26 Jul Wednesday, July 25, 2018
This Week in The Lund Letter:
> Talent coaching
> Choose your news
> Reaching Generation Z
> And the latest media trends
Lund Management Alert: Coaching for Improved Performance
To many air talents, a meeting with the program director to go over their airwork is as dreaded as a root canal. This is pure torture when the meeting becomes a critique of identifying mistakes. To be more effective, the meeting should be for coaching, not critiquing.
How to make your coaching session more effective:
+ Talent review should be 30 minutes or less. Shorter sessions will preserve concentration and comprehension.
+ Meet regularly as follow up; positive reinforcement is necessary for guiding improvements.
+ The PD should listen to an aircheck in advance and identify segments which demonstrate good content and execution as well as segments which highlight areas that need improvement. Play these segments during the coaching session.
+ Outline your meeting so it doesn’t drift off into idle chitchat. Start with going over the summary of the previous meeting.
+ Begin by giving specific praise for a segment you heard indicating you listened to the show in real time.
+ Play back several good audio segments with specific feedback on why you liked the segment. This initial part of the meeting inspires the air talent.
+ Play three segments that could use improvement. Limit the number so the talent is not discouraged. Play the audio clip first, then ask for their insight and give your feedback.
+ After the aircheck segments, discuss ways to improve execution, like editing out redundancy, including audio, playing an appropriate music bed, improving a tease, connecting with the music, pronunciation, a stronger opening statement, improving the resolution, etc.
+ Allow time for the talent to make suggestions or feedback, like technical problems, improving promotions, social media, personal appearances, music selections, commercial production, etc.
Finally, mutually write a summary, with a copy to file and one given/emailed to the talent. Here’s a typical talent summary format:
> Talent name and date of meeting
> List listener benefits and talent attributes
> List three areas for improvement and suggested action items
> Schedule date and time for next coaching session
Lund Programming Clinic: What’s New?
The world is changing, especially when programming an FM music station. Generally, newscasts are of minimal interest on FM music stations. Leave the hard news to News-Talk stations. But in the morning, when people thrive on information, air an hourly capsule of “5 things you should know” or “what’s trending,” and include some quick interesting lifestyle stories.
Politics, crime blotter stories, and other negative items should mostly be off limits. People who really want news have an app for that; likely several. Sadly, more people get news from Facebook than anywhere else…because so many stories are interesting. Also, drop the official 5-day forecast and make weather relatable to the listener. In the morning, focus on today only.
Promotion of the Week: ATM Game
Listeners call in when they hear the ATM sounder. The qualifying caller will be asked to guess the ATM PIN code, using numbers between 1 and 60 (including 1 and 60). If the caller guesses all four numbers correctly and in the correct order, they will win $500. If the player guesses one or more numbers correctly, the station will confirm those numbers and positions, correct or incorrect, on air during that game only. Once a number is revealed and locked into position, all following callers must use the correctly guessed number(s) and position(s) in their PIN code guesses. This process continues until all the numbers have been revealed and locked in resulting in a winning PIN code. Once a winner has been determined, the numbers reset and a new set of four numbers will be used in the following contest.
For 200 more great contests and sales promotions, see the Lund Contest and Promotion Guide.
Lund’s Top 3: Fall Ratings Insurance
The fall Nielsen diary sweep begins September 13 (eight weeks from tomorrow). For the next few weeks, we will share programming strategies to help your station expand listening this fall.
1. Have frequent time checks and brief weather in the morning show.
2. Promote “Station Usage”; help listeners discover new ways to “use” the station (stream, smart phone app, etc.).
3. Program an exciting, fun and interesting show with local relatables, listener interaction, planned benchmarks, and frequently work the Top 3.
Continues next week in the Lund Letter. Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!
Are you marketing to General Managers or Program Directors and want to reach the 9,400+ readers of the Lund Letter? Email John Lund.
This Week’s Music:
Taylor Swift is the queen of both CHR and Hot AC with her song “Delicate.” Kenny Chesney’s “Get Along” holds on to the top spot at Country. Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” continues to reign at Bright AC. Panic! At The Disco’s “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” spends another week at #1 for Alternative. Lund clients receive weekly music research information on current music plus regular updates on the best-testing recurrent and gold titles.
Lund Trend Watch:
Prime Day Performance
Amazon went to the dogs. Several hours of Prime Day were plagued by error pages that feature dogs owned by Amazon employees. Some other retailers even referenced the dogs in their own email ads later the same day. Despite these cute but annoying problems, Prime Day was a success. Analytics from a Feedvisor report show that shoppers spent 54% more in the first three hours of this Prime Day than they did in the beginning three hours of last year’s promotional period. And according to Amazon, more products were ordered in the first hour of this year than last.
The Other Threat
Amazon is often used as an example of the threats faced by brick-and-mortar retailers. But another type of store may be just as a big a threat… one that has been overlooked due to ignorance and arrogance of the threat analysts. Dollar Tree and Dollar General, the two biggest “small-box discounters,” each operate 15,000 stores. That’s more combined stores than all six of the biggest U.S. retailers (Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Home Depot, CVS and Walgreens). The department store chains in the country equal less than 15% of that number. A good reminder not to count out who you may mistakenly view as the little guy.
Generation Z
Who is Generation Z? They are 19 and younger, generally the offspring of Generation X parents. According to Altitude/Accenture, they have a well-known limited attention span of 8 seconds. What is not as commonly acknowledged is that once something does grab their attention and prove worthy, they are very loyal to it. Gen Z is internet-savvy in the extreme and uses social media to simultaneously stand out and fit in as well as to earn instant validation. They use trending pages and curators to quickly find the information and entertainment that will best suit their needs. This has allowed them to learn to sift through large amounts of information quickly. Their limited attention span applies to marketing as well, making it imperative to have a good point made quickly.
Pathway to Sounding Better
Maximize your programming with a top-to-bottom review. The Lund Strategic Programming Evaluation finds the strengths and weaknesses of your stations – promotions, talents, and programming strategy, and details specific ways to improve the programming. If you play music, the evaluation also includes a detailed analysis of your music. ContactJohn Lund for info on how this study will benefit your stations.
Programmer’s Planner:
Here is a list of actions this week for the proactive program director:
Today, 7/25
Spring books in diary markets are coming in – Review yours against previous reports and plan for fall.
TV Premiere – The CW begins new show Burden of Truth.
Streaming Premiere – Hulu starts new J.J. Abrams horror series Castle Rock with its first three episodes (one episode a week from there).
Thurs., 7/26
Summer diary ratings week #6 begins. Start of week #2 of August PPM.
Is your Back to School promotion running? With many schools starting back up in mid-August, now is the best time.
Fri., 7/27
Plan fall promotions for Labor Day through Halloween. Remember, fall is also the time for the new TV season.
Streaming Premieres – Netflix has several premieres, including season six of Orange Is The New Black, sci-fi movie Extinction, documentaries The Bleeding Edge and Roman Empire: Reign of Blood, and family programming The Worst Witch.
Movie Premiere – Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
Sat.-Sun., 7/28-29
Review music and formatics of weekend shows.
TV Premieres – On Saturday, CBS has new reality show Pink Collar Crimes. On Sunday, the Comedy Central Roast of Bruce Willis airs on that channel (ex-wife Demi Moore makes an appearance).
Mon., 7/30
Examine all aspects of your music (library, scheduling rules, etc.).
Concentrate on TOMA today. Improve the station’s top of mind awareness.
Tues., 7/31
Today’s programming meeting… How can we have more listener involvement with summer activities? Where else can we be seen?
Schedule talent vacation time for fall carefully. Ideally, every key talent should be on-air through the ratings sweep.
TV Premiere – Making It, a crafting competition show hosted by comedic actors Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, starts on NBC.
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 t
alk, 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.