Alan Burns

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

In 1985, Alan Burns left a successful programming career to hang up his consultancy shingle. And Alan Burns & Associates have been successfully consulting Top 40, AC and God AC stations ever since. To stay on top of their game, Burns has just conducted a comprehensive “What Women Want” study; much its data have been presented in a series of webinars. Here, Burns offers a sharp overview of the study and cites some of the most compelling revelations.

When did you decide to do this survey and what did you hope it would accomplish?

We did our first survey of this kind in 2010. At that point in time, most of the stations we consulted programmed female-based formats such as Top 40 and Hot AC. So we decided to do these women-and-media surveys first to build up our knowledge base -- and we always hold back some information that becomes proprietary for our clients. The second reason to undertake these huge studies, though, is that we always hope to generate some information that helps the industry. I’m a big believer that a rising tide lifts all boats. After seeing so many “radio is in trouble” stories, I felt we needed to update the data to see if radio listening has stabilized or is eroding, and was happy to have Strategic Solutions Research be our partners in this study. The good news is that with one or two caveats, radio looks stable and healthy from a listener perspective.

Were you surprised at any of the findings?

Absolutely. I was stunned by the amount of radio listening these women reported doing with headphones and earbuds on. Basically half -- 49%, to be exact -- of all women surveyed used headphones for some of their radio listening – far more than I think anyone expected. And 15% of them used headphones or earbuds for over half of their radio listening time. For the sake of argument, let’s ignore the “or more” potential of those 15% and just focus on “half of their time.” If just that listening is not captured and reported, and men’s listening is similar, it would result in an total AQH underestimate of 7.5% -- which one rep firm source estimated would be worth more than a billion dollars of spot and network revenue! Thus, the upside of the headphone issue is a huge potential revenue increase.

More than that, our sample netted 142 women who had actually kept a diary or wore a meter in a ratings survey – and headphone listening by those women was enormous. More than 40% of them listened on earbuds for half or more of their listening time. So if – and remember, that’s a big if – that amount of listening occurs but isn’t captured and reported, fixing the problem could be a great boost in radio listening and millions of dollars in potential revenue for the industry.

What can radio do about capturing those “lost” or unaccounted-for TSL?

It’s up to radio to hold Nielsen accountable. They need to publish the amount of listening they capture through the PPM headphone adapter they send panelists so it can be compared to our numbers, and perhaps to the listening behavior NextRadio is seeing. NextRadio-enabled phones capture all listening done through the phone, even if headphones or wireless earbuds are used. The bottom line is to keep the pressure on Nielsen to be transparent and report on what they’re doing.

Should radio be happy with the fact that, as your study found, “Half Of Women's At-Work Listening Is To Radio?” Should radio do more to get additional at-work listening, or should they now concentrate on not-at-work listening?

We should be happy that radio dominates at-work music listening with women at a time when listening options for at-work music listening, as well as listening in other places, have multiplied. The audience is a little more fragmented now, yet radio still dominates, and that’s really good news. Secondly, we should continue to concentrate on at-work listening, especially for formats appropriate to longer-span at-work usage, because these folks are generally among the heaviest of listeners.

The study found that 'Local' Is Not Radio's Best Defense.” What is … and how should that be employed?

Our interpretation is that emphasizing “local” is not radio’s first line of defense against competing media, but it’s still a very important asset. Radio’s best defenses are entertaining personalities, fun and humor. The personal connection radio stations and personalities make with their audiences is really radio’s unique selling proposition. In addition to playing good defense against other media, when you reach people who listen for entertaining personalities and fun, you’re reaching heavier listeners who are more likely to participate in ratings. The 142 former ratings panelists in our sample were definitely more attracted to personalities and fun.

That doesn’t mean being local isn’t an important issue. It can be huge in a crisis, such as a flood, hurricane or tornado. We have seen many strong examples of that throughout radio’s history, when radio stations stayed on the air and served their markets well during a crisis when there was no TV, electricity or Internet -- and when the phone lines were down.

Another plus for being local is that you become friends with people in the community and the local advertisers. The more you get to know the market, the better you can engage them, and they come to feel an affiliation with your personalities and your station. Plus, local businesses like to do business with local people they know and trust.

While your female listeners want entertainment and fun, programmers at PPM stations want their personalities to be as succinct as possible. It must be an art form to be entertaining in such short spurts.

It really is an art form, and it has been since Bill Drake back in the ‘60s. Drake figured out that air personalities needed to not just get it done over a song intro, but they need to do it in an entertaining fashion -- and that takes some effort. So the answer in a PPM world is that, once again, you really have to work on it. It takes more time and energy to focus on a great short break than it does to just go on and on.

Here’s an “out of the mouths of babes” story: One night I was doing focus groups in San Jose. It was the last of a long set of them, it was late at night, and I was probably a bit punchy. The women in this particular focus group told me they didn’t want to hear ANY talk, but that they did want local information and weather, and they wanted it to be fun or funny. I said, “You don’t want any talk at all, yet you want local information and weather and you want to be entertained. How do you expect a station to accomplish that?” One of the women just looked at me and said, “It’s easy: you just make a quick joke about something that’s going on, and then play my favorite song.” She should have become a PD.

One of your webinars delved into the finding that radio’s personalities are not connecting as well with teens. What should radio do to alleviate the problem?

We need to spend more time understanding and then talking to teens. They’re less likely than other demos to feel that a radio station understands them. Of course, teens tend to feel that no one understands them, so we take that alienation with a grain of salt. That said, they are the future and if we don’t get them habituated to radio, we could lose them for the rest of their lives. The good news is that most 15-24 year-olds love their favorite radio stations, even though there’s a tendency to not feel as connected to radio as everyone else. I have heard, through the years, the occasional nighttime show on a Top 40 station that does a really good job of connecting to teens, because they have personalities who really talk to the listeners, as opposed to what I call the “Yo! Yo Yo!” DJ. One example of talking to young people is the syndicated Zach Sang show, which has done very well at night.

Your study also noticed the growth in popularity of streaming. iHeartRadio is offering streaming to compete against the Pandoras and Spotifys of the world. Do you feel that is the best way to fight them -- by joining them? What else should radio do?

iHeartRadio is already in place, and it has generated quite a bit of momentum, but Canada just launched a cooperative app with 400 radio stations on it. It’s conceivable that our industry could start do something similar that isn’t owned or dominated by one company. But iHeart is the incumbent, so the smart money would be on that. As for pureplay music streaming, though, to my knowledge no one except perhaps AccuRadio has been able to make that model profitable on an operating basis.

Now that the webinars are about to end, how should radio use this information to improve their chances for success?

Aside from continuing the headphone dialogue with Nielsen, I would suggest they download this data, study it and really think about it. For example, what’s the #1 job that contemporary music radio stations need do to entertain their audience … just play the hits? No. That’s an important part of it, but overall the biggest driver of radio listening for women is to provide an escape and to elevate their mood. There are probably more ways for radio stations to accomplish that than the ways they’re doing it right now, and even the current efforts might be improvable. The smart programmers will focus on and think about that.

In an era where the ratings monitoring system offers near real-time results, how should radio maintain a long-term success perspective when they react to these results by the month?

That may be the toughest question I’ve been asked in a long time. All the financial pressure and incentives are focused on right now and very-near-term results. I was talking to one of my favorite GM clients this morning about this issue, and I said, “I bet your bonuses are for the current financial results, but nothing is based on good moves for long-term station branding that affects the franchise” and she said, “Absolutely.” It’s hard in radio – as in almost every other industry – to maintain a long-term perspective when the present demands so much of your time and focus, and the very near future contains debt obligations to meet. Ries and Trout, whose books are still valid today, made the point that in marketing, which is basically what radio programming and promotion is, short and long-term effects can be polar opposites – the long-term result of a good short-term move could be really bad. But how can you strategize long-term success when you know that in American business circa 2017, the answer is always to take care of short term? After all, if you don’t survive the short term, there is no long term. There are, though, companies such as Hubbard, which do think longer-term.

What’s next for your research? What areas do you plan on investigating?

One thing we might do is to find former ratings panelists who kept a meter and ask them if they used an adapter when listening on headphones. Primarily, though, we’re going to spend a lot of time with our clients, discussing the deep meaning of this data and to make sure we and they take maximum advantage of what we now know.