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The High Risk Of Low Cumes
November 22, 2005
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No Matter What Else They Do, Programmers Must Get New People To Listen.
Just about everybody in radio would agree that 2005 will go down in history as another year of forced, accelerated change. What has caused this change is technology. Technology is something we can't control, and it will continue to spawn new gadgets, new research and new competitors. What can we do, since we can't control it? We can only try to understand it and embrace it.
One of the things we have to understand in our quest for new cume is the ever-growing Hispanic audience. It is the fastest growing segment of the population in America. Spanish formats are becoming more sophisticated. They're doing research and offering several musical varieties of the format.
Hispanic listeners are becoming relatively sophisticated consumers who appreciate a quality product. Many of urban radio's listeners are the same Hispanics who grew up listening to urban and Urban AC stations and, if we do enough of the right things, they will continue to listen and become new cume.
Within the urban formats is a lot of diversity from a number of musical blends. That's part of what has changed in 2005. Research now must include Hispanics, some of whom may be bilingual. The key to building cume in the future is to find the songs and the blend that will be welcomed by a broader audience.
It is this broader base that can make a cume difference, but in order to make that difference, you have to tweak the format with higher rotations and rotational patterns that are evolving all the time. With both urban formats, you not only have to find the right songs, you also have to rotate them higher and give them the impressions they need for the listeners to become familiar and comfortable with them. When you're thinking about your potential new listeners, you don't always want to simply say you're going after the 18-34s or the 25-49s, although those are cells that are extremely important to the formats. Despite that, there's a new, particular audience who likes to stay on the cutting edge. That's an audience that wants to hear some of the familiar songs they grew up with alongside the new songs. It's also a lifestyle thing.
Most urban outlets build cume by being full-blown, current based, hit music stations. It's a misnomer to think women don't like hip-hop. They just like to hear hit rap songs that are familiar, melodic and tuneful. To build cume with females, there has to be balance.
Most urban AC stations tend to be much more gold and recurrent based. They tend to be focused on 25-49 persons with females as their primary target. Both formats must remember the music freaks and the advantages of a shorter playlist. A listener only gives a certain amount of time to radio. During that time they only want to hear the hits. If you program to the reality of radio listening as measured by Arbitron, assume some listeners only listen an hour or two a day when they're going to and from work. You can build cume if you program to that reality.
Many talented people in our format are caught up in the performing aspect of their gigs and often are surprised to find out they are less secure than they might have thought. We probably all know people who were fired for cascading cumes. We even know some who were terminated because their trends trickled.
We're in a numbers business -- cume numbers -- and when the numbers are not on your side, your bosses better be. How do you make sure you'll at least get the benefit of the doubt from those in charge? In today's cume jungle, you have to find out how you are doing before it's too late. Check your cume regularly. Some don't want to know how they are doing because, deep down, they are afraid they aren't doing very well. You cannot hope to succeed in your career unless you pierce this conspiracy of silence.
Remember under the current Arbitron unaided re-call process it's important to note that an Arbitron diary can't really measure time-spent-listening (TSL). At best, it measures memory. Shortly, the PPM will show the true impact of cume.
Today's cume goal is not to get one person to listen for an hour, it is to get four people to listen for fifteen minutes.
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