A recent Arbitron study of in-car listening in that commuter's paradise known as Los Angeles drove home (pun intended) something that we've mostly known, but don't always read in black and white.
In this study, 39% of people said avoiding commercials was the number 1 reason they frequently switched radio stations. But at a close 37%, the #2 reason was "to search for a better song".
So, if they search your radio station at any given moment, are they gonna find it? I'm gonna talk to you about how you can increase the odds they will through effective use of your music scheduler. But first, some foundational stuff.
Take Back Control
The time has come for one person to be completely, totally responsible for not only what music is played on your station, but how and when. If you're the PD, that person is you.
It's crazy to spend a bunch of time on a carefully crafted plan to increase TSL and build cume, only to have your night jock throw it out the window by shuffling every 3rd song around and sneaking in requests. Right at the start, make up your mind that music consistency and essence are so fundamental, so inviolable to the success of your radio station that you will adopt a zero-tolerance policy of jocks monkeying with the mix.
Now, if you think that this tip is old news or just for beginners, you haven't been around a lot of Christian radio stations! I'm all for the human touch, and there will be times when you break the plan for the right reasons. But too often that's just an excuse for being undisciplined with the implementation of what we KNOW is the #1 reason people listen!
YOU are the DEFENDER OF THE PRODUCT, so don your cape and mask (if they still fit after all that eating at GMA) and jealously guard the sound that you're working to achieve.
Build from the ground up
We can probably mostly agree that playing the right music is key. But, the first step in answering the question "Are we playing the right music?" is "Who are we trying to play the right music for?"
Face it, most MDs & PDs are guys, many of us are a bit younger than the 35 year old female most ACs claim to be trying to target - and the temptation is there to want to regularly "take chances" and "push the envelope".
For those of us who AREN'T younger than our target, well, we've been doing this so long we tend to get a bid jaded at the "typical" AC music. "Everybody hates AC…except the listeners" goes the oft-quoted saying - but it's TRUE.
We must make sure we're not being too insider when we build our playlists, and work very hard at making every song be consistent with the preference of our station's target. (By the way, I am deliberately avoiding the question of how to assemble a profile of a target listener - that's another article. I am assuming that anyone ready to tackle the issue of music has ALREADY DECIDED on his or her target and know exactly who she/he is.)
If I go from 900 to 750, won't my TSL drop?
You've got a big job ahead of you and the first step is to assess where you are now.
The very first thing you have to do is print a list of each and every active song in your database and ask yourself, "Does this song REALLY have a likely appeal to my station's target listener?"
Find 10 songs you're playing that are the cream of the crop. Print that list out and keep it by your CD player, and glance at it whenever you add new music.
Throw out everyone that does not. No argument, no hand wringing, no committees. Just do it.
Yes, you should regularly do auditorium music tests and always be researching, but I really believe that a good majority of "stiff" songs become pretty obvious to someone who has the right instincts and merely takes the time to examine the music. If you don't trust yourself all alone on such an endeavor, ask your GM for his or her advice. On second thought, you should do that anyway even if you think you've got it all figured out! And then, ask them for permission to let 3-4 PDs you respect look over your list and make suggestions. Average out the results and this will be helpful.
I love it when a plan comes together…
Decide what features are important in your station's music. (You should tout the emotional BENEFITS of these features in your promos and copy). But what are you emphasizing in your positioning? Music that "picks you up and makes you feel good"? Then a bright tempo and mix is key. "Soft and relaxing favorites"? Make sure you're keeping things cool on the tempo and energy. Is "variety" the watchword at your station? Then you need to not focus so much on tempo perfection as making sure every song schedules as evenly around the clock as possible, that you can adequately handle "no repeat workdays" etc.
What's your position in the market? Are you in a 3-way competitive battle? All alone in your format? Re-imaging yourself? Your answers to all these questions will determine what you tell your scheduler to prioritize in its selection of music.
The whole point I'm advocating with all of this is to have a sense of cohesion to your music process. You should decide what's REAL important for your music mix to be, what's KIND of important, and what's not that important at all. From these decisions, you prioritize the rules on your music scheduler so that it's working hard on what matters and not on what doesn't. Write down your priorities, and equate each one with the correlating "rule" your music scheduler uses to enforce the priority. You'll need that list later.
Question EVERYTHING - and maybe answer a few things, too…
OK, so the next key step in this process is to make sure you clean out the cobwebs in your music scheduler. Think about it, over 3 years, maybe 3 different people (or more) have been maintaining your database, each with his or her own philosophy and preferences. And with Selector or Music Master there are HUNDREDS of tweaks - who knows how many of 'em are old but still in effect? That happens even with just one person at the helm. And it's so easy to just hit "Schedule a Day", export or print, and go home day after day, but is your music scheduler really working on the rules that are important to you NOW? Here's my favorite way to make sure it is.
First, Take a backup. PLEASE DO THAT FIRST. I will pray right now that you do…………. In Jesus Name, AMEN.
OK, now get permission from your family, and take one Saturday afternoon or evening away from the phone and other distractions, and just sit in front of the computer working on this. Remember that list of programming priorities you worked on earlier? Well break that out and refer to it here. Just to be safe, take a SECOND backup (or create a 2nd database that you can "play" with), and then - ahem - wipe out every rule, policy, code, and tempo/mood/energy rating you have.
He wants me to do WHAT?
Yes, that's what I said. Wipe 'em clean. What you want are just songs with only title, artist, and vital automation/library info.
Now is the time to decide which of the many options your scheduler offers do you want to use, and how. The way I have found that works best is to set ALL those parameters from a clean slate. Go for the ideal - you're experimenting and not working off an active, airing database.
Yet.
When it comes to music schedulers, I have found what works best is to be completely stubborn and inflexible on some rules, and completely permissive and tolerant on others. Remember that the more restrictions you place on your music scheduler, the more out of sync you'll be from your ideal turnovers. So you're working to strike a balance.
As to which parameters you should use, go back to your programming philosophy. Are you in a 3-way competitive battle? All alone in your market? Are you selling a particular feature to listeners, such as variety, or upbeat, or soft and relaxing? Your answers to these questions will help determine what you tell your scheduler to prioritize.
The temptation with these programs tends to be on one of two extremes. There's the extreme of letting the scheduler to ALL the work, completely ignoring the human element that is essential to any good music mix. And there is the extreme whereby an individual spends 2 hours daily "massaging" the log after it's been scheduled.
Avoid both.
OK, back to that paper you worked on earlier that defined the "essence" your music should convey. Keep it handy and let's begin to work on brushing up your library to get there.
Be nice if at least ONE of these options was a STOCK option!
First, do you have the right categories? What, you've got 17? Try a simple approach first, you can always go back and add layers of complexity if you need to. I recommend just Heavy, Medium, Recurrent, Power Gold, and one, maybe two levels of Basic Gold. (I'm not accounting for any specialty shows or "block programming". If you're doing that, by all means, keep those categories discrete. This article is just dealing with your basic music mix).
Next, you need to calculate how often you want an individual song in one of your categories to repeat itself. Desired individual song turnover should determine category size - don't just pick a number out of thin air. Do the math first, based on your clocks.
Define some things here in the scheduler. What's your scale for "Energy" or "Mood"? 1-5, 1-7? Decide now what the range is and what each number means. What are the "Sound Codes" that are important to you - in other words, what sounds are NOT core but you still allow in your mix? Things like "Dance" "Alternative" "Country", etc. Pick what you need and leave the rest blank. (Keep these to a minimum - if a song really is Country, should it even be on an AC playlist? These are just indications of where a song leans while still fitting…)
Now, go through EVERY song in your library, and make sure it's "coding" matches the criteria you just defined. Attitudes about songs mellow over time, so make the necessary adjustments now. (Example: Remember when "Shine" by Newsboys was real cutting edge for AC? Probably coded as real hot by many - but now it's on virtually every AC playlist, probably not even as that extreme of a song…)
What about your rotational rules? How important is it to you that a PG not play in AM drive two days in a row? How about recycling? Choose all those types of parameters now and decide which ones you don't need (sometimes that's just as hard).
Double-check your search depths. Lots of philosophies on how to set these, but my feeling has always been that you need to keep them fairly short. 33% is a good guideline - this way you're searching deep enough that you can find something, but not so deep that only your easy songs schedule. You can adjust it to deeper levels on larger categories if needed later.
Next, set the ORDER in which the scheduler works to enforce these rules. Obviously this is key. Many stations find success with something like the following with Golds (in order of importance)
Media Protection (if you're still spinning CDs)
Daypart Restriction (no long slow Golds in mornings, for instance)
Artist Separation
Minimum Separation
Rotational "Play Window" 3 back (must play 3 hours away from last spin for at least 3 plays)
Sound Code
Energy
Mood
Tempo
Many stations find that in this day and age of tight playlists and the battle for TSL that making sure all your titles are right is more important than trying to squeeze the perfect 3 song segue every time. You might consider emphasizing an approach that, although not abandoning things like tempo and mood, doesn't flunk songs based on those rules. If you're only playing the right songs, you'll find the "flow" is usually quite good without much manipulation your part.
Using things like Rotational Dayparting, you can schedule songs across as many dayparts as possible before repeating them in the same daypart. This is a very good way to expose your audience to as much of your library as possible without having to play thousands of titles.
Run lots of sample schedules to see how everything fits. Retool and adjust as you go. It's tedious but great to see it finally start to come together after all those attempts. And when you print a sample hour with your new plan in place, it will make you very happy when you see how nicely if flows.
Keep working at it, and be sure to consult your manual! MusicMaster, Selector, Powergold ALL offer excellent documentation and support, and they really know how to help you make the most out of your investment!
Wow, look at the time - you 'bout ready to wrap this up?
Yeah - but do you want another good, cheap exercise?
Twice a year, find 10 songs you're playing that are at least six months old but no more than 3 years old. You put little or no restrictions on these songs when scheduling, they are by core artists, and really are songs you just KNOW are the cream of the crop. Print that list out and keep it by your CD player, and glance at it whenever you add new music. Make sure your new adds fit the essence, feel, and quality of those 10 songs. If you're in doubt about a new add, wait a week, and then consider it again. Be careful, because you don't want to be all about the past, but this does help instill some discipline into the process of new adds, especially if, like so many stations, only one person is involved in the decision.
Remember, instant gratification is how people listen to the radio; if you're not giving them what they want to hear now, they're gone. Work very hard to make sure your clocks and rotations build what Mike McVay calls "Music Essence" - the focus of your station that can consistently be heard and understood in any 15 minute window of time.
Nothing impacts that more than the selection and rotation of your music. Take the time now to use the wonderful tool of your music scheduler to make sure you're building on a sure foundation for your station. That way, if someone leaves the OTHER guys in search of a better song, the chances are real good they'll find it with you.
And perhaps they'll find hope in the message of the music, too.
