Hypothetical station WXXX promotes 19 programs
in a week. Two receive heavier exposure, (indicated by height of bars above),
others only a few airings. None airs often enough for listeners to remember
it.
What radio tune-in promos need: reduction and repetition
Chances are, your radio station promotes too much of its programming. You may wonder how that can be true. Isn’t promoting a radio program, or any product, like loving a child — there’s no such thing as too much? Our broadcast logs have space for dozens if not hundreds of programming promos during the week, and we fill them from a vast mixed bag of program promos.
The intentions are admirable: We’re proud of the programming we offer. We believe our listeners would enjoy it, and we want them to be aware of it.
We’re also drawn to airing promos out of a sense of fairness. Just like a parent with children, we claim no favorites and want to give every program a chance to be noticed and succeed.
All these promos add up, but we justify them by thinking that the more program promos we air, the better.
It isn’t. The problem is that we assault listeners with a smorgasbord of promotional messages. These spots air so infrequently, and are often so information-heavy, that they don’t resonate with listeners or create lasting impressions.
The good news is that the solution is simple. Two principles can give radio
stations a framework for effective program awareness campaigns: Reduction
and Repetition.
Simply put, the fewer programs you promote, the better. Fewer, more often,
is even better.
Reduction
Reduction has two meanings: On the macro level, it means talking about fewer
things; on the micro level, it means simplifying the message.
According to a survey conducted as part of the CPB-sponsored On-air Programming Promotion Insight Study, the average public radio station airs promos for 10 different programs or dayparts every week. This is about three times more than the ideal.
Some stations promote as few as two programs or dayparts, others as many as 27. The number varies dramatically from station to station with—literally—no two stations promoting their programming the same way. But the tendency is clear. On the average day, more than 95 percent of public radio stations promote too many programs.
This is inefficient for two reasons: First, it prevents the listener from hearing the message often enough to remember it (more on this in the “Repetition” section). Second, a multitude of promos just adds to the shower of noise we dump on our listeners.
Take the station WXXX. Data in the chart on page 16 come from an actual station that typically airs 19 different promos. Two programs are promoted 15 times a week, while the remaining 17 are promoted an average of three and a half times a week.
While the program director obviously targeted two programs for heavier exposure, promos for the other 17 get in the way, taking up most of the station’s remaining available slots. As a result of promoting so many programs, the station promotes none effectively.
It’s almost a cliché to discuss today’s message-soaked culture — where people are confronted with hundreds, even thousands, of messages a day. We air some as parts of station breaks or talk sets and others in weather and traffic reports, underwriting credits, public service announcements and the like.
This alone makes the case for reducing the number of messages we put in front of a listener—just to clear the air. Complicating matters further, research indicates that when we confront listeners with multiple, unconnected, info-packed messages, they simply tune us out. At that point, listening to the radio requires too much attention, so they exile us to their mental periphery.
Reducing the noise level is essential, but so is presenting a promo with a clear and concise message. The most effective messages—the ones listeners mentally process, retain and can recall most easily—are those that contain the clearest ideas, fewest words, and no unnecessary details or tangents. Research into message recall and retention has proven repeatedly that the impact of a message on listeners is proportionally reduced by the amount of “information bits” that surround it. The fewer information bits packed in a promotional spot, the more likely it will make an impression.
Take for example, the following text from an actual promo:
This week A Prairie Home Companion comes to you from Ames, Iowa — Iowa State. With blues man Dave Moore, pianist Radoslav Lorkovich, The Barn Owl Band, the news from Lake Wobegon, and much more.
Without looking back on the text, can you recall the names of all the performers? Of course not. If you remember anything, you might recall that A Prairie Home Companion will feature a variety of music and the news from Lake Wobegon. So if there’s little chance we’ll remember the extraneous information, why include it?
While you’re looking at how your station promotes programming, it may be a good time to take a fresh look at all the different kinds of information presented on your station. Are there tangential details or information bits that aren’t necessary? Removing these can help clear some of the static and give those well-constructed promo messages a chance to resonate. A great way to clear some of the unnecessary clutter is to perform a little feng shui on your radio station (see the box for a full explanation).
Repetition
According to researchers, an average listener must hear a message three times
within a week to retain and recall the information it contains.
Look again at the WXXX chart. The average listener tunes into the station
six times a week for an average of one hour each time. With more than one-third
of the promos airing fewer than three times, what are the chances that a listener
will hear three airings of any particular promo?
Practically none.
In fact, less than 1 percent of WXXX’s weekly cume audience will hear any promo enough times to remember it—even the two programs most heavily promoted by the station. Even for those two programs, WXXX would have to quadruple the number of airings to effectively reach its audience. (How many promos are enough and not too much? In a future article, we’ll take a look at Optimum Effective Scheduling, or O.E.S., a versatile tool that can help you tailor programming promotion to your station and its audience.)
If you don’t put a message in listeners’ ears often enough for
them to retain or recall it, there is no point in airing it at all.
The answer for WXXX, and for most public radio stations, is to jettison the
less-aired promos so that the station can focus on its two or three promotional
priorities. Of course, those priorities can change periodically — but
the key to success is picking a small number of programs to promote and airing
them often enough that most listeners will be able to recall the message.
The Zen-like simplicity of Reduction and Repetition goes against our very nature as broadcasters. We are information professionals, trained to hunt down, vet and present information to our listeners. Our instinct is to provide more — to link quantity with quality. But if our promos are to resonate with meaning, we must think more like a listener. They do value our stations and programming, yet we compete for their attention with hundreds of other messages, concerns and stimuli. Instead of trying to overwhelm with detail, minutiae and variety, we can make our best impression with selective, precise and well-targeted ideas.
Eric Nuzum is program director of WKSU-FM in Kent, Ohio. This article is based on his research for the CPB-sponsored On-air Programming Promotion Insight Study. For more information on the study and its results, visit ericnuzum.com/oppis.
Web page posted Feb. 2, 2004
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