28 Nov Wednesday, November 28, 2018
This Week in The Lund Letter:
> Don’t just go with it, create it
> When not to tease
> Holiday spending and the latest media trends
Lund Programming Clinic: Programming “Flow”
Successful radio stations project a forward, posi¬tive motion that expands TSL. The station flows with continuous momentum even when there is a stop-down for commercials. Each programming element flows naturally into the next. Good flow consists of the following:
+ Music to music transitions
+ Prepared talk sets that are carefully edited and executed
+ All elements in a break including content flow well
+ The last spot in the stop set fuses with the next song well
What inhibits flow?
The dreaded Screeching Halt Disease kills TSL in a heartbeat. What’s SHD? Imagine driving a car on a road leading to a beach. The pavement ends and the car slows dramatically as the wheels enter the soft sand and gets bogged down. Wheels spin and the car comes to a screeching halt.
Talents need not get bogged down with Screeching Halt Disease. Causes to watch out for:
> Unprepared talk
> Benchmarks, bits or stories that last too long
> An inability to deliver humor succinctly
> Talk that does not relate to the station’s audience
> Behind the scenes “inside talk” with staffers that listeners don’t relate to
> Lengthy, directionless chats in the studio (with sidekicks, producer, another DJ)
> Redundancy caused by repeating statements within a break
A great station flows continuously and effortlessly. It never really sounds like it stops down. The goal is to keep the content flowing and moving along. Talents exhibit forward momentum and always promote something special coming up, like an artist, music sweep, feature, updated weather, etc. Talents never give the listener a reason to tune away.
Win with Christmas – It’s not too late!
Get 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 Deeper Look: The Time To Tease
We’ve previously written about the concept of forward momentum and how effective teasing can set listening appointments and extend time spent listening building better ratings. However, there are three times where teasing can actually stop momentum and cause possible tune out.
Breaking the Momentum
Imagine sitting and listening to your favorite artist performing your favorite songs in concert. Suddenly, they walk off stage and an emcee makes some stage announcements of what’s coming up at the venue; then the music resumes. You will probably see many in the audience getting up from their seats and going to the restrooms, buying refreshments, or looking at their smart phone.
Yes! This is an interruption of flow. This also occurs when air talents tease between songs in a music sweep. A music sweep’s objective is to achieve several quarter hours of listening. By interrupting the momentum with a tease, you are not maximizing the music sweep’s objective. The exception is morning talents who tease between songs before the next content break. Since the morning brand is not just music, this tease can be effective in building time spent listening.
A Second Scenario
You have been standing in line to check out at the register. The cashier rings you up and just before you are to pay, you are asked to join their preferred customer club for discounts and email notifications of special sales. You had your expectation of leaving the store compromised as you now have to recalculate whether you want to spend additional time in the store to join their club. Don’t tease between the end of the stopset and first song. Your audience has listened through a long commercial stopset, and then you tease a contest or feature 20 minutes away instead of going directly into music.
Get Into Content Fast!
A final scenario: There use to be a time in television when one show ended and another began when there was a “station break” between the shows… credits end, station id, promo, commercials, introduction to next show, commercials. Now sometimes the intro to the next show starts over the credits of the last show. Television understands momentum, they know when something ends you need to establish new momentum. With radio, when the music ends, you need to start with content not a promo, tease, or station business like weather and traffic. When the music ends, get right into your content. PPM data shows you only have 8 seconds to hold attention.
In summary, here are the three places not to tease:
1. Between songs in a music sweep.
2. After your commercial stopset.
3. After the music ends going into content.
NASA Landed Its Spacecraft On Mars…
…but did you achieve your revenue goals for 2018?
Is your station “dressed to impress” for the holidays and beyond? Do your listeners and advertisers seek you out for stations with great programming and music on all of your platforms (over the air, website, stream, mobile app, etc.)? Do you need one final off-the-charts sales promotion to end 2018 on a killer note?
Lund Media provides custom solutions for stations in all size markets and for all platforms. Contact John Lund to discuss your future growth.
Lund’s Top 3: Morning Prep Enhancements
An 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 station name and positioning statement are heard often throughout each hour. The name is used in conjunction with memorable bits or features and station promotions, and always attached to station features to take ownership.
2. Timechecks and weather reports fit audience needs in morning drive. Weather can be as brief as the few words describing what will happen today, but always said in the language of the listener, not meteorologist wording.
3. Teases and promos that air in morning drive specifically sell the benefits of continued listening so the larger morning audience is “recycled” to other dayparts.
Morning Prep Enhancements continues next week. Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!
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Promotion of the Week: (Prize) For A Year
The beginning of January, otherwise promotionally a ghost town, is a great time to award a “year” of something. Some ideas: music (mp3s of every new song played on the station that year, or a “copy” of the library for gold-based formats), movies (couple of movie theater tickets a week or a paid membership to Netflix or another streaming service), car (a lease agreement), meals (once a week restaurant gift certificates), calls (pre-paid cell phone), etc. Or combine several and give away a Year of Easy Living.
Are you marketing to General Managers or Program Directors and want to reach the 10,000 readers of the Lund Letter? Email John Lund.
Brighten Your On-Air Sound
Your 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 Trend Watch:
Increased Holiday Spending
The National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics has released a new holiday consumer sentiment survey. In it, 77% of all consumers say they will spend the same or more this year as compared to last holiday season. 43% of 18-24 year olds and 38% of 25-54 year olds say they will spend more. In contrast, only 9% of those 65 and older plan to spend more this year. Some other interesting findings? 50% of those who own smartphones or tablets will use them to research holiday purchases. Gift card spending is expected to reach $29.9 billion (up from $27.6 billion last year). And the must-have toys for kids? For girls – Barbie. For boys – LEGOs (LEGOs are pretty high on the list for girls too).
Mobile Marketing In Danger
Text messaging should be classified as an “information” service according to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. This is a blow to Twilio, Public Knowledge and other advocacy groups’ desire to officially label texting a “telecommunications” service. Pai wants the info label so carrier services can block text-spam, but Twilio and the others claim that this allows carriers to block messages from companies and groups they may disagree with politically (which has happened in the past).
Mud On Your Facebook
Just hand them a towel. Facebook has had some pretty bad press recently and stock prices are at a year low, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting their ad revenue bottom line. Most of their 6 million advertisers are slightly wary of scandal but continue to get their money’s worth on the relatively unaffected ad platform. As long as brands are safe in the Facebook environment, whatever is going on in the background is not as much of a concern as ROI.
Make Sure You Get The Lund Letter
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Programmer’s Planner:
Dec 3: First day of Chanukah/Hanukkah
Dec 5: Last day of the Nielsen fall diary sweep (and 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
Dec 31: New Year’s Eve (Monday)
Jan 1: New Year’s Day 2019 (Tuesday)
Thanks for reading
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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.