Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Lund Letter

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

This Week in The Lund Letter:  
>   Don’t be a turkey; perfect your holiday music
>   When to rebel against your music scheduling rules
>   Better morning prep
>   The wealth of Baby Boomers and the latest media trends

Happy Thanksgiving – 50% Off Black Friday Sale

thanksgivingsale.gifBuy 7 of Lund Media’s most popular guides at 50% off

+   Creative Imaging Liners A
+   Creative Imaging Liners B
+   At Work Imaging Liners A
+   At Work Imaging Liners B
+   Fake Commercials A (Fully produced)
+   Fake Commercials B (Fully produced)
+   Morning Show Guide

Valued at over $207.00 …  for only $103.50.

Order here for 50% off these 7 useful guides.


Lund Programming Clinic: The Christmas 3M’s

christ3ms.jpgHoliday programming is a great opportunity to win new listeners and strengthen your bond with your existing audience.

Music:  Play the hits. Play a tight list of the best researched Christmas music.  No one gets tired of hearing a favorite song, so play the hit versions of the top Christmas standards.  Many stations limit the total Christmas library to less than 200 hits. And the top twenty hits need to be played in a power rotation.

Mornings:  Talk up the Holidays.  Listener interactive phone calls and talent comments should sound positive and happy reflecting the good feelings of the season.

Marketing:  Just as you do in your home and station, dress up the on-air programming with “produced Christmas decorations” – in your liners, imaging, talent beds (especially in News-Talk), edited listener testimonials, cheery comments from children, and thus truly reflect the warmth and positive spirit of the Holiday.  Add a Holiday theme to your website. External marketing helps build new cume and builds community ties.

Win with Christmas – It’s not too late!

christmusic.jpgGet the song list you need for terrific holiday music programming.

+   Best researched Christmas songs – with categories
+   Christmas music formatics and song scheduling of powers and secondaries
+   Calendar of rotations for playing Holiday favorites

The Lund Christmas Music Advisory outlines the songs you should play.

This Christmas Music Advisory is ideal for AC, Classic Hits and Pop formats.


Lund Music Scheduling: Rules Are Made To Be Broken

musicscheduling18.jpgCheck your music software.  Perform your weekly review of the most frequently played songs.

+   Are there songs in your power rotations receiving more play than others in the same category?

+   Are there up-tempo “one hit wonders” rotating faster than slower songs by core artists?

These problems may indicate your attention to programming the “perfect quarter hour” in terms of tempo, variety and artist separation may be interfering with your music strategy of playing the listener’s favorite songs.

When it comes to scheduling music, focus on your overall strategy of playing the hits.  More than artist separation, genre, and tempo, you want to insure your listeners hear their favorite songs.  Today in CHR radio, Ariana Grande has several songs in current rotation, so you want to adjust your artist separation around the number of songs she has in rotation.  Many CHR stations are using a quarter hour separation because they know the audience has a huge appetite to hear all these songs.   In Rock and Classic Rock, a core artist may be Led Zeppelin.  If your station is Soft AC, and many of your songs are ballads, you don’t want a tempo control which restricts slower down-tempo songs.

+   To maximize your programming opportunity, play the best researched hits.  Adjust your music scheduling rules to insure all of your listener’s favorite songs are rotated evenly.

+   Avoid letting tight rules which cause a “stacking” of songs prevented from scheduling because of your rules.

Brighten Your On-Air Sound

lightbulb.gifYour imaging liners should be creative and fun, and they need to reinforce the station image.  Refresh your imaging liners today – Order 100 creative imaging liner scripts today.  For music stations order here, and News-Talk order here.

Lund’s Top 3:  Morning Prep Enhancements
 
Top3B.jpgAn ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Or in this case, half an hour of prep makes the morning show run smoothly and helps it sound perfect on the air! Follow Lund’s tips to improve the morning show:

1.   The talent prepares each show at least twelve hours in advance of air time. Preparation includes scripting, recording and reviewing bits, rehearsing, and promoting ahead.

2.   Since less music is played in morning as compared to other dayparts, each song in the morning is among the best-tested gold and recurrent, or an established current hit.

3.   Live copy and promos are truly sold to the audience, which is consistent with other dayparts. A talent must tap his/her personality to truly sell the benefits of listening.

Morning Prep Enhancements continues next week.  Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!

Amp Up Your Morning Show 

morningshowcover.pngWhere do you find benchmarks and bits that work great in the morning – and all dayparts?  The Lund Morning Show Guide lists the top 50 benchmarks and how to execute them.  This guide has all the tools your star talents need to grow and sound better.  It’s great for morning personality and all talents looking for content ideas for their breaks.  To improve the sound and execution of your shows, order the LundMorning Show Guide.

Promotion of the Week: Christmas at Your House

christmastree.gifA sales promotion where entries at sponsor locations or on the station website result in winning a Christmas tree, decorated by station staff, plus gifts underneath.  This can also be done as a simple on-air promotion.   Staffers deliver the tree, help the family put up decorations, and bring seasonal refreshments.

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:


Small Business Saturday – Day 22 for Revenue

smallbusinesssat.jpgAccording to transaction data from software company Womply, Small Business Saturday’s impact is a little, well, small.  Daily revenue for the “buy local” focused day is up 27% over the average day, but the average purchase prices are down 13%.  Deals meant to lure in more shoppers are cutting into profits more than business owners would like.  The biggest day?  Black Friday! Small, independent retailers have an average daily revenue of $1,576 which rises to $3,087 on the biggest sales day of the year.

Demographic Shift

finedining.jpgOn January 1, 2019, the last of the youngest Baby Boomers will age out of the 25-54 demo.  Most Baby Boomers have been outside this highest-sought sales demo for years.  And yet, Baby Boomers control 50% of the country’s wealth and do 28% of retail spending, according to Deliotte Insights and DEFcom Advisors.  This generation was raised on radio!  We should be the medium to continue to enjoy the power of these people.

Networks Strong On Radio

nielsenlogo18.pngAccording to the Nielsen Audio Today Report, 94% of American radio listeners 12+ tune in to a network-affiliated radio station each week.  The numbers if slightly higher (95%) among the 18-49 and 18-34 demos.  Most network listening happens out of the home (77%).

Make Sure You Get The Lund Letter

emailwhitelist.pngRadio’s only programming newsletter is delivered to your email every Wednesday.  Add the Lund Letter to your address book or safe sender list so it doesn’t hide in your spam folder.  For Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo, find instructions here.  Those with a private company server may need to speak to their IT department.

Programmer’s Planner:

Tomorrow: Thanksgiving Dayhappythanks.gif
Nov 23: Black Friday
Dec 3: First day of Chanukah/Hanukkah
Dec 5: Last day of the Nielsen fall diary sweep (and the Dec PPM)
Dec 7: Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
Dec 21: First day of Winter
Dec 24: Christmas Eve (Monday)
Dec 25: Christmas Day (Tuesday)
Dec 26: first day of Kwanzaa

Have Fun

babylaugh.gif…with your listeners.  Add more humor to the morning show with a humorous commercial like no other!  Or, if your station plays network spots and you’re tired of hearing the same network PSAs, cover them with a funny, fake commercial.

These humorous spots are 30-60 seconds and fully produced.  The spots include adopting a lion from Africa, US Army barge repair, buying a Boeing 747, owning an island in the Pacific, vacationing in Throop PA, becoming a rock and roll DJ, Tom Brady’s miracle diet, and many more fake topics and products.

Brighten your morning show…and your station with these funny commercials!

Volume A – 17 fake commercials
Volume B – 17 more fake commercials

Buy Volume A for $27.50; or get both Volumes A & B for $52.50.

Fully produced spots will be sent via Dropbox for easy downloading.


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, alljclforLL.pngtalk, 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. 

C
all 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