-
Guy Zapoleon
February 26, 2019
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. For radio, while we know social media is of paramount importance for listener engagement, radio can't forget to hold its best audio content back for radio broadcast first. That's any content that creates dramatic surprise: unexpected concert announcements, special guests and major-artist song world premieres. Not letting other music platforms beat radio to the punch with music discovery is strategically critical. Radio can't afford to not world-premiere incredible audio content on radio's airwaves first to promote FOMO. This is a "Brilliant Basic" radio best practice
-
Guy Zapoleon may be pulling in the reins a bit on his consulting business, but his landmark Music Cycles theory continues to go on. Conceived over 26 years ago, the Music Cycles have evolved through changes not only in musical tastes, but in technology. Here, Guy offered an overview of the radio climate in 2019, as well as how the Music Cycles have adapted to changes in radio and technology - and will continue to roll on.
What exactly does "semi-retirement" mean for you? What will you be doing -- and not doing -- now?
I'm very happy to still be working with iHeart as a Senior Advisor on programming and research projects. iHeart is the most amazing collection of programming minds I've ever worked with. The team of Tom Poleman, Brad Hardin, Marc Chase, Jon Zellner, the incredible EVPPs, programmers and the CMM team headed by Marc and Lainie Fertick, as well as great minds like my friend Dave Denver and so many others at iHeart always leads me to what I've said it before: Having been a MD for KRTH at the legendary RKO Radio chain back in the '70s, with the collection of talent at iHeartMedia, it's RKO on steroids.
If asked, will you work with other stations or programmers on their individual situations?
That would be only for iHeart. Again, my current role and my total focus is working with research and programming behind the scenes for the company.
Is there anything new - work or otherwise - that you look forward to doing?
I'm looking forward to spending more time with the love of my life, Cathy, and traveling more with her and to see my family and friends. We have a busy year ahead as we're about to become grandparents. Also, I'd like to write a book about media and music history. I know a ton of books have been written, but I'd like to write it with a different slant that hasn't been done before.
What's your take on the state of music radio today? Is it getting better, worse or just stagnating?
Honestly, I think it's a great time for radio, as 90% of Americans that are 12+ still listen to radio every week -- more than those watching TV or using a smartphone, TV-connected device, tablet or PC. Radio's 18+ monthly reach at 243 million is larger than the combined reach of different types of digital destinations. However, we certainly know that radio has more competition than it has ever had before, and we face challenges we've never faced before. The one place where radio had no competition, "in car" listening, is now being challenged. New car models are equipped with Internet streaming options as well as satellite -- right on the dashboard alongside radio. So, with competitive challenges looming ahead, especially on the younger end, radio must find ways to develop compelling content that appeals to music/content consumers young and old.
Air talent has always been radio's key, connecting music and spoken-word content together to form that unique bond with listeners. That air talent/listener connection is something only radio is famous for and doesn't really exist on any other music platform. We're in an interesting time, which reminds me of something a mentor of mine from Nationwide, Dale Weber, told me:
There are three "times" for any business:
- Make the rules when you are starting out and find out which rules work best for your company in creating your product.
- Keep the rules when those rules are still working.
- Change the rules when the rules no longer work in creating the best product that pleases your target consumer and your company isn't doing well.
There are new rules to be added in targeting and engaging these new generations of music consumers. They shouldn't replace all of the basic rules that have always worked for radio. We know that 12-34-year-old listeners have somewhat unique behaviors and views from previous generations (just as all generations do). The two generations that make up 12-34 (Millennials and Gen Z) have grown or are growing up with computers, the Internet, mobile phones and social media freely accessible to them, offering many different platforms to be able to consume entertainment and music content -- and many different ways to connect to them.
I thought Fred Jacobs wrote a fantastic article a few days ago about losing advantages/rules that were always a part of great radio. For years, people waited all year also to see the best commercials of the year debuting on the Super Bowl. Advertisers spent millions to create them, incredibly creative commercials that made you laugh and even made you cry. Commercials you would never forget. They pay tens of millions to show them on the Super Bowl broadcast. Those commercials made the TV broadcast of the Super Bowl more special and more memorable because those commercials were a part of the surprise, the shock and awe and certainly the fun we associate with partying while watching the Super Bowl. They created the "Fear Of Missing Out" the FOMO Factor that viewers not interested in the game could talk about and still fee part of the conversation.
Today, by the time the Super Bowl commercials are shown on the TV broadcast, they've already been viewed for as long as two weeks by millions on Facebook, Twitter etc. so there is no surprise, there is no "Fear of missing out" ... when those incredible new commercials debut on network TV as they finally run on the Super Bowl TV broadcast. With no first-time viewing surprise, so many viewers aren't waiting for those incredible commercials and don't watch as they air ... hurting the advertisers who spend millions and hurting the viewing numbers for the broadcast itself.
For radio, while we know social media is of paramount importance for listener engagement, radio can't forget to hold its best audio content back for radio broadcast first. That's any content that creates dramatic surprise: unexpected concert announcements, special guests and major-artist song world premieres. Not letting other music platforms beat radio to the punch with music discovery is strategically critical. Radio can't afford to not world-premiere incredible audio content on radio's airwaves first to promote FOMO. This is a "Brilliant Basic" radio best practice.
But do you think radio does an adequate job of 1) finding such exclusive quality content; and 2) alerting more than the P1s to what it has to generate appointment listening? If not, what should radio do to accomplish all that?
Is there great exclusive content on radio, certainly! Is it enough? Finding enough consistently great exclusive content is always an ongoing challenge; it's a work in progress ... especially finding appointment listening content that appeals to 12-24.
What are the biggest challenges facing radio?
Consistently engaging with our younger generations, who are growing up with more entertainment and music delivery choices than ever before, and developing new talent who effectively entertain and communicate with listeners as well as creating content, and finding new ways (rediscovering old ways) to engage them.
Exactly how would you re-engage the younger listeners ... and what's the best way to reach them -- on-air or via digital platforms?
We'll find the answers by observing Gen Z and behavior and the content they love best on radio and certainly on other music platforms. It's going to be about radio offering exclusive content, offering the best new music and content first hosted by personalities that can relate to and in many cases are in the Gen Z and Millennials generation. We reach out to them on any and all platforms that Gen Z and Millennials use in order to engage them and in many cases lure them back to radio.
How have your views on what makes successful programming changed over the years?
Many of today's programming Brilliant Basics (best practices) have existed for 40 years (or more). These basics have expanded from the all-important 3 M's (Music, Mornings and Marketing) as newer Basics have emerged over the past 10-15 years that must be added as well.
We have now seen, through research and ratings, what works and what doesn't work.
- Music strategy and scheduling: Music architecture and music clocks and rules to create the perfect music hour.
- Music rotations: My friend, KYLD programmer Mark Adams, and I talk quite often about how important it is to spin the best new songs fast enough with enough plays 6a-7p to give them a fair shot to come through in research and become hits.
- Talent coaching: Building great morning shows and air talent in all dayparts that can communicate with Gen Z and Millennials (as well as radio's more loyal older generations of listeners). Creating a farm team of future talent for your radio station.
- Contesting: Contests that capture the imagination of the listener (as well as the contest players). Events that offer listeners a forever experience at the concert; contests and events are effectively branded on-air/off-air and at the event that forever burn your radio station's brand into the minds of the listener.
- Engagement: Social media (Facebook, Instagram/Snapchat, Twitter) have obviously given radio the ability to connect with listeners of all ages and help brand radio stations
- Marketing: Effective outside brand marketing to remind listeners what radio offers them every minute of every day ... it's free, it's convenient, it offers the very best hit music from every format, music discovery and air talent to host radio's incredible content and engage listeners. We're in the most competitive music and content platform battle we've ever been in -- and marketing is more critical, not less critical. We need more outside marketing, not less in 2019 and beyond. The good news in addition to traditional forms of marketing (TV, direct marketing, etc.), we now have social media and stealth marketing as a fantastic marketing vehicle.
When did you first come up with the Music Cycles concept - and how has it changed over the years?
When I was National PD for Nationwide Communications, my company was very concerned about the Top 40 format (as were a lot of radio companies during Top 40's massive loss of 25-54 ratings during the Extremes in 1989 and 1990). My company asked me to write a "white paper" as to what was happening with the format. With my background of studying music and music charts from today back to the beginning of Rock & Roll, I was hoping to find something in music history that might explain the challenges Top 40 (and other formats) were facing in the early '90s. Sure enough, I discovered a musical pattern ... a Music Cycle with three phases of Rebirth, Extremes and Doldrums that repeated over and over and over again in the same sequence every 10 years ... Nationwide Communications head Steve Berger and Mickey Franko loved the white paper and that made me reach out to my friend Joel Denver, who loved the concept and wanted to run it as an article in Radio & Records. The first edition appeared in December '92.
Is there still a typical duration of a music cycle?
The typical duration of an entire music cycle has been approximately 10 years for the first four music cycles (1956 to 2005), but the last full cycle went from 2006-2013, which was only eight years ... only two years shorter. In the last few music cycles, technology has changed the timing of the new rebirth, but what we could be seeing is that a change in the leader of music delivery could affect the timing of the next music cycle
In the past, Rebirth began in the middle of each of the first four decades, beginning with Elvis phenomenon that brought Rock & Roll (and R&B) to the masses in '56, then the Beatles and British Invasion in '64, then the move from singles to albums in the mid-'70s led by artists with huge albums from all three key genres -- Rock (Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin), Pop (Fleetwood Mac, Eagles), and maturing Motown artists (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye).
That changed in the early '90s due to a poor reaction by Top 40 radio and its owners as the leader in music delivery. The hitmaker was radio but driven by the Top 40 format. The Music Cycle had gone through two weaker phases, Extremes and Doldrums. Radio consultants had pronounced Top 40's death and spooked owners and radio companies all over the U.S to change the format as over 500 Top 40s did so. Top 40 didn't recover until 1998 when Teen Pop -- which started with Hansen and the Backstreet Boys, then exploded with Britney Spears, Christine Aguilera and N Sync -- brought Pop back.
Then Top 40 radio led by Z100 under the leadership of Tom Poleman, Sharon Dastur and Paul "Cubby" Bryant fully embraced Pop. The format recovered, and the Music Cycle began again with a rebirth phase buoyed by Pop music, always the center of Top 40. So, Music Cycle 4 had its worst Doldrums period lasting longer with no Top 40 leadership and the Rebirth and Music Cycle 5 started late and thus shortened the next Music Cycle to eight years.
Has the growth of streaming influenced the Cycle at all?
Without a doubt. The early adopters/heavy music consumers who I think still make the bulk of the streaming audience (but that will expand to the masses) have streamed a ton of great Hip-Hop and R&B songs so that genre dominates the Streaming charts. While sales charts remain more balanced, genre-wise, in terms of what sells, Hip-Hop is still the biggest factor here buoyed by streaming as well as radio airplay. With the lull in Pop music and the Hip-Hop explosion (influenced by streaming), we're currently still in the Extremes.
If there isn't a typical length of time for a cycle anymore, exactly what instigates a change?
Artists and music styles have spurred rebirth and a new Music Cycle in the first three Music Cycles, but in the last four decades, rebirth has been spurred primarily by technology/new music platforms for music - Bob Pittman's MTV in the '80s; digital/computers/Internet and digital file sharing in the latter part of the '90s; the music competition phenomenon lead by American Idol in the mid-'00s, streaming music and mobile phones (with EDM mixed with Pop) in '14. The massive consumption of music streaming/mobile phones will again lead to the next Rebirth in some un-yet known form in mid-2020s.
Music streaming/mobile phone usage is already quite popular. Why do you expect it to take years for it to instigate the next Rebirth?
We're following the Rebirth/Extremes/Doldrums pattern that always occurs each Music Cycle and we're still in the Extremes tipping into Doldrums now ... The next two years of Doldrums will occur as we all figure out what a new evolving group of young listeners want, what that next big thing is and how to engage/re-engage them.
And how do you expect the growth of Alexa and its ilk to impact the Cycle?
Alexa Echo and smart speakers will have a profound impact on the cycle and could be the one thing that brings about the Rebirth of a new cycle. Smart speakers can only help expand listeners' access to any and all forms of music and spoken-word content. That's part of the technology that will change what we listen to and usher in the next Rebirth cycle. We know it always takes a period of time before the masses create habits built around using smart speakers for entertainment consumption. Now more than ever, it's incredibly important to effectively brand radio for its most important content and do so in a simple and understandable way. It's critically important for listeners to remember to ask Alexa for that particular radio brand and the content it specializes in.
Some believe that the electronic/mixing/EDM influence has decreased the Millennial and younger audience's interest in guitars (i.e.: rock); wouldn't that impact the Cycle?
Yes, I think that electronic mixing and EDM helped create the Rebirth Pop Phase and the last Music Cycle in 2014, with less focus on guitar-based music, but as with all things, you can get too much of a "good thing." Listeners tire of the same old thing as well as new generations want their own genres (or new variations of established genres). I think there will be a rebirth of guitar music. The guitar-based Classic Rock format has actually picked up 18-34 listeners over the last few years as a new generation discovered great guitar music. That may be an indication of the return of the guitar in popular music.
And where does Country fit in the Cycle?
Every single format, whether its Country or Urban, goes through its own music cycles and phases. When a song or genre/format is popular, it has the capability to cross to Top 40, but enough Top 40 stations must want to spin it and support that music. Top 40 programmers are so focused on sticking to the glue of the Top 40 format, Pop music, that at times they avoid potential hits from other genres and formats. We often avoid hits from Hip-Pop, R&B, AC/Hot AC, Alternative and yes, Country as well. Back in 2013, Bro-Country caused the Country format to explode and yet very few songs crossed over to Top 40 because of programmers' concern of playing a majority of Pop music (of course, part of it also was that Top 40 was in Rebirth and there was a lot of great pop music to play).
Bottom line: Like I said in the last Music Cycle article a few months ago, radio can't over-focus on maintaining musical balance like Top 40 with Pop. It must be open to playing hit songs from other genres. As three radio veterans who've studied Top 40 radio for 50 years know, one my dear friends now in heaven, Steve Rivers, first said --as well as my friend John Ivey -- and I have always said: The most important thing Top 40 can do is ALWAYS "play the f'ing hits!"
Finally, how do you see the Cycles evolving from here on out?
I see the basic form of the Cycle with the three phases (Birth-Rebirth, Extremes and Doldrums) repeating and repeating with the phase order remaining the same. What will change will be the different genres and forms that Pop, Hip-Hop R&B and Alternative/Rock take, as well how influential other formats such as Latin and Country are. We also know that an artist, a genre or technology/new music platform will cause the rebirth of new Music Cycle (while it has been Technology the last three decades, it might be an artist or genre that becomes so popular, it creates Rebirth again).
-
-