I get questions. Everywhere I go people ask me questions about how radio works and i thought I would take a minute to answer one of them.
I was at a dinner last week and someone asked me why we dont play any music on ANTS. This lady thought it would be nice to hear some music instead of all the talk programs. Its a good question and the answer....I comes down to one word, consistancy. Back in the 50's when you had only one radio station in town, they tried to be all things to all people. Thats why they did an hour of country music once a day, an hour of standards for an hour, a big band show, a cooking show, etc.
Today its different, with multiple stations serving each market, Satelite Radio, Internet Stations all competing to get you to listen. When this first happened, some wise man decided that if I played the same kind of music all the time I could get all the fans to listen to my station. Soon all the other stations did the same thing. Thats why you have a country station, a top 40 station, a classic rock station, a religeous station, etc in each market. They are all competing to get the most listeners to make their station more attractive to advertisers.
The Holy Grail of radio is what is called the P1. These are people who call your station their favorite. They like the music, they like the personalities, the whole package. They listen alot, primarily to you. They might sample the others, but they always come bacck to you, as long as you keep doing what they like. If a country station should start planying Pop music, for instance, they would be less likely to listen to you. If you let go their favorite jock, this too is a turn off. They want what they like every time they turn on the radio. If you dont give it to them, they will look for someone who does. If you are a music station and suddenly they do a talk show, bam! they are gone to someone else. If you are a talk station and you start playing show tunes, Bam! They are gone.
Even the Variety station, the so called "Bob" stations are carefully crafted not to chase you away. They say they play "anything", but do they? No. They will never play a gospel song, a Broadway Ballad, a comedy record. They have carefully look at the audience they are aiming for and only play things that would appeal to that group. So you sneak a pop sounding country hit in, a rock record that has broad appeal, some 70's, 80's and 90's turnes that are "tested" to appeal to the broadest audience it can. There is nothing wrong with this, its just careful programming by the Program Director.
Every professionally programed station does this. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss.
Lets try a hypothetical. Suppose you have a station that plays a rock tune followed by a country song, followed by a gospel song, a disco hit, then a rap record. Who would this station appeal to? Very few really. If you were listening to "Staiway to Heaven", and then "Shall we gather at the river" comes on, what do you do. YOU CHANGE THE STATION! If you are loving the latest George Strait hit and on comes a blistering Rap tune, what do you do? YOU CHANGE THE STATION! These are four works that get a Program Director fired. After all, his job is to turn you into that P1 we were talking about before.
Even talk stations are programed that way. If you are looking toward getting an audience that is as broad as possible today, you play the controversial talk shows. The hottetest talk show in the country today is Rush Limbaugh. If you want your station to have "conservative credentials", you have to have him. Then you build around that with Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, the top 3 shows in the nation. In the evening, the audience and the attitude changes a bit, that why we do Dave Ramsey at 8. The audience still is conservative and they care about money and building wealth. This works. See what I mean, you figure out what listeners you want to attract and build a station for them. You wouldnt plop down a "girly" advice show in the middle of the afternoon, that could be a major turn off for your target audience. You also wouldnt put a Liberal talk show(if one existed) in there either.
You even see TV networks do it. Spike appeals to men, Lifetime to women, ESPN to sports fans. You see,,,it works. Thats why we do it.
And this ends Radio 101 Part 1. If you have any questions about this wonderful world of radio, drop me a line at wmgwboss@yahoo.com and we can address it next time. See Ya!
