09 Jan Wednesday, January 9, 2019
This Week in The Lund Letter:
> No more, “That song always plays at this time!”
> Start the year fresh-sounding
> Gaining tune-in and expanding TSL
> Radio’s great ROI and the latest media trends
Lund Management Memo: Fixing Same Song Same Time Every Day
Groundhog Day is February 2. In the classic comedy movie, “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray awakens every day to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” on a clock radio (remember those?). After awakening to the same song several times, Bill Murray eventually throws the radio against the wall. In the movie, he experiences the exact same day over and over.
Do your listeners hear the same songs at the same time every day? We call this music scheduling situation as “stacking” when you examine your song history and find songs are being scheduled in the same hour over the course of several weeks.
You can avoid this occurrence by taking the following ten steps:
1. Prioritize the order of scheduling of your categories. Power categories should schedule first before your Secondary rotation.
2. Power and Secondary currents should be an odd number. Normally you do not want more than 7 Power currents and no less than 3 songs. Secondary currents should be no more than 15 songs. This is based on playing music 24/7.
3. Other than “Yesterday Song,” your Power Currents in your first round of scheduling should not have any rules to prevent them from being scheduled. You want your currents to have the minimum amount of rules so they rotate often to gain familiarity.
4. Develop an alternate clock for each daypart, where the clock placement changes for the Power and Secondary currents. The clock should alternate every other hour and the next day it should flip flop alternating with the other clock.
5. For stations not scheduling music 24/7, utilize the “Kick” function where each day at 1 or 2 AM you would skip one song in the category and then return to picking the first song available.
6. Set up your scheduling hierarchy so your Power categories are scheduled first and then your smallest categories in Secondary next. The larger Secondary and feature songs should be scheduled last.
7. Utilize your “Yesterday Song” and “Prior Day” rules and in the larger categories your “Daypart rotation” rule.
8. It’s good to “Shuffle” several times a month.
9. Review your song history maps frequently. Relax your rules so they don’t force your music scheduling software to “stack.”
10. Avoid overusing “dayparting” as once the “daypart restriction” is lifted the song may get scheduled in the first hour after the restriction was lifted.
By reducing “stacking,” you can maximize the songs in your library and not give listeners the perception that you have a limited library.
New Year’s Resolution: Play the Hits!
Music is the #1 reason people listen to FM music stations. Playing the right songs and managing your software are vital to your success. Lund Media will conduct a complete analysis of your active playlist along with every aspect of your music software – rules, clocks, and rotations. We also provide a quick turn-around.
Capitalize on the very thing listeners want most – the best researched music played in the best rotation for your target demo. Email John Lundfor a complete music software analysis and tune-up to assure you sound perfect in 2019.
And if you just need a best-researched song list for your format, email us.
Lund Programming Clinic: Production Quality Check
The start of a New Year is a perfect time to examine all the production elements on your stations. New Year, Fresh New Sound! Assess all your on-air elements. Look for quality, freshness, and imaging liners with unplanned consequences.
+ Are imaging liners touting listener benefits? That’s a stronger ploy than a list of features. Great production makes grasping the context easy for the listener.
+ Look for unintended tune-outs, like comments that signal to the audience that they’ll have to wait for music. Do you really think those “the music is only two minutes away” breaks between commercials perform a positive role?
+ Check the dates when liners were put in place. Are they frequently updated? Be sure they are topical and relatable to core listeners.
+ Imaging should sound fun, and funny imaging should be updated frequently. No one wants to hear the same joke five times a day.
Examine every detail of your programming sound this week – content, delivery, and imaging production.
Brighten Your Imaging
Start 2019 with new imaging liners to refresh your on-air sound for the year. Your imaging should be updated often so your station sounds live and local. And we have hundreds of creative liners to spice up your sound… Fun liners for music stations, at-work liners, and imaging liners for News-Talk. These liners help your station to sound fresh and live all day.
Your imaging liners should be creative and fun. Brighten your imaging with hundreds of creatively written imaging liners that can be customized for your station. Order these scripts now… for music stations order here, for at-work listening order here, and for News-Talk order here.
One Minute Sale Meeting: The Four Criteria of a Sales Promotion
Have a definite objective for every promotion under consideration. All promotions on your station should fulfill at least one or more of the following:
1. Cume growth
2. Expanded time spent listening
3. Image enhancement
4. Generate sales revenue
Determine how much extra advertising revenue will be generated when selling a sales promotion to the client. Many stations calculate the price of every promo mention into the sales promotion package.
How good your sales promotions are depends on how well they work for your client, your listeners and your station. Our 40-point questionnaire covers everything from creation to execution to qualify each sales promotion and ensure the best possible results. This checklist is included with details of the 200 best sales promotions ideas for radio stations. The Lund Sales Promotion Guide is 50% off right now; get your copy here.
Lund’s Top 3: Format Basics
Programming meetings build consensus and morale, and they’re a great way to set the direction and spirit for fall. Consider the topic of Format Basics to discuss in your next programming meeting:
1. Gain tune-in with contests, morning show stunts, social media and in-person appearances. To stimulate listening, build your TSL. Make your promote-aheads more effective and always give the listener a reason to keep listening.
2. Bolster listener usage. Teach listeners how to “use” the station with your live liners. Why is it a good thing to listen to the station at work, at night, on the weekend, at the beach, etc.?
3. Sell benefits, not feature names. Begin all liners with the benefit (what’s in it for me!).
Next week – a new Top 3. Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!
Promotion of the Week: The Missing Song
At the end of an hour (or a frequency-related number of minutes), the talent back-announces all the songs played. The first listener to call in with the song the talent “missed” wins.
Are you marketing to General Managers or Program Directors and want to reach the 10,000 readers of the Lund Letter? Email John Lund.
Lund Trend Watch:
Radio Great at Engagement & ROI
“Radio is in the top half of media when it comes to ROI,” according to BIA/Kelsey. Customer engagement (39%) and expected ROI (40%) are the main factors in determining ad spending. Radio advertisers rate the medium as having “excellent” (10-19x) or “extraordinary” (20+x) ROI (40%) and “fair” (2-4x) or “good” (5-9x) ROI (53%).
Holiday Spending Best in Six Years
MasterCard SpendingPlus has released their holiday spending report and the news is good. Overall sales reached $850 billion this year, a 5.1% increase over last year. Online sales rose 19.1% over a year ago. The biggest spending category wins were clothing (up 7.9%) and home improvement (up 9%).
Click & Drive
One of the drawbacks of online purchasing, especially with more pricey merchandise, is not being able to examine/try an item before buying. Imagine buying a car without being able to take a test drive! Some already are, and more auto dealers are considering adding the ability to buy a vehicle online to their websites. For now, franchising rules make online purchase of new vehicles tricky, but used models are straight-forward purchases. Carvana, an online car dealer founded in 2012, sold about 66,400 in the first three quarters of 2018. It sold 44,000 in all of 2017.
A Lot of Alexa
Amazon devices SVP Dave Limp announced in an interview with The Verge that the company has sold over 100 million devices with Alexa pre-installed. Although Amazon-built devices and other companies’ tech that works with Alexa were not distinguished between in the number, Limp did acknowledge that there are 150 devices currently on the market. Not released yet, the Alexa Auto device has more than a million people on the list to get an invite to buy when it is launched.
Programmer’s Planner:
Jan 21: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Feb 2: Groundhog Day
Feb 3: Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, Georgia
Feb 5: Chinese New Year (Year of the Pig)
Feb 14: Valentine’s Day
Feb 18: President’s Day
Thanks for reading
The Lund Letter
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About the Lund Media Group:
For over 20 years, the Lund Media Group has provided programming, music consulting, operational guidance, and research to commercial and public broadcaststations throughout North America and overseas. Whether you program all sports, all
talk, or all music, the Lund Goal is to help stations get more listeners and keep them listening longer. The Lund Consultants are a multi-format custom programming and management consultancy.
Call John Lund for more information about how the Lund Media Group can help your stations achieve more listeners, higher ratings, and more revenue.
Phone: 650-692-7777.
Email john@lundradio.com.