Moneyball: Does Your Station Serve Its Community?
• Our 24th NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study with responses from 3,188 people ages 14 to 64 nationwide, allows us to probe feelings people have about radio stations that may not get researched otherwise. One such prompt was toward the end of the interview when we asked respondents to agree or disagree with this statement, “Other than the commercials, the AM/FM radio stations where I live never talk about what’s going on locally.”
Some may question whether it’s important that a station talks about local happenings. If you have great syndicated hosts who are known to be doing shows on a national scale, perhaps listeners don’t even expect you’ll mention the local broadcast area. However, we can trust that a station that regularly reflects what’s going on locally is likely to be of greater interest to potential local advertisers. Keep in mind, ours is a nationwide sample and when we divvy up respondents by format constituencies, we’re mixing partisans from many stations. It’s easy for us to cite that a majority of the P1s to a given format share this opinion, but that glosses over specific stations that have deep connections within their communities of license.
We’ve chosen to break up the overall results we’re here by nine different format P1 groups, showing the ratings-likely subset from each. After all, these are the people who are most likely to give stations their report cards each quarter – or more often. Overall, less than a third of our sample agreed with the prompt that stations where they live never talk about what’s going on locally. Sadly, the number climbs to nearly two fifths among the group who are most likely to participate in the ratings (labeled “RPS Yes” in the chart below).
And, as shown in the chart above, some formats are worse than others when it comes to the perception of ignoring the local area. It’s about a quarter or less among listeners who are likely to participate in the ratings and are core listeners to Classic Rock, Country, or CHR/Hot AC. It’s closer to a third among the ratings likelies who are core listeners to a Rock station or an Alternative station. You can imagine there are stations among those format groups that are relatively better or worse off.
But about half or more of the ratings-likely core listeners to five different broad formats agreed that stations where they live never talk about what’s going on locally. Maybe these respondents weren’t thinking about the stations they listen to most — but we’ll argue that their core station IS the one they listen to most and are most likely to be thinking about when responding. And about half the ratings-likely core listeners for Urban Adult, Spoken Word and Hip Hop stations complain here. Among the combined ratings-likely core listeners for Classic Hits and Adult Hits formats, 55% complain about a lack of localism — and that climbs to 60% among ratings-likely core listeners for AC.
Working to fix a perceived lack of localism is all upside. If your programming is primarily syndicated talent, get those hosts to give you custom liners about the most important local events — and get them to voice evergreen wraparounds when they’re handing off to a local voice for community information. Working to better reflect your community on the air will increase connections with listeners and advertisers alike. Staying aware of what’s going on in your area will open opportunities for station appearances and station promotions.
Want more details? We’re walking clients and could-be clients through deeper results of Ratings Prospects Study 24 now. An email to tellmemore@nuvoodoo.com or to leigh@nuvoodoo.com will get your team on the schedule.
