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As formats fragment and niche appeal replaces mass appeal radio, it has become
increasingly difficult to win with only a high cume strategy. Add to this the
obvious fact that advertisers do not buy cume and it is no secret that your station's
success depends upon building and maintaining good TSL.
One of the misconceptions about building TSL is that it requires doing things on your radio station that cause the audience to listen longer. While perhaps your most fanatic, core listeners may have the desire and option to listen for longer periods of time, most of your audience cannot. So, if the majority of your audience cannot listen longer, how can you get more TSL from them? The answer is to encourage more frequent sampling or occasions to tune in your station. The other side of this equation is to insure that nothing you are doing on the air fatigues or annoys your audience so as to discourage them from coming back for more.
Think of your radio station as a restaurant. When you are planning to go out to dinner, the first thing you consider is what type of food you are in the mood to eat. A parallel thought process goes on in the minds of the listeners when they choose a radio station. If they are in the mood for memories, they may choose an oldies or classic rock station. If they are in the mood for information, they will choose a news/talk station. As difficult as it might be to discourage you from pizza when you crave it, it is almost impossible to do anything on your radio station to affect the natural mood swings of your listeners. However, once the listener is in your "restaurant," whether or not they stay for dinner, return again soon, or never come back, is totally in your hands. Your programming is your menu. If it is dull, stale or inconsistent, your audience will not be compelled to return for another meal anytime soon. And, your air personalities are your wait persons. If they are not entertaining, informed, polite and personable, the listeners will not be inclined to return and ask for a table in their section.
Here are six things you can do to improve time spent listening to your radio station:
- Do A Flaw Analysis.
Many TSL problems are directly attributable to denial about obvious product problems and flaws. In every market there is "that" radio station which never goes anywhere no matter what it does. Everyone outside of the radio station has a clear picture of why it goes nowhere. But, within the walls of the station, everyone defends the average and sub par deluded into thinking that the next Book will be the one. Radio stations that achieve consistently good TSL pro actively analyze all facets of their programming and continually question everything on the air. Are we in the right format? Do we have a competitive morning show? Are the songs really rotating as designed? Has the station outgrown an employee? When you identify a flaw, take action. Do not let it slide using the rationalization that it is just one little thing. Great radio stations are made up of lots of exceptional little things. Making sure that your product is the most appetizing one in the marketplace is the single most effective way to improve your station's TSL.
- Avoid Radio For Radio's Sake.
Many tactics employed on some radio stations are completely counter-productive to garnering good TSL. Most of these tactics are used for no other reason than someone heard some other station or personality use them. They include loud, growling, in-your-face, fast talking "jocking"; talking up every vocal; interrupting the music flow after every record with a talk element; complex, noisy production which is hard to consume and out of date; meaningless, inside radio words and chit chat. If your station's programming contains any of these elements, ask yourself why? If the answer is "because other radio stations in our format do it", you are thinking too much like a radio person and not enough like your audience.
- Really Listen To What Your Air Personalities Are Saying.
Many personalities do not sound mentally focused and honestly passionate about what they are saying. When that happens they become about as compelling as white noise. Great waiters know the importance of selling the menu as enthusiastically to their last customer as they did to their first. Give your personalities the following test. Tape one hour of each of your personalities and pick a break with some substance like a contest or promotion explanation. Transcribe each break on paper. If, as you read a break aloud, you find it hard to read or boring, show it to the talent. Reinforce the importance of personalities being mentally connected to each and every idea.
- Constantly Reinvent Your Product.
If a radio station sounds stale and predictable, its TSL will decline. Great radio stations, like great restaurants, understand the importance of changing the menu on a regular basis. Know the shelf life of ideas. Just because something worked yesterday, last month or last year does not mean it should be on the air today. Reinventing your product refreshes the audience appeal of your radio station. Regularly revise music and talk clocks, replace benchmarks and features, provide your talent with new sources for content and creative inspiration and, most important of all, set time aside to brainstorm new promotions and features and write new promos.
- Reassess Your Programming Priorities.
The operational demands of programming a radio station today will occupy every hour of every day if you do not actively manage your time. Make a list of everything you did on the job yesterday and ask yourself which tasks really contributed positively to your primary function: getting great ratings. Tomorrow spend the time you spent yesterday on meaningless, operational tail-chasing to write fresh promos, do an extra talent critique session or just get out and do a little market and audience observation. Put your product first! In the end, your success or failure will be determined by the ratings you get and nothing else beyond those ratings you may have done well will matter if your numbers are not good!
- Find A Unique Approach To Everything.
If you want listeners to remember that you are still on the dial, you have to find new and creative ways to differentiate your station from the other products on the shelf. Radio stations which continually exude unique creativity cause market talk and that is the best way to keep your audience coming back to sample your station time and time again. When everyone's product is essentially the same, the station that can back it up with the most money wins. If you cannot be the only, the biggest or the best at something, change the rules of the game. For example, lots of stations are giving away trips to Atlanta to see the Summer Olympics. If you cannot give away the sexiest trip package or the most trips, create something unique like a "Why Would You Want To Go To Atlanta Anyway?" contest. Position Atlanta as hot, humid and overcrowded with tourists and give away trips to past Olympic locations like nice, cool Lake Placid, NY and exciting Seoul, Korea.
In the end, time spent listening levels directly correlate with the quality and focus of your programming. Creative TV spots, direct marketing campaigns, big cash contests and other "fairy dust" tactics will not improve your station's TSL if you are in the wrong format or there are multiple flaws in your programming. Great time spent listening is built and maintained by being a combination of rabid advocate and relentless critic of your product!
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