January 15, 2024 • 20 mins
In this episode, we explore the evolving dynamics of radio in 2024 with industry guru Sean Ross! In his roles as VP Music + Programming at Edison Research, and creator of the popular Ross on Radio Insight column, Sean is the perfect 'go-to' guy to explore the key questions we'll all be facing in 2024. Among them:
- Can collaboration with record labels rejuvenate radio's influence?
- How crucial are up-tempo hits in today's audio landscape?
- Is radio's influence slipping in comparison to platforms like TikTok?
- How will the radio landscape change with different music tastes evolving including the surge of country music?"
- Is revitalizing local stations with truly local programming – the key to sustainability?
Sean also explores the coming pulse of the Billboard Hot 100 and industry concern over the scarcity of new music on radio.
We’ll also explore how falling ratings and market share threaten radio's legacy, and what can be done about it.
Join us as we attempt to unlock these secrets of radio survival. The future of radio…and your career awaits!
Time-stamped takeaways you won't want to miss:
[1:59] Sean questions music beliefs, citing 2023 hits like Miley Cyrus's "Flowers" and Olivia Rodrigo's "Bad Idea," impacting Top 40 radio.
[5:07] Radio's evolving role is discussed. Sean notes its vital role to listeners, raising questions about its significance to labels.
[7:11] Sean anticipates changes, highlighting radio challenges and emphasizing collaboration with labels. Discusses reliance on platforms like TikTok.
[9:02] Sean explores the ideal radio station model, balancing local and national focus, and discussing their roles in the marketplace.
[11:00] Sean challenges radio success metrics, advocating a broader evaluation beyond AQH share, and suggesting a more comprehensive approach.
One-Minute Martinizing (tap here)
Please help us thank these supporters who help keep BRANDWIDTH ON DEMAND free!
Return to Brandwidth on Demand episodes
YES! Send me the free SHOW NOTES preview email
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sean (00:00):
I hope that we have stations that are truly local, and I think the best
model for the rest of them is to becometruly national as opposed to fake local.
I don't think fake local ishelping anybody or fooling anybody.
(00:21):
Welcome to Brand With On Demand,your guide to rebooting radio.
Radio needs music.
Radio needs to find a better way tofind music because having delegated
everything to TikTok hasn't worked.
VO (00:36):
BRANDwidth on Demand.
Rebooting radio with a differenttake on all radio can be.
Now your guides through the metamorphosis.
David Martin and author ofthe book BRANDwidth, Media
Branding, coach Kipper McGee.
Dave (00:52):
As we've been doing the past few seasons, BRANDwidth on Demand
kicks off 2024 with the alwaysinsightful Sean Ross for those
unfamiliar Sean's seasoned Radio Pro.
Having covered the industry foryears as publications like Billboard
and r and r, he then joined.
Edison Research in 2003, lendinghis expertise to music testing and
(01:16):
surveys as VP of Music and Programming.
Today, Sean focuses on market trends,format evolution, and how radio adapts
in the evolving audio landscape.
You'll find links to hisinsightful Ross on Radio column.
In this show notes we read it every weekand follow him online at Ross on Radio.
(01:38):
We're thrilled to start the new yearwith an always unique perspective
on the evolving world of audio.
Railroad On Demand is proudto welcome back Sean Ross.
Welcome
Sean (01:48):
Sean.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Always happy to start the yearwith a clean slate, when anything's
still possible for radio.
Kipper (01:57):
There you go.
Well, you recently wrote that a lot ofyour longer held beliefs were kind of
shaken, if not completely sunk in 2023.
So for those who have not beenand following along at home,
which observations most shatteredyour assumptions for that year?
Sean (02:16):
Well, shaken, not shattered, which by the way, is how I feel about radio.
Radio is diminished, not demolished.
And what has been shaken is two things.
One, Even though music goes throughchanges, I always think that when
(02:41):
you put up tempo hit music, majorchords, not too hard, not too wimpy.
When you put that kind of recordin front of people, it works.
And when Top 40 goes througha bad patch, it's because it
doesn't have a lot of that music.
(03:03):
And some of that music did workin 2023, Miley Cyrus Flowers is
an up tempo hit record of the sortthat I'm always talking about.
On the other hand, OliviaRodrigo, bad idea, right?
(03:23):
And get him back to great up tempohit songs and radio did not jump on
them and if they are playing them.
But not really embracing them.
And it seemed to me thatthose were exactly the songs
that Top 40 Radio needed.
(03:45):
Cool up tempo records from a cool artist.
And we're so busy playing all theseballads that we don't know what to do
with records like that when we get them.
That was one!
And the other is that top 40radio, even in its current
(04:09):
state, still sets the agenda.
Certainly, radio sets the agenda.
And you can't reallyhave a hit without radio.
But first of all, country hasmore audience and more share and
(04:30):
more ability to set the agenda.
And it's not all coming from radio.
I used to think that if you hadeven a phenomenal viral song
like We Don't Talk About Bruno,it wasn't a hit without radio.
This year you have something likeRichmond, North of Richmond that,
(04:58):
gets to number one with no radio,although people tried to play it later.
And it was a national news story, andit was part of a presidential debate.
And certainly people heard of it,so who am I to say it wasn't a hit?
(05:19):
Who am I to say what'son the radio was a hit?
When the consumer press writes about hits,they write about the Billboard Hot 100
now, and the Hot 100 doesn't necessarilysound like any one radio station anymore.
But it sets the agenda, partially becauseradio is not playing a lot of music.
(05:47):
And doesn't have a lot of music andisn't so determined to set the agenda.
Anyway, sometimes they'd rather theTikTok do it in the first place.
Kipper (06:00):
Right, but to your point, even when shows like The Voice or
American Idol are talking aboutPerspective winners, they always
say, I can hear that on the radio.
Yeah.
It's so wired into our whole gestaltthat it really seems to be a factor
(06:21):
in the industry as well as in
Sean (06:23):
radio.
Nobody flips out the momentthat you hear their song on a
playlist for the first time.
Right.
Or maybe they do now.
For the most part, theexcitement is still there.
Making songs for the radio, but we alsoincreasingly have a generation of artists
(06:46):
who don't even have that as a frame ofreference, not even when they were 10.
So it's hard for them to make somethingthat sounds like a great radio record
if they have no frame of reference.
Dave (07:01):
Sean, what changes are you anticipating for the new year, and
what impact are you looking for intraditional music radio formats?
Sean (07:10):
I don't know that these changes will happen.
I have a want list.
I have things that I think need to happen.
And one is that I think radio needsto find more music and needs to work
(07:31):
with the labels to find more music.
I don't think the strategy of let TikTokdecide, then if it gets TikTok engagement.
Then it gets streams, maybe itwill take it to radio, and then
maybe radio will deal with it, andthen possibly it will test power.
(07:58):
That's not working, it's left us withnot a top 40 anymore, but with a top 15.
Nobody tuned in to hear CaseyKasem count down American top 15
and I didn't go to the newsstandgrowing up to buy the Billboard Hot 20.
Kipper (08:19):
Right, right.
Sean (08:20):
Radio needs music, radio needs to find a better way to find
music because having delegatedeverything to TikTok hasn't worked.
And I hope that radio and thelabels figure that out in 2024.
Yeah.
Other thing that I hope happens as radiotries to figure out how it can still
(08:47):
do the things that matter with lessrevenue and less budget and still being
heavily leveraged in a lot of cases.
I still very much believe in a modelwhere, in a given market, two or three
stations are local brands, truly local24 7, so that if the train derailment
(09:15):
happens at ten o'clock on Sundaynight, they can still report it.
Kipper (09:21):
Yeah, you're not voice tracked with yesterday's news.
Right, absolutely.
Sean (09:27):
Yeah.
Or weekend broker programming or,or whatever, uh, or yesterday's
celebrity, I hope that we havestations that are truly local.
And I think the best model for therest of them is to become truly
national as opposed to fake local.
(09:51):
I don't think fake local ishelping anybody or fooling anybody.
And if you look at K Love, which is a verygood radio station, and which obviously
has had enough money to be on a buyingspree for 10 years, part of the model.
(10:13):
I think it's that they are trying tooperate one radio station, not 200.
Right.
And I have said for years that KLUV is theWLS of this generation in terms of being.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
y'know, a big national shared experience.
Kipper (10:36):
One of the columns that I found very intriguing last year
was the one on whether ratings hadbecome radio's participation trophy.
So for folks who may have missedthat column, could you explain
what you mean there and what radiocan or should be doing about it?
Sean (10:56):
Yeah, specifically, we still tend to judge the success
of our radio station in share.
We look at the share of availablelistening, and what we don't
look at is how much listeningas an industry we're losing.
(11:20):
That number is not published.
You pretty much have toextrapolate those numbers.
You don't see them in the trades.
And by arguing about share, byjudging our success in terms of share,
(11:42):
we're only looking at what's left.
Yeah, I had a top 40Program Director tell me
that I was making a mistake quoting6+ when 18 to 34 was all he cared
about and all he got a bonus on.
And that may be true, but there are Top40 stations in some markets that have a 2.
(12:09):
5 share.
And I don't know how efficient youcan be in 18-34 that a two and a half
translates to much more than that.
Dave (12:19):
You mentioned that personally, Sean, you've been spending more
time with classic radio air checks,including those posted by LSB Feaster
on YouTube and Airchexx, noting alevel of craftsmanship and quality
that's less readily available now.
What elements from those thrillingdays of yesteryear inspire you most?
And how can those principles be appliedto elevate today's radio experience?
Sean (12:44):
A lot of it is just the engagement.
A lot of it is that there is somethinghappening between the records.
A lot of it is energy level.
It's a lot of small things, but youcertainly notice a difference in effort.
(13:06):
stations have three contests going onand somebody wins them and it's not,
listening for a national keyword thatyou won't hear a winner with until they
give another national keyword next hour.
There was recently a retrospective of WLSand WCFL, and some of it was people like
(13:33):
Larry Lujack and John Landecker and alltime great jocks and certainly, you heard
the kind of acts that you don't hear now.
But, in general, some of it was justthe greater level of engagement,
even when it was station business,even when it was rote, even when it
(13:53):
was nothing particularly distinctiveby the standards of 1974 or 1987.
You just heard more going on, but youalso heard more localism, and you also
Heard more contesting and at the rightmoment, you would let, I listened to
(14:20):
Dick Biondi on this WLS retrospectiveand he certainly made it sound like every
teenager in Chicago was tuned in and thathe was personally aware of what every
high school and And the city in and inChicagoland overall was doing, and I don't
(14:44):
expect today's radio to sound like 1962.
Radio 1967, radio 1974, radio1983, radio because 1983, radio
didn't sound like 1973 radio.
(15:06):
1973 radio didn't sound like60s WLS radio, and none of
them sounded like Chuck Blore.
I just think that we haven'tquite found a new template yet.
We haven't replaced creaky oldradio with anything shiny and new.
We just have Again, a diminishedversion of what we grew up with.
Dave (15:30):
Um-hmmm...U-huh.
One of radio's a students.
Sean Ross, somebodyyou'd love to hear from.
We'd love to hear from you.
Just email show@brandwithondemand.comor reach out to us on social brand with
plus on Insta, Facebook, and Twitter.
That's X of course.
That's BRANDwidthPlus PLUS BRANDwidthPlus
Kipper (15:53):
And if you like what you're hearing.
or finding value, please tell a friendand be sure to give us a five star rating
wherever you download this podcast.
Dave (16:02):
Coming up, Sean shares one thing that works so well,
radio just stopped doing it.
COM (16:08):
Music Master, less stress, more yes.
Hi, this is Jerry Butlerfor the team at Musicmaster.
One of my favorite tips for classicformat programmers is to use
the breakable one day, one houroffset rule for artist keywords.
It's not just for songs.
That way, your listeners won'thave the same sampling of artists
each time they tune in, and weturn the variety knob up to 11.
(16:30):
Musicmaster.
Music scheduling the way it should be.
If you want to know more easyways to keep your station
sounding fresh, contact us today.
Learn more at musicmaster.
com.
VO (16:41):
Stuff that worked so well, we stopped doing it.
BRANDwidth on Demand.
Dave (16:47):
We're talking to Sean Ross from Ross On Radio.
Sean, what's one thing radio brandshave done successfully in the past that
works so well, we just stopped doing it?
Sean (16:57):
I think the number one thing that anybody can do at
this moment is address spot load.
If you look at KMVQ in San Francisco,which is probably the most successful top
40 in the country, they have three and ahalf, four and a half minute stop sets.
(17:25):
They have, only one hour in whichthey, have even a typical heavy spot
load, mostly throughout the day.
It's a lot of music and very listenable,and I recently made them a button in
my car radio, and when I punch themup, they're in music most of the time.
(17:50):
Spotload is, the elephant in the room.
If you are only dealing with the listeningthat we've got now, Spotload will allow
you to have more listening, just fromthe people we've got, because you're
(18:11):
not making them punch out as often,and you're not making them punch out to
three or four other choices that arealso running 10 minute stop sets.
That said, the thing that people haven'tdone that they can do again is market.
(18:31):
And I don't know where you'regoing to find the money to do
that, but if you don't ask forthe order, it doesn't happen.
People do have other choices.
People are not necessarilyaware that your station exists.
People are not necessarily goingto pick up on your format change
(18:53):
because they weren't listeningto the old station to begin with.
The thing that we canall do again is market.
Kipper (19:01):
Yes.
We're guaranteed of theanswer if we don't ask.
Absolutely true.
And isn't it interesting that theone radio brand that seems to be
advertising at least through theholidays of 23, is Sirius XM?
Sean (19:18):
Yeah, the SiriusXM model is dependent on marketing,
especially now, but.
It is interesting because we're notasking people to pay for radio in most
cases, we're just asking them to turnit on and maybe if we treated it like
(19:40):
they did, that their survival dependedon it, maybe we'd start marketing again.
Dave (19:47):
Our thanks to Radio's A student, Sean Ross.
We have links to Sean's Ross onRadio and more all in the show notes.
Just scroll down on your phone.
Kipper (19:55):
As always, special thanks to our exec producer, Cindy
Huber, who put this all together.
And to Hannah B, our associateproducer for booking.
Speaking of which, coming up next,
Dave Beasing (20:08):
Dave Beasing here on the next BRANDwidth On Demand.
I want to talk with the guys aboutmy company, Sound That Brands, that
makes branded podcasts, and thinkabout how local broadcasters can
use on demand content to make money.
We've got to get this stuff sold.
Dave (20:24):
That's a wrap, Kipper.
You'll need to invent your owninvention, and we'll talk about
it in One Minute Martinizing.
Find it in the show notesat BRANDwidth on Demand.
com.
I'm
Sean (20:34):
Dave Martin.
Kipper (20:36):
And I'm Kipper McGee.
May all your BRANDwidth be wide.
I hope that we have stations that are truly local, and I think the best
model for the rest of them is to becometruly national as opposed to fake local.
I don't think fake local ishelping anybody or fooling anybody.
(00:21):
Welcome to Brand With On Demand,your guide to rebooting radio.
Radio needs music.
Radio needs to find a better way tofind music because having delegated
everything to TikTok hasn't worked.
VO (00:36):
BRANDwidth on Demand.
Rebooting radio with a differenttake on all radio can be.
Now your guides through the metamorphosis.
David Martin and author ofthe book BRANDwidth, Media
Branding, coach Kipper McGee.
Dave (00:52):
As we've been doing the past few seasons, BRANDwidth on Demand
kicks off 2024 with the alwaysinsightful Sean Ross for those
unfamiliar Sean's seasoned Radio Pro.
Having covered the industry foryears as publications like Billboard
and r and r, he then joined.
Edison Research in 2003, lendinghis expertise to music testing and
(01:16):
surveys as VP of Music and Programming.
Today, Sean focuses on market trends,format evolution, and how radio adapts
in the evolving audio landscape.
You'll find links to hisinsightful Ross on Radio column.
In this show notes we read it every weekand follow him online at Ross on Radio.
(01:38):
We're thrilled to start the new yearwith an always unique perspective
on the evolving world of audio.
Railroad On Demand is proudto welcome back Sean Ross.
Welcome
Sean (01:48):
Sean.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Always happy to start the yearwith a clean slate, when anything's
still possible for radio.
Kipper (01:57):
There you go.
Well, you recently wrote that a lot ofyour longer held beliefs were kind of
shaken, if not completely sunk in 2023.
So for those who have not beenand following along at home,
which observations most shatteredyour assumptions for that year?
Sean (02:16):
Well, shaken, not shattered, which by the way, is how I feel about radio.
Radio is diminished, not demolished.
And what has been shaken is two things.
One, Even though music goes throughchanges, I always think that when
(02:41):
you put up tempo hit music, majorchords, not too hard, not too wimpy.
When you put that kind of recordin front of people, it works.
And when Top 40 goes througha bad patch, it's because it
doesn't have a lot of that music.
(03:03):
And some of that music did workin 2023, Miley Cyrus Flowers is
an up tempo hit record of the sortthat I'm always talking about.
On the other hand, OliviaRodrigo, bad idea, right?
(03:23):
And get him back to great up tempohit songs and radio did not jump on
them and if they are playing them.
But not really embracing them.
And it seemed to me thatthose were exactly the songs
that Top 40 Radio needed.
(03:45):
Cool up tempo records from a cool artist.
And we're so busy playing all theseballads that we don't know what to do
with records like that when we get them.
That was one!
And the other is that top 40radio, even in its current
(04:09):
state, still sets the agenda.
Certainly, radio sets the agenda.
And you can't reallyhave a hit without radio.
But first of all, country hasmore audience and more share and
(04:30):
more ability to set the agenda.
And it's not all coming from radio.
I used to think that if you hadeven a phenomenal viral song
like We Don't Talk About Bruno,it wasn't a hit without radio.
This year you have something likeRichmond, North of Richmond that,
(04:58):
gets to number one with no radio,although people tried to play it later.
And it was a national news story, andit was part of a presidential debate.
And certainly people heard of it,so who am I to say it wasn't a hit?
(05:19):
Who am I to say what'son the radio was a hit?
When the consumer press writes about hits,they write about the Billboard Hot 100
now, and the Hot 100 doesn't necessarilysound like any one radio station anymore.
But it sets the agenda, partially becauseradio is not playing a lot of music.
(05:47):
And doesn't have a lot of music andisn't so determined to set the agenda.
Anyway, sometimes they'd rather theTikTok do it in the first place.
Kipper (06:00):
Right, but to your point, even when shows like The Voice or
American Idol are talking aboutPerspective winners, they always
say, I can hear that on the radio.
Yeah.
It's so wired into our whole gestaltthat it really seems to be a factor
(06:21):
in the industry as well as in
Sean (06:23):
radio.
Nobody flips out the momentthat you hear their song on a
playlist for the first time.
Right.
Or maybe they do now.
For the most part, theexcitement is still there.
Making songs for the radio, but we alsoincreasingly have a generation of artists
(06:46):
who don't even have that as a frame ofreference, not even when they were 10.
So it's hard for them to make somethingthat sounds like a great radio record
if they have no frame of reference.
Dave (07:01):
Sean, what changes are you anticipating for the new year, and
what impact are you looking for intraditional music radio formats?
Sean (07:10):
I don't know that these changes will happen.
I have a want list.
I have things that I think need to happen.
And one is that I think radio needsto find more music and needs to work
(07:31):
with the labels to find more music.
I don't think the strategy of let TikTokdecide, then if it gets TikTok engagement.
Then it gets streams, maybe itwill take it to radio, and then
maybe radio will deal with it, andthen possibly it will test power.
(07:58):
That's not working, it's left us withnot a top 40 anymore, but with a top 15.
Nobody tuned in to hear CaseyKasem count down American top 15
and I didn't go to the newsstandgrowing up to buy the Billboard Hot 20.
Kipper (08:19):
Right, right.
Sean (08:20):
Radio needs music, radio needs to find a better way to find
music because having delegatedeverything to TikTok hasn't worked.
And I hope that radio and thelabels figure that out in 2024.
Yeah.
Other thing that I hope happens as radiotries to figure out how it can still
(08:47):
do the things that matter with lessrevenue and less budget and still being
heavily leveraged in a lot of cases.
I still very much believe in a modelwhere, in a given market, two or three
stations are local brands, truly local24 7, so that if the train derailment
(09:15):
happens at ten o'clock on Sundaynight, they can still report it.
Kipper (09:21):
Yeah, you're not voice tracked with yesterday's news.
Right, absolutely.
Sean (09:27):
Yeah.
Or weekend broker programming or,or whatever, uh, or yesterday's
celebrity, I hope that we havestations that are truly local.
And I think the best model for therest of them is to become truly
national as opposed to fake local.
(09:51):
I don't think fake local ishelping anybody or fooling anybody.
And if you look at K Love, which is a verygood radio station, and which obviously
has had enough money to be on a buyingspree for 10 years, part of the model.
(10:13):
I think it's that they are trying tooperate one radio station, not 200.
Right.
And I have said for years that KLUV is theWLS of this generation in terms of being.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
y'know, a big national shared experience.
Kipper (10:36):
One of the columns that I found very intriguing last year
was the one on whether ratings hadbecome radio's participation trophy.
So for folks who may have missedthat column, could you explain
what you mean there and what radiocan or should be doing about it?
Sean (10:56):
Yeah, specifically, we still tend to judge the success
of our radio station in share.
We look at the share of availablelistening, and what we don't
look at is how much listeningas an industry we're losing.
(11:20):
That number is not published.
You pretty much have toextrapolate those numbers.
You don't see them in the trades.
And by arguing about share, byjudging our success in terms of share,
(11:42):
we're only looking at what's left.
Yeah, I had a top 40Program Director tell me
that I was making a mistake quoting6+ when 18 to 34 was all he cared
about and all he got a bonus on.
And that may be true, but there are Top40 stations in some markets that have a 2.
(12:09):
5 share.
And I don't know how efficient youcan be in 18-34 that a two and a half
translates to much more than that.
Dave (12:19):
You mentioned that personally, Sean, you've been spending more
time with classic radio air checks,including those posted by LSB Feaster
on YouTube and Airchexx, noting alevel of craftsmanship and quality
that's less readily available now.
What elements from those thrillingdays of yesteryear inspire you most?
And how can those principles be appliedto elevate today's radio experience?
Sean (12:44):
A lot of it is just the engagement.
A lot of it is that there is somethinghappening between the records.
A lot of it is energy level.
It's a lot of small things, but youcertainly notice a difference in effort.
(13:06):
stations have three contests going onand somebody wins them and it's not,
listening for a national keyword thatyou won't hear a winner with until they
give another national keyword next hour.
There was recently a retrospective of WLSand WCFL, and some of it was people like
(13:33):
Larry Lujack and John Landecker and alltime great jocks and certainly, you heard
the kind of acts that you don't hear now.
But, in general, some of it was justthe greater level of engagement,
even when it was station business,even when it was rote, even when it
(13:53):
was nothing particularly distinctiveby the standards of 1974 or 1987.
You just heard more going on, but youalso heard more localism, and you also
Heard more contesting and at the rightmoment, you would let, I listened to
(14:20):
Dick Biondi on this WLS retrospectiveand he certainly made it sound like every
teenager in Chicago was tuned in and thathe was personally aware of what every
high school and And the city in and inChicagoland overall was doing, and I don't
(14:44):
expect today's radio to sound like 1962.
Radio 1967, radio 1974, radio1983, radio because 1983, radio
didn't sound like 1973 radio.
(15:06):
1973 radio didn't sound like60s WLS radio, and none of
them sounded like Chuck Blore.
I just think that we haven'tquite found a new template yet.
We haven't replaced creaky oldradio with anything shiny and new.
We just have Again, a diminishedversion of what we grew up with.
Dave (15:30):
Um-hmmm...U-huh.
One of radio's a students.
Sean Ross, somebodyyou'd love to hear from.
We'd love to hear from you.
Just email show@brandwithondemand.comor reach out to us on social brand with
plus on Insta, Facebook, and Twitter.
That's X of course.
That's BRANDwidthPlus PLUS BRANDwidthPlus
Kipper (15:53):
And if you like what you're hearing.
or finding value, please tell a friendand be sure to give us a five star rating
wherever you download this podcast.
Dave (16:02):
Coming up, Sean shares one thing that works so well,
radio just stopped doing it.
COM (16:08):
Music Master, less stress, more yes.
Hi, this is Jerry Butlerfor the team at Musicmaster.
One of my favorite tips for classicformat programmers is to use
the breakable one day, one houroffset rule for artist keywords.
It's not just for songs.
That way, your listeners won'thave the same sampling of artists
each time they tune in, and weturn the variety knob up to 11.
(16:30):
Musicmaster.
Music scheduling the way it should be.
If you want to know more easyways to keep your station
sounding fresh, contact us today.
Learn more at musicmaster.
com.
VO (16:41):
Stuff that worked so well, we stopped doing it.
BRANDwidth on Demand.
Dave (16:47):
We're talking to Sean Ross from Ross On Radio.
Sean, what's one thing radio brandshave done successfully in the past that
works so well, we just stopped doing it?
Sean (16:57):
I think the number one thing that anybody can do at
this moment is address spot load.
If you look at KMVQ in San Francisco,which is probably the most successful top
40 in the country, they have three and ahalf, four and a half minute stop sets.
(17:25):
They have, only one hour in whichthey, have even a typical heavy spot
load, mostly throughout the day.
It's a lot of music and very listenable,and I recently made them a button in
my car radio, and when I punch themup, they're in music most of the time.
(17:50):
Spotload is, the elephant in the room.
If you are only dealing with the listeningthat we've got now, Spotload will allow
you to have more listening, just fromthe people we've got, because you're
(18:11):
not making them punch out as often,and you're not making them punch out to
three or four other choices that arealso running 10 minute stop sets.
That said, the thing that people haven'tdone that they can do again is market.
(18:31):
And I don't know where you'regoing to find the money to do
that, but if you don't ask forthe order, it doesn't happen.
People do have other choices.
People are not necessarilyaware that your station exists.
People are not necessarily goingto pick up on your format change
(18:53):
because they weren't listeningto the old station to begin with.
The thing that we canall do again is market.
Kipper (19:01):
Yes.
We're guaranteed of theanswer if we don't ask.
Absolutely true.
And isn't it interesting that theone radio brand that seems to be
advertising at least through theholidays of 23, is Sirius XM?
Sean (19:18):
Yeah, the SiriusXM model is dependent on marketing,
especially now, but.
It is interesting because we're notasking people to pay for radio in most
cases, we're just asking them to turnit on and maybe if we treated it like
(19:40):
they did, that their survival dependedon it, maybe we'd start marketing again.
Dave (19:47):
Our thanks to Radio's A student, Sean Ross.
We have links to Sean's Ross onRadio and more all in the show notes.
Just scroll down on your phone.
Kipper (19:55):
As always, special thanks to our exec producer, Cindy
Huber, who put this all together.
And to Hannah B, our associateproducer for booking.
Speaking of which, coming up next,
Dave Beasing (20:08):
Dave Beasing here on the next BRANDwidth On Demand.
I want to talk with the guys aboutmy company, Sound That Brands, that
makes branded podcasts, and thinkabout how local broadcasters can
use on demand content to make money.
We've got to get this stuff sold.
Dave (20:24):
That's a wrap, Kipper.
You'll need to invent your owninvention, and we'll talk about
it in One Minute Martinizing.
Find it in the show notesat BRANDwidth on Demand.
com.
I'm
Sean (20:34):
Dave Martin.
Kipper (20:36):
And I'm Kipper McGee.
May all your BRANDwidth be wide.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.