Music Radio: What Gets the Most Airtime Besides Music?

Nuvoodoo Research: Leigh Jacobs & Carolyn Gilbert

Spouses of program directors talk about it: PDs listen to the car radio wrong – they turn up the volume when a song is ending, listen for whatever happens between the songs … and turn the volume down. I haven’t programmed a station since 1999 – and I STILL listen to the radio that way.

Listening that way will also remind you that most of the non-music programming on music radio stations isn’t the jock or imaging or promos – it’s commercials. In cases where the breaks are voiced by busy, non-local talent, commercials may be the only thing telling listeners what city/metro/locality is being served by the station. While the PD sweats the playlist, the music schedule, the imaging, the contests, and the jock content … the commercials often get no attention at all.

If you go back far enough, this wasn’t always the case.

• You’ll hear of stations where the sequence of the spots in a break was programmed with the most entertaining, listener-friendly commercial first in the break and the worst commercial saved for the end. The theory was that you might hold listeners with the better spots and hope that by the last spot (the third or fourth in the break) they would still be there, hoping for another song.

• Some PDs had “veto power” over clients and creative to protect listenership. In practice, GMs (or corporate sales) would override most vetoes, but often there’d be some change to the copy or creative that would improve listenability.

• The best PDs attended all sales meetings (some still do) to influence creative and copy choices while working to align the (sometimes) competing goals of audience retention and revenue generation.

PDs are spread thin today, but working to find ways to influence creative, to improve the messaging in the commercial inventory is sorely needed. Who at the station knows more about targeting the station’s audience? Who at the station has thought more about grabbing the attention of listeners – or has thought more about using the power of audio? With their greater expertise in engaging listeners, PDs are natural allies for sales in generating better results for clients. Everybody wins when that happens (including PDs).

It’s time for radio advertising to get the credit it deserves. Our medium has massive reach. Many stations enjoy a prominent position in their communities and in the lives of listeners. NuVoodoo clients are finding success in increased renewals, extensions, and additional sales by supplying their clients with brand lift studies.

The concept of brand lift studies is simple: screen two samples across the same demo, ethnic composition, and geography. One sample is screened to be listeners of the stations included in the schedule – those exposed to your client’s campaign. The other sample is an unexposed “control” group. Radio companies using brand lift studies accept the small sales expense as an investment in their continued success.

We showcased a recent brand lift study for an expanding local bank in a webinar. Competing with much larger institutions, our client, the cluster of radio stations, knew they were starting at near zero awareness with the bank’s campaign. You’ll get all the details of their success in less than 15 minutes in the webinar video on our website.

Giant digital players say they give away brand lift studies for a large enough ad spend, but NuVoodoo can scale brand lift studies to make them work for radio ad budgets. Studies can be run across a group or market cluster. We can cover several clients in a study when schedules align. We work to make costs commensurate with budgets. Reach out to me at leigh@nuvoodoo.com for more information.