From the Hear 2.0 blog:
Seacrest…out?
So Ryan Seacrest has reportedly been coached to talk less between the songs on KIIS FM.
In a competitive market, the PPM ratings decline when the mic opens, or so the general consensus (with plenty of exceptions) says.
Ryan is supposedly miffed, and who can blame him? There are, after all, lots of companies that pay him lots of bucks to say stuff in front of an open mic. Putting a lid on it is the last thing they want.
More here. Be sure to read the comments.
From Mark Ramsey’s Hear 2.0:
Once upon a time there was a Top 40 station in a very large market — a VERY, very large market. And they were doing an on-air call-in giveaway of concert tickets. I don’t know how many calls they took, but it doesn’t matter to my tale. This station was doing this, obviously, to engage the audience and activate them. To create an opportunity to interact with the audience, one on one. Now when the phone lines are jammed and the jock is punching one call after another you might consider this tactic a success, right?
Well guess what?
This station called the phone company after the contest ended, and they asked a simple question: How many different (i.e., unduplicated) people attempted to dial in to win that prize in that time window?
The answer was 200.
Yes, for one of the biggest stations with hundreds of thousands of active Top 40 listeners in one of America’s biggest markets there were a mere 200 people playing their game. But the phone lines were jammed! With the same 200 people calling over and over!
Just last week I heard the same kind of game on a satellite radio program, and the 450th caller would be the winner. It made me wonder how many times 12 people would have to dial before one of them is caller 450. What is the point of wasting your time on something which motivates only 200 people to participate when your audience numbers in the hundreds of thousands? What do you think that does for the rest of your listeners, and how do you think it will affect you at ratings time?
This is not engagement, it’s delusion. It’s random motion.
It’s clutter.
I had this conversation with a consultant a dozen years ago and he pointed out that if just one of those callers has a ratings diary it can make a difference. (Mind you, the competition’s doing the same contest, so it could be a wash. But what station wants to be the first to give up contests?)
Are “caller 10″ contests clutter? They can be, but remember:
- Non-players like to hear winners. Hearing someone just like them win is heartwarming.
- The sound of winners on your station adds to your station’s image of coolness, generosity, hipness, localness, etc.
- With just a little work you can turn a boring “You’re the 10th caller!” call into some creative interaction with a listener.
- A smart radio host will turn that pair of concert tickets into a chance to increase Time Spent Listening.
It’s simple: Don’t allow your “caller 10″ contests to be just clutter.
From FMQB:
Arbitron has released its first-ever report on satellite radio ratings, with detailed figures on listenership for Sirius and XM. Unsurprisingly, Howard Stern’s “Howard 100″ is the most popular channel in satellite radio, with an AQH of 96,700 listeners and a total cume of 1,225,100. However, this is still only a fraction of Stern at his peak on terrestrial radio.
… As for some of the other, big-name personalities, Oprah Winfrey’s “Oprah & Friends” channel draws a weekly cume of just 115,800, while Martha Stewart’s Sirius channel nets only 35,700 listeners per week.
… Overall, Arbitron found that XM has a weekly cume of 10,332,900, while Sirius has a cume of 6,595,000. The satellite ratings were for persons ages 12+, based on approximately 466,000 in 300 markets during the Spring book (April-June).
With the Portable People Meter, radio is learning a few things about its listeners, listening habits and format preferences.
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