In May, KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco PD Jim Archer told the CHR panel attendees at Radiodays North America that “the people who are left [listening to radio] are the people who want to be here.” That allows him to program to people who are “listening closely,” rather than “the lowest common denominator.”
Of the things said about radio recently, the notion of programming to radio’s actual superfans is the one that has most stayed with me. (Archer’s panel continues to ripple; Hubbard Radio EVP/programming Greg Strassell brought it up at MSBC in Austin last week.) I thought about it again Tuesday when the July PPM ratings came back for Triple-A WXPN Philadelphia as that station was celebrating Vinyl Day on-air by going even more eclectic than usual.
On the air, WXPN was letting not just its air staff but Triple-A artists, local record-store owners, and a winning listener dig in the crates. When acting PD Jim McGuinn devoted the last hour to 1966-68, he played one of the era’s ultimate oddities, “An Open Letter to My Teenage Son” by Victor Lundburg, and two answer records. He also hit on enough relatively obscure faves of mine — “Shake” by Shadows of Knight and “(I Wanna) Testify” by the Parliaments – to the point where I wondered if we had somehow discussed them before.
Off the air, WXPN was up 3.6-4.3. Despite being adventurous even during regular programming, it was eighth in the market, ahead of Country WXTU, both Classic/Adult Hits stations, and both the Mainstream and Adult CHR. I write a lot about both KMVQ and WXPN. I’m coming back to them again this soon because Archer’s comments resonate now.
WXPN is very much a station for people who have chosen radio. Over the last five years, nearly every PPM monthly seems to bring one success story involving a station in seeming violation of conventional programming rules. If that doesn’t turn out to be WXPN next month, it will be somebody else. (Check out this success story from the spring diary markets.) That got me thinking about what else you would do if you were programming through a filter where everything was “for people who choose radio.”
If we were programming deliberately for people who love radio, we wouldn’t be afraid to curate music and advocate for us. It’s one of the things they expect from us. Top 40 in particular has tended to view its audience as “the people who are left listening to radio.” In an effort to meet that audience where we think they are, Top 40 has ended up in a place of being slower and more recurrent/library-based than ever. Now, ratings are showing us daily that neither passive nor active CHR listeners are happy. We’ve tried to use streaming alone as a proxy for active listeners, but that alone isn’t providing enough hits either, in part because plenty of passive listeners have become streamers as well.
It has been amply documented for years that older songs remain popular after they peak, we shouldn’t misinterpret that as “so I want nothing new from you.” Pop listeners aren’t necessarily expecting CHR to bust out “Breakaway” by Big Pig or the Patti Smith double-play I also heard on WXPN, but they are coming with an element of trust. If you went to a the house of a friend with good taste in music, you would probably look forward to hearing something new and be disappointed if they put on the exact same album every time.
If we programmed for people who love radio, we would make sure they had the best possible radio experience when they listened, rather than an offhand, bare-bones presentation meant to replicate USPs. We already know the building blocks: companionship, humor, entertainment, community (whether geographic or otherwise), sense of place. They all mean more to the people who stayed. Also, we would thank them more often for listening.
If we programmed for people who chose radio, we wouldn’t mistake their continued interest for weakness. We would make sure that the radio experience was consistent across the dayparts, even if the weather emergency or artist passing took place on a weekend. We would still address both the quality and quantity of spots. We would want to be appreciated, not merely tolerated. “Program to the passionate and you will acquire the passive,” wrote RCP’s Ron Harrell, when I asked Facebook friends for their thoughts.
The best news is that super-serving radio’s fans isn’t more complicated than doing what we know to be good radio already. The challenge is doing good radio under our current circumstances. But we complicate it with the notion that maybe we don’t want to do good radio. Radio’s audience, we constantly remind ourselves, is siphoned but still substantial. Do we respect them the way they respect us?
Isn’t that what radio has been doing for the past 35 years by researching the hell out of the music with P1 listeners? Isn’t that why radio today is sterile and boring? Just asking for a friend . . . .
Research was never meant to get the super-fans, it was there for the people who would never otherwise engage with a radio station or buy music. When stations researched the music, P1s rarely got more than 50% of the vote. Even then, in a different time, research was often in the hands of enterprising PDs and MDs, who cared about avoiding the stiffs while still finding the hits in equal measure. That’s gone now. I’m not sure that given the current state of CHRs that the P1s are in any way really into the radio station, especially if they’ve just picked up on “that new song about ‘Tipsy’ or ‘Espresso.'”
To bring the discussion full circle speaking of college radio, and P1 listeners. I was programming active rock in 2009, pretty decent signal in college, show took off right away because I knew what I was doing. All the collars said, I love that you don’t play the same songs all the time, I swear I hear the same stuff from these artists on the other station… A few months later guess what happened? Those listeners, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, they started requesting the same things they always do. And I say this as someone who nerds out like you over a music enterprise. People say they love a variety of music and they want to hear different things but they’re pretty much actually fickle and just wanna hear what they know they like. Even successful AAA‘s work for that reason. The music at least sounds a certain way! I totally get why someone would just rather play it safe and play the hits though. Especially these days. I think most listeners know that Bob FM doesn’t play anything, but they like at least feeling like they’re into everything. that’s a delicate balance that’s only now starting to be figured out.
I’m assuming do we respect them is a rhetorical question. I was about to say, I think some brands respect their audience, but if Beasley takes another hit, I wouldn’t put it past them to just fire Preston and Steve or Dave and Chuck.
The bottom line comes first, air talent comes second, maybe even third or fourth,we can pretend it isn’t that way, or we can acknowledge the truth. i’m not picking on Beasley specifically, I don’t have to explain how easily public radio probably will violate its trust with listeners. I wanna talk about trust but I wanna circle back to the statement made by everyone in their Q2 earnings calls. We’re all about digital revenue now, oh yeah and we do radio!
Monoculture barely exists as is, and the one thing most damaged due to several political and technologicalfactors is trust. I don’t believe radio is an escape, but I guess there’s hope if manufacturing a peaceful happy place with feel good sounds full of people who are unhappy and feel bad is the best we get. I’m not bitter or hateful, I actually love radio, I’m the biggest fan. I’m blind, I had a radio in front of my ear. Since I was three, nobody wants this industry to succeed more than I do, but I studied enough business and sociology to know that industry won’t exist if it doesn’t even know what it is anymore.
Envy me. I’m advising a college station where discovery, re-discovery and enthusiasm are educating me. Many dozens of students will eagerly attend the info meetings to start the semester soon… to share and be heard on the medium we let fall into disarray with the lowest common denominator.
“The challenge is doing good radio under our current circumstances. But we complicate it with the notion that maybe we don’t want to do good radio. ”
So much that is on the air today is just unlistenable. And that is very much due to the costs involved of hiring talent — and not just “good” talent; there aren’t even enough warm bodies period — when so much ownership today is encumbered by debt. Listeners are confronted with repetitive music selections from a limited play list, very little community engagement, prerecorded “chatter” — what is presented is “good enough” radio from the perspective of management under pressure to cut costs and service debt. But it isn’t “good radio,” radio that is compelling enough to attract and retain listeners.
Personally, I am a fan of a format that doesn’t even exist anymore: the “full-service” format popular on AM from the 1960s through the 1980s, with a local host who did interviews and comedy segments (while also spinning two songs every half hour), along with a news anchor, sports, weather and traffic. That level of staffing is just unthinkable today. But it made great radio, and you could find stations with that format in every market.