TORONTO – Working hard every day to engage radio listeners in innovative ways to keep them coming back to your station is still the key to great radio programming, according to some of Canada’s top program directors.
While that might sound as though they were tooting their own horns, the PDs who spoke Thursday during a special session on PPM (Portable People Meter) audience data at the Radio Interactive conference in Toronto actually came across as pretty humble as they spoke about audience retention strategies for their medium, which has been around for nearly a century, as it fights for attention from some far younger media formats.
Kath Thompson, program director at 98.1 CHFI Toronto’s Lite Favourites, said radio stations need to be “consistently fresh” to bring listeners back every day. “You want people to know your brand and know the personalities on the brand, but also know that they’re going to get something different every day,” Thompson said. “So it isn’t ‘Groundhog Day’ every day that they come back.”
In addition, Thompson said radio programmers need to understand the daily reality of their listeners’ lives, which is reflected in the PPM data that measures listening behaviours of radio audiences. In the diary days of audience measurement, radio programmers were focused on getting listeners to tune in for a longer period of time, perhaps just another 15 minutes, Thompson said. But the reality is they don’t always have another 15 minutes to listen to the radio, she said. “People have stuff to do in their lives, and stuff doesn’t stop for radio.”
So the focus has shifted to getting listeners to keep returning to your station, she said. “To say, ‘Here’s what we have coming up tomorrow or next week,’ is very powerful and a great way to invite them back.”
Ronnie Stanton, brand director and operations manager for Virgin 95.3 in Vancouver, agreed with Thompson, adding that program directors also need to guard against making assumptions about the audience measurement data they get from PPM. For example, PPM data might reveal a trend that suggests a radio station’s listeners are tuning out in large numbers all of a sudden, Stanton said.
“It’s very easy to say, there’s something horribly wrong at 8:30 with my morning show, but it’s actually just because of a lot of your audience is turning the car off to go to work or going into a work place where your station isn’t on,” Stanton said, “and that creates the opportunity to hook for tomorrow, and not just be single-minded in hooking for the next 10 or 15 minutes, because reality sometimes doesn’t allow it,” Stanton added.
Specific promotions such as contests or money giveaways can help to increase return visits among listeners, Stanton said. However, establishing a great brand and living up to listeners’ expectations goes a long way to keep them coming back, he said. “So when they do punch in, they get their fix of what they think they’re going to get,” he explained, “and that creates the circular effect of people coming back.”
When thinking about radio programming, program directors have two things they can affect – PPM tuning and brand building, Stanton continued. “But sometimes when you’re affecting the brand, it can hurt your PPM… You might be doing an interview that’s a touch too long, or you’re doing a promo that’s not as good as that Adele song that you could be playing 7,000 times a week.”
But branding efforts build up listener loyalty over time. “Those things add up, too, and when the person sits in their car for the first time at 8:30 in the morning, maybe that helps you be their first choice,” added Stanton.
According to recent research from Coleman Insights, both 98.1 CHFI in Toronto and Virgin 95.3 in Vancouver are top choices for radio listeners in their respective markets. To kick off the panel discussion, Warren Kurtzman, president and chief operating officer of Coleman Insights, released a new report on PPM data for the Canadian radio market.
As part of its study, Coleman Insights looked at 81 radio stations in Canada and identified 13 “high performance stations” in the five main markets (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal). These high performance stations consistently had higher audience numbers on a daily basis and more listener visits per day, when compared to the other 68 stations included in the study. In addition, the 13 high performance stations had more listeners tuning in from an “out of home” location, whether that was at work or in the car, Kurtzman said.
Capturing the market for “out of home” listening is a key focus for 98.1 CHFI’s programming strategy, explained program director Thompson. “Obviously with CHFI, it is marketed as an ‘at work’ station,” Thompson said. “We’ve very aggressively gone after that programming-wise, to make sure that is a key message. And I think the PPMs reflect that is what we do.”
Linda Stuart is covering Slacker Canadian Music Week for Cartt.ca, which is also a media sponsor of the event.
