories about listening recommendations and audio tourism, including Australia.
In my internal monitoring of how readers are responding to Ross on Radio, I’ve tended to look at week-by-week activity on each issue. That’s my report card both for whether there was a big well-received story, but also how well I’m doing at providing a mix of articles. ROR has a wide audience of readers in every format and every department of a station. With “Lost Factor,” I added more music writers and non-industry music lovers. So I’m trying to offer a mix of stories that:
- Honor radio programming history;
- Diagram radio programming’s current playbook;
- Show a way forward for “radio,” on the AM/FM dial and in whatever form it takes next;
- Think differently about hit music, then and now.
This week, I looked more closely at the individual clicks for particular stories. I also asked my content partner, Lance Venta of RadioInsight, where the majority of Ross On Radio articles appear, for the stories generating the most clicks on the site. Those numbers reflect which stories were the most shared, particularly those that found an audience beyond industry readers. RadioInsight’s click rates for ROR stories can be four times what I see on a story in the week or two after publication.
There are many contextual factors in whether I have a hit story. Was it in an issue with another hit? Did I publish it more than once? What time of year was it published? During summer months, I usually have to highlight an article twice to make sure everybody saw it despite vacations. Then again, when KROQ is involved, readers will apparently open a story at poolside.
Some stories are targeted to a narrower audience—articles concentrating on a particular format; nuts-and-bolts stories on radio music scheduling; some of my geekier music analyses. Any story is a success if it generates response from the readers I wrote it for. I’m particularly happy when I get the call from the large-market programmer who never reached out before, but tells me, “We were just discussing this.”
I’ve written or published more than 100 stories already this year, not including re-blasts. The most-read stories are not the full story of how readers interact with the newsletter. But I still thought you might appreciate this inside glimpse. My stories with the greatest number of opens so far in 2022 were:
- Lost Factor’s All Time Top 100, in which we finally looked at the endurance of all hit songs between 1960-99.
- The Number One Music AM on Earth – Stories about radio outside the U.S. aren’t always the most read, but this tribute to Australia’s now-defunct 4KQ Brisbane introduced a lot of readers to a new favorite station, at least for a few months.
- KROQ and Kevin Weatherly’s Return – Weatherly had been back in the building for less than two months when I spotlighted KROQ, WNYL (Alt 92.3) New York, and KBZT (Alt 94.9) San Diego. An earlier Fresh Listen to KROQ and rival KYSR (Alt 98.7) was just outside the top 10.
- The Z100 Worst to First Documentary
- Did Radio Destroy the Recurrent? – A “playbook” story that I was proud of and that spoke to programmers in a wide range of formats.
- Targeting Younger Listeners – Prompted by an international super-session of programmers at the Canadian Music Week conference. Another vital topic that I’m glad found an audience.
- Intriguing Stations of 2021 – One of the tentpole stories of the newsletter every year. It was part of my biggest issue, as well as the one that is always most quickly opened by readers.
- The Return of Radio’s Best & Worst – I’m glad you were happy to see this roundup of my recent listening, along with those observations that didn’t need a whole column. It’s now a recurring feature; here’s the most recent.
- What Classic Hits Stations Added This Year – When KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles began to play “California Love,” it also got the attention of non-industry readers who made it one of Radioinsight’s most-read ROR stories. An earlier story on why I think Classic Hits should play some ‘60s music again got a similar number of readers last December and January.
- Music and the National Mood – Looking at how songs like “Living on a Prayer” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” continue to resonate in our troubled times was the hardest story of the year to write in the wake of Uvalde, and thus one of your most gratifying responses.
Radioinsight’s figures show a few other hit stories, some still generating clicks well after their publication date:
- The Top 100 Lost Factor Songs of the 1970s – Originally published in December 2020 and holding up better than some of the songs we write about.
- KUBE’s First and Last Episodes – Stories about Hip-Hop and Rhythmic Top 40 are often among my least clicked because of the relatively small number of programmers in those formats. But the launch and sign-off of KUBE Seattle were watershed moments in Hip-Hop’s moment of mass-appeal dominance and this story took on a life of its own outside the newsletter.
- SiriusXM Changes Its Channels – For years, broadcasters showed studied indifference to radio on other platforms. Increasingly, SXM has found industry fans for its commitment to some aspects of classic radio, plus this was also a story that some of the new “Lost Factor” audience could appreciate.
- The “Back to the Future” Station – Richard Phelps’ tribute to the fictional KKHV Hill Valley also found a lot of listeners in ROR. He’ll be doing an updated version shortly.
One of the other stories I’m especially proud of this year is “A Father in the Business,” veteran radio writer Tom Taylor’s remembrance of his dad (which also became a meditation on future generations of radio people). A year ago, I wrote about a father/daughter morning team that worked at a Southern Gospel station. If you didn’t read that one because of the niche format involved, it’s also one of my favorites.
The stories that I consider my most important are the ones that help envision a way forward for broadcasters, or analyze their strengths and weaknesses among proliferating choices. Those are sometimes frustrating stories to read (or write) when you can’t single-handedly fix radio’s spotload issues or the streaming experience. But if you missed them, I recommend:
- In Search of Show Biz Radio;
- Five Things I Learned About Radio and Audio – prompted by the much-publicized launch of the Amp platform;
- If You Can Only Afford One Local Shift Do This – maybe my favorite column of the year, intended as a way forward that keeps radio’s localism but acknowledges its realities.
I’m trying to keep Ross on Radio surprising to you, and to give my many different constituencies something that interests them every week. I love getting listener story suggestions, so I hope you’ll keep that dialogue open, but I’m also gratified when I help readers articulate a programming issue that they previously had not. The enterprise and surprise that I encourage from radio programmers every week is exactly what I’m aiming for here. I’m trying to keep the column vital so that you can keep radio vital. Thank you for the chance to help radio together.
