Inside Music Media

A morning show featuring a woman not a man and for those shows that are succeeding now with a man in the lead, the difficult but required process of changing the show to appeal to strong women.
Traffic reports that become contests – Hardly anyone in the money demo relies on radio for traffic as long as they have a smartphone. The race to beat the smartphone will become a contest that pays prize money and offers social status (Radio has gone silent on contents at a time when the gaming audience has grown).
A morning show “advocate” to help listeners – And not a national one, only local. Yelp, Trip Advisor and the many popular sites that give voice to online audiences can translate well into a local “haggler” who earns a reputation for sticking up for listeners. Yes, and especially for music formats.
No voice tracking at all even overnights – The one thing 20 years have proven is that voice tracking never gained an audience it just saved money.
On-air people who sound like the audience – Turn the radio on, it doesn’t sound like what Millennials sound like either in voice, values or content.
A major contest that pays down listeners’ college loans – No Millennial or Xer could resist a good station with this great contest. But it can’t sound like a radio contest and no prize sharing among markets. That’s not authentic.
The above college loan prizes paid by advertisers as an advertiser incentive that generates many more times the cost of doing it. Listen in on the pitch that has advertisers fighting with each other over sponsors paying down college loans.
Putting all short commercials in one stop set – These are the ones advertisers want but most stations are making the mistake of stacking their long commercial stop sets in a way that makes them sound even longer. The station of the future has to accept what the market wants but be less destructive about delivering it.
Making commercials more effective for advertisers – This is unfortunately the last thing on the minds of most station execs just trying to keep up. Tested copy, spots that are produced with proven techniques for increasing response. Finding advertisers who will sign long-term contracts for premium rates not the bonus-infused market declines.
Shorter music sweeps not longer as attention spans now require lots of interruptions to keep audience attention. New thinking on stop set placement not for PPM but for short attention spans.
Songs that aren’t played all the way through – We have research that shows in-demo listeners even tune out songs they love so the station of the future will modify its playlist, presentation and format. In other words, radio used to understand that if you played the right songs, listeners would keep listening. Now you must play the right songs, not all the way through, with new elements added to keep them for the same period of time.
The best of podcasting on-air – Podcasting appeals to older radio listeners who prefer it to political talk radio. Podcasting is a radio format. A Sunday night show. Maybe the “Haggler” or advocate referenced above in #3. Or LOCAL musical companion to your radio format.
No digital – Don’t give away radio content or drive listeners elsewhere – It hasn’t worked giving away content for free without an adequate path to real monetization. When this station does digital, it does something entirely different from radio and starts a revenue stream. I’m thinking short-form video that teenagers have figured out how to monetize more than the average radio station.