Pot calling the Kettle Posted on April 24, 2024 at 03:41:27 PM by Just sayin, IMHO
You lecturing me, Jim, about what you do because I say "Just sayin" and you don't?
I don't blame anyone but corporate broadcasting. We've always built our presentation clocks around everyone but the one entity we SHOULD....our LISTENERS and VIEWERS.
For decades, radio's built their broadcast clock to game the Arbitron hour. Television's always built their broadcast clock on the hourly clock.
The vast majority of the workforce uses the hourly clock. People are scheduled to punch in on the hour and half hour.
They need 10 minutes to go from their workstation to their cars, or vice versa. Which means radio should be broadcasting at :50, :10, :20 and :40, under the assumption that car radios go ON and go OFF around the work hours, assuming it takes ten minutes to walk into or out of their jobs.
If this was LA, and every commute was an hour, that's different than a small town where it takes no more than 15 minutes in the car to get everywhere.
I learned that decades ago from a radio consultant who was into programming off of worker habits.
Top 40 stations would program to high school hours, adult stations to worker hours.
If a top 40 station was required to run news by the FCC, they'd bury it at :50 when noticeably fewer people were listening and also that would help the diary evaluations (Just don't tell advertisers that you cluster your spots at :50 where fewer people are listening!)
But talk shows program for the top of the hour. They place spots and their news for that, regardless of what listeners are doing at that time.
Maybe they should shift that during morning and afternoon drive specifically for commuters, which is :50 and :10, allowing for walking in and out of the buildings.
The way to validate that is to go downtown and watch the comings and goings of a big parking garage. Or the road outside a manufacturing plant's front gate in a blue collar town. Or a high school or college parking lot. Retailers unlock the doors at 8:50 and 9:50. Office workers at 7:50 and 8:20am. If you run traffic tie-up breaks, place them when people get into the cars for the commute. Pretend your not in radio. When do your LISTENERS need to know stuff.
And they turn off their car radios at 6:10pm. Rush hour's OVER.
And if you aren't risk aversive, reintroduce them to news.... but you must know exactly what kind of news and where in your viewer's day do you put it... news producers are TOTALLY into viewer acceptance and it changes. How do you determine that? Listen to what everybody else is running, or RESEARCH it? What was big news last night at 5:30? Do you talk politics this week or everything BUT? If you have decided no politics, maybe that decision limits you on days the Supreme Court just handed down a huge decision. Good managers know when to break the rules, I'd say.
IMHO, TV's greatest research methodology is the FOCUS group. How often do you get listeners together and find out what THEY want to talk about as opposed to what the midday shows are talking about on TV? It's hard.
Who to blame because radio talk sucks? I'll tell you. Its because Entercom (or whoever they are this week) is too cheap to hire them a producer who lives breathes AUDIENCE ACCEPTANCE. Instead they asked the TALENT to divide their time between their shows and show planning! Maybe what they should be doing is having a producer spend time exclusively choosing topics and then deciding at exactly what times of the show to start and end those topics?
And listen closely to the calls and what the callers want to talk about, and know when a topic has made its points and time to move to the next topic.
Executives, always worried about the bottom line, wanna save another buck and squeeze another hour out of their air staff, which destroys their ability to choose topics.
That's obviously why the bean counters have no business programming the broadcast day! You want to build interest, and they want to cut expenses.
-0-
"Just sayin" is the kissin cousin to "IMHO". If I don't show an inkling of humility, you'll just say to yourself, "oh that radioman's lecturing me like he knows everything...what an ego! And he's been out of radio HOW LONG?"
I say, True THAT! And I turned into a cubicle worker so I know more about my office co-worker listeners than YOU do! And I can hear what music they're listening to turned down low in their cubies--women like chick music and lots of variety because they listen all day long, every day! Given a choice, do they listen to what YOU"RE playing or what they subscribe to?
-0-
You do know why people pay attention to consultants and not others already on their broadcast staffs? Because they're PAYING TOP DOLLAR for the consultants, and ideas from staff are free so they must not be worth much. Could it be that consultants used to be in radio but now they're on the other side, spending more time with listeners?
The boss will always take a consultant's advice over yours! He paid the consultants for ideas. He doesn't pay for yours. Chances are he figures consultants know more than you do. Chances are, they might be wrong because you're much better at analyzing things and it sucks they don't listen to you!
Well, hope you heard something unexpected and new here. Take what's useful and toss the rest cuz I'm just sayin.