Wednesday, December 19, 2018

19 Dec Wednesday, December 19, 2018

This Week in The Lund Letter:  
>   Balance your morning clock
>   Announcer clichés and crutches
>   Voice inflection
>   Top news sources and the latest media trends

Today’s issue is our last for 2018.  Our next issue will be published on January 9, 2019.  

We wish our more than 10,000 readers of the Lund Letter a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Lund Programming Clinic: How Does Your Morning Clock Stack Up?

Since the beginning of the Nielsen PPM methodology era, music radio programmers have shrunk the number of commercial stopsets each hour to two to maximize time spent listening with longer stretches of music.  The two stopset philosophy even includes morning drive clocks, but this represents a problem for morning show personalities.  Why?

+   The clock is unbalanced.  One quarter hour is all music, while the next quarter hour could be a combination of morning show content, service elements like news, weather and traffic, station promos and commercials.  Worst case scenario: a listener tuning in the all music quarter hour could perceive the station as automated with no personality, and the listener tuning in the commercial stopset quarter hour hears the station as “very busy” or cluttered, which could cause tune-out.

+   With only two breaks for content, the morning personality will find it difficult to build a relationship with their audience.

+   Serial content would be difficult if not impossible since the next content break is twenty minutes away.

+   Focus on the commercial stopset break; it represents the major issue of “stacking” with multiple elements in one break.   

Ways of reducing stacking in the morning:

1.   Filter out marginal content and only air the most popular benchmarks.

2.   Review and reduce service elements.  Are listeners getting this info on their mobile devices?  Only keep the service elements your sales department is able to sponsor.

3.   Do content breaks between songs.  Your morning show needs to break the paradigm of only breaking around commercial stopsets.  Content as well as service elements like news can stand alone between songs; they don’t have to be adjacent to a commercial stopset.  Morning radio should be about content and service elements as the listener is constantly tuning in and out because of their busy lifestyle in the morning.

4.   Review the two stopset policy in mornings with your sales and traffic departments.  The show may be better off having three or four commercial stopsets each hour.

Stacking causes tune-out and minimizes the morning show desire to build a relationship with the listener.  Spread your content and service elements throughout the hour instead of stacking them all in commercial stopsets.  

The Best Christmas Gift Ever

If you’re doing mornings – or any show – personal growth adds to your profession.  Spend time this holiday season developing new enhancements to your daily performance.   

The newly expanded Lund Morning Show Guide provides hundreds of tools and new ideas to make every talent show better…checklists, benchmarks, show essentials… all designed to grow your audience, connect better with listeners, and sound terrific.  Order the Lund Morning Show Guidehere.

Lund Deeper Look: Clichés and Crutches

Last week we listed a number of clichés and redundant words that we hear on the air.  Readers provided additional phrases to add to our list.  The goal is to be concise, time efficient, and to the point when speaking to the listener.  Do you hear these words on your station? 

Days:
“Hump day,” “On your Monday,” “End of the week Friday,” “T.G.I.F.,” and “It’s the first day of the week Monday.”   

Weather crutches:
“It’s raining outside” (it’s not raining in the studio).  “Currently,” “Presently,” “Degrees,” temperature “right now,” and “Thunder boomers.”  For storm alerts, change “10 miles either side of a line from 10 miles west of Bloomington, Indiana to 30 miles west of Evansville, Indiana” to “From Bloomington to the Kentucky border.”  If the weather is the same for two days, say “Clear skies through tomorrow.”  

The time:
“I’ll be here until 2 this afternoon,” “15 minutes after the hour of two” (say it’s 2:15), “Ten minutes this side of one o’clock” (what side are they are on?), “The studio clock says it’s time for me to get out of here,” “Johnny Holiday till ten o’clock” (just what does Johnny become after ten?), “I’ll be back in three minutes,” and “I’ll be right back after the news” (these two signal a reason to tune out).  

From Steve McKay at WTCB in Columbia, SC, “At 2 we’re giving away free money” (if we’re giving it away, isn’t it free?), “Good mornin’ to ya,” and “Join us tomorrow morning at 6 AM” (since it’s morning, it’s already AM).

Region clichés:
“Hello out there,” “Hello, Illinois.”  People listen individually, so talk to one person at a time.  Referring to listeners in the outlying areas, “over there” or “down there” or “up in.”  This comes from George Bower at KICD in Spencer, Iowa, who says that everywhere our signal can be heard is “right here.”

Music:
When voice tracked, “if there’s something you want to hear, call me.”  “The king of Rock and Roll,” “Four guys from Liverpool,” and “Coming up (three artists) and more” (define “more”!).  Also, promoting ahead three artists is not as effective as promoting ahead one.

If you have some clichés or crutches you hate to hear, email John Lund.  

Clichés are often heard in commercials (“Come see our friendly staff of professionals,” “Hurry on down”). Jeffrey Hedquist has assembled a list of over 300 insidious phrases that kill results and insult the audience.  Get a copy on Hedquist.com to improve your commercial copy writing.  

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, we have that also.

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.   Pause for effect in your delivery. Insert a quick pause between thoughts and before a key point that you want to emphasize. This makes the break less fatiguing for the listener and it sounds more interesting. The pause tends to focus attention on what follows.

2.   Use voice inflection as a “personality” vehicle.  Add some “pizzazz” to your speech.  Vary your pace and pick out key words to give extra emphasis; as a result, you sound more personable. 

3.   Always be positive and avoid sarcasm. Listeners usually react poorly to what they perceive as negativism and put-downs. Be enthusiastic about every aspect of your airtime.

Format Basics continues in the next Lund Letter.  Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!

Brighten Your On-Air Sound

Promotion of the Week: 12 Months of Love

A huge Valentine’s Day promotion.  Sell to 12 sponsors. Listeners register in stores to win 12 prizes — one per month — to give to their sweethearts.  The more stores the listeners register at, the greater their chance of winning. Plan to have at least one large prize like a trip, home entertainment center, etc.

Are you marketing to General Managers or Program Directors and want to reach the 10,000 readers of the Lund Letter? EmailJohn Lund.

Lund Trend Watch:

Top News Sources

Statista analysis of Pew Research data shows that Social Media has squeaked past Print Newspapers as a news source for the first time.  Social Media is still behind TV, News Websites and Radio.  The numbers for preferred news source in 2018:

>   TV preferred by 49% (down from 57% in 2016)
>   News Websites preferred by 33% (up from 28%)
>   Radio preferred by 26% (up from 25%)
>   Social Media preferred by 20% (up from 18%)
>   Print Newspapers preferred by 16% (down from 20%)

Auto Sales Likely to Fall in 2019

The National Automobile Dealer’s Association expects new vehicle sales to drop next year due to higher interest rates and rising prices.  16.8 million units are the estimate, and it would be the first time sales had not reached the 17 million mark since 2014.

Movie Advertising

82% of the average movie’s ad budget goes to TV.  According to data-analytics company Neustar, TV ads have a “marketing impact” of 42% for a movie’s box office results.  Overall digital media had a collective 14% of movie marketing in 2018.  However, marketing impact of box office revenue was 46%.  Only 2% of the average movie’s ad budget goes to radio.

Pause For Commercials

 Hulu and AT&T (DirecTV) are looking into inserting ads that appear when video content is paused.  Static “screensaver” images as well as short 2 to 5 second video ads are being considered.

Programmer’s Planner:

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)

This week, code all commercials, promos, and imaging that mention “Christmas” or “Holiday” to disappear after December 25.

   
Thanks for reading
The Lund Letter
Now more than 10,000 broadcasters get the Lund Letter each week!  
Have suggestions for future articles?  Email John Lund!

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, alltalk, 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.