A famous football coach once said that “success is never final” and that statement certainly applies to the radio business where we are in essence playing a new 24/7 game every day making it imperative that you regularly review, refresh, rewrite and improve station music, imaging, promotions, air staff and web site. Here’s a recommended checklist for starters.
A famous football coach once said that “success is never final” and that statement certainly applies to the radio business where we are in essence playing a new 24/7 game every day making it imperative that you regularly review, refresh, rewrite and improve station music, imaging, promotions, air staff and web site. Here’s a recommended checklist for starters.
1. Review the Station’s Strategic Plan. Make sure that the station is doing exactly what it has been agreed upon by your programming team. Insure that your promotions, tactics, clocks and music adhere to the strategic plan for the station. In fact it isn’t a bad idea to dust off the last perceptual every couple months just so you don’t forget some of the details of what your team agreed upon.
2. Station Monitor. Conduct regular station monitor of all dayparts. Be the station’s biggest critic.
a.Make sure that your positioning is selling the strategic message of your station brand. Listen carefully for ancillary positioning that may confuse the listener.
b. Are the jocks interesting? Is the station making little mistakes like “wrapping up” music sweeps instead of teasing the next sweep? Do the jocks get to the headlines or the listener benefit immediately or does it take them 20 seconds to get to the point?
c.Are the jocks moving music around in the clock? Are they dropping the song that they’re most tired of, which happens to be the best testing song on the station?
d.Are your promos really so good that they need to be 60 instead of 20 seconds long?
e.Do the jocks turn 60 second remote segments into 2 ½ minutes of clutter?
f.Is the station promoting the website by giving real listener benefits instead of a generic “go to XXXX.com?” Last Songs Played, your mobile and social networking initiatives and signing up to win major station contests should be heavily promoted on air.
3. Review the most recent music test/call-out or I-Net. Every few months review your music test song by song and category by category to ensure that no mistakes were made and that the library is as it should be. If your music testing has been eliminated due to budget cuts review your entire library, song by song, with your consultant to make sure that everything adheres to your strategic plan. In particular;
a. Recurrents. Stations that play new music often take their eye of the recurrent category. Ask yourself if there dead weight songs in the recurrents or has the recurrent category been allowed to balloon to an unwieldy, inefficient size that limits rotations of huge testing songs while artificially increasing rotations of tired war horses? Treat the Recurrent category like a current category. When one song goes in another one should come out. The recurrents should rotate nearly as quickly as Power Currents given that they are huge songs with a little burn.
b. Mistakes. Review to determine if you have accidentally mis-categorized any of the songs from the music test.
c. Sound Coding & Rules. Make sure that your dayparts, song coding and rules in your music software are designed for today's goals and are not holdover precepts and rules from previous programming administrations. If you don’t know why a certain codes or rules are there it’s probably best to go back and zero base the whole database.
4. Imaging. Do you have fresh imaging on the air or are some things getting stale. Imaging is a job that is never finished. It always needs updating. Design a schedule where promos are bicycled several times per week.
5. Promotion/Marketing. Nail down your promotion/marketing plans well in advance of the major survey period. Don't wait until the last minute to decide what to do, to try to get prizes or get art work done. Part of a successful promotional campaign is the make sure that your e-marketing to the station database is prepared and ready to go as well. We suggest no more than one short email per week. There must always be a benefit in the email for the listener or you’re spamming them.
6. Weekends. Voice tracking is certainly a byproduct of the economic times in our industry. But ironically, with voice tracking we can ensure that our “A” talent is heard on weekends as well as during the week.
7. The Web Site.
a. Review and make sure that there are no dead links.
b. Are the jocks blogging? If so are the blogs up to date? As part of the job jocks should be required to blog on a consistent basis. Furthermore, air talent should be required to assist the PD with creative content on the administrative backend of the website.
c. Is the “Listen Live” link working? Is “Last Songs Played” easily visible on the site?
d. Are you making the most from your mobile and social networking initiatives on the site.
e. Are you taking advantage of the various applications like Radiolicious to ensure that I-Phone users can receive your radio signal on their phones?
8. Do the jocks understand the strategic plan? Sometimes announcers are confused about why the station is playing certain songs or doing various promotions. Make sure that your announcers understand the station goals and objections. With more transparency you surely receive more cooperation.
With smaller staffs and programmers now overseeing two, three or even more stations taking a regular inventory of the station is getting more difficult to do. That’s why it is more important than ever that you make it a priority to conduct quarterly station tune ups.
Dave Brewer
EVP North American Radio
Pollack Media Group
310-459-8556
dave@pollackmedia.com
