Smaller companies in mid to large markets...research?

[tall_guy1]

I always wondered about that. It seems like some stations like KMXV/Kansas City, KQCH/Omaha and KSTR/Des Moines are not owned by a major conglomerate yet hold up well in the ratings and their music selection "sounds" well-researched. How are these kinds of stations able to do research not owned by a large group?

 

[K.M. Richards]

If market #72 is acceptable as an answer to you, I can answer for KRKE as its program director.

There is a service called Mediabase which stations can subscribe to either by paying a monthly fee or by running a couple of minutes of barter advertising each day. It monitors the streams of every reporting station in the database and uses song-identifying software to log every "spin" that happens.

Subscribers can look at any individual stations' play history, sort by spin count, and made a good educated guess as to what that station's power and secondary rotations are, as well as see what newer songs are playing in lower rotation.

One feature Mediabase has is called Station Portfolio. In that, you can set up a custom report of only those stations that you want to see results for. So stations in the midwest, per your example, might only look at stations with the same format as theirs, in their part of the country.

For my purposes, I want to see primarily what songs are getting a lot of airplay nationally on Classic Hits, plus what songs are still getting a fair amount of play outside of the powers and secondaries. So my portfolio consists of about 35 stations in the top 40 markets, and another 50 in lesser markets. The system totals all the plays as well as breaking them out by station in separate columns, downloadble as an Excel file. The conclusions I draw from looking at those are pretty consistent; very little movement back and forth between categories every week.

By doing this, we benefit from the research done at the larger market stations and/or station groups by seeing what changes they make in rotation frequencies.

Hope that at least partially answers your question.

 

[tall_guy1]

If market #72 is acceptable as an answer to you, I can answer for KRKE as its program director.

There is a service called Mediabase which stations can subscribe to either by paying a monthly fee or by running a couple of minutes of barter advertising each day. It monitors the streams of every reporting station in the database and uses song-identifying software to log every "spin" that happens.

Subscribers can look at any individual stations' play history, sort by spin count, and made a good educated guess as to what that station's power and secondary rotations are, as well as see what newer songs are playing in lower rotation.

One feature Mediabase has is called Station Portfolio. In that, you can set up a custom report of only those stations that you want to see results for. So stations in the midwest, per your example, might only look at stations with the same format as theirs, in their part of the country.

For my purposes, I want to see primarily what songs are getting a lot of airplay nationally on Classic Hits, plus what songs are still getting a fair amount of play outside of the powers and secondaries. So my portfolio consists of about 35 stations in the top 40 markets, and another 50 in lesser markets. The system totals all the plays as well as breaking them out by station in separate columns, downloadble as an Excel file. The conclusions I draw from looking at those are pretty consistent; very little movement back and forth between categories every week.

By doing this, we benefit from the research done at the larger market stations and/or station groups by seeing what changes they make in rotation frequencies.

Hope that at least partially answers your question.

So essentially they take notes from stations similar from Mediabase to theirs in similar markets?

 

[K.M. Richards]

So essentially they take notes from stations similar from Mediabase to theirs in similar markets?

That's a pretty good summary of the process.

 

[tall_guy1]

That's a pretty good summary of the process.

That's interesting to know. How do they know how many spins to give each song they select?

 

[TheBigA]

One word: consultants

 

[PTBoardOp93]

In years gone by, stations in smaller markets would hire a consultant to do some of that leg work.

I think hiring a programming consultant is less common than it used to be, but it might still happen in medium markets that aren't owned by the big radio operators.

 

[davideduardo]

And stations can buy a music test, too. Because those tests are now done online the high cost of recruiting have been reduced, but not eliminated. This makes doing a real local format specific music test within the reach of stations at least in the top 50 or so markets.

 

[davideduardo]

One word: consultants

We are talking about determining a playlist, not programming advice.Consultants do not do music tests themselves and generally serve to give a referral to the research company they like working with best.

Plenty of small and independent groups contract music test from a variety of suppliers. There is no need for a consultant and the associated expense to buy a music test.

 

[davideduardo]

In years gone by, stations in smaller markets would hire a consultant to do some of that leg work.

I think hiring a programming consultant is less common than it used to be, but it might still happen in medium markets that aren't owned by the big radio operators.

 

[K.M. Richards]

That's interesting to know. How do they know how many spins to give each song they select?

Good follow-up question. Generally, most programmers know that by category (power, recurrent, lunar) and set up the hot clock accordingly. The number of spins will then be dictated by how many songs are in a category and how often it plays.

Here's an example: Let's say you are programming a CHR and you know you want to have your power currents repeat every 2½ hours. And let's also presume those are 60% of your spins in a standard hour. If you play ten songs an hour -- not unheard of with a normal commercial load at a successful CHR -- then six of those are going to be power currents, multiplied by 2.5 means 15 power currents. Then the math works out on its own to give each song's spin total ... 6 x 24 = 144 per day, divided by 15 = nine or ten plays per song in that category per day, or somewhere around 65 to 70 spins per week. Of course, that's not an exact count, because you may have the scheduling software shift songs around by a position or two to keep them from playing in the exact same order all day, and your morning show (presuming you have one) will play fewer songs per hour, which affects the overall total.

So generally, you're going to know how many power currents you need to have the desired turnover for each, rather than work from a "how many spins for any specific song" calculation.

 

[K.M. Richards]

In years gone by, stations in smaller markets would hire a consultant to do some of that leg work.

I think hiring a programming consultant is less common than it used to be, but it might still happen in medium markets that aren't owned by the big radio operators.

In general, consultants will create formats for client stations based on the existing market, what target demographic the owners want to reach, and for formats with significant gold libraries, will often use Mediabase to determine the titles for those categories.

At KRKE, I treat The Eighties Channel™ as if it were nationally syndicated and then program based on the consensus favorites of listeners being more or less the same in any market, at least for the top 200 or 300 songs. Of course, that also gives me a potential advantage if someone in another market comes along and wants me to duplicate it for them ... the heavy lifting's already done.