Two Switch Theory Of Radio Programming

....Article by Tracy in Hitmakers Magazine Recently I was watching some old home videos (yeah, we have a life) of my kids playing with toys at Christmastime. Alex (then two years old) had an electric train with a simple on/off switch. He flipped the switch to make the train go, and then flipped it again to make it stop. Pretty simple, right? Well, this train had a second power switch that provided the main power to the toy. His older brother Andrew (four) switched the main power off, and Alex immediately complained that the train was broke. Alex is just like a lot of programmers that fail to grasp the two-switch factors in programming radio stations. They just dont grasp the notion that not only must the switch be turned on, the power source must be there too. Like life itself, programming issues are rarely as simple as we sometimes try to make them. For example, theres a traditional Arbitron argument that a cume drop represents a marketing problem, and a TSL loss is a product problem. We arrive at these conclusions partly out of ignorance of the other switch, and partly out of a desire to take action. It makes us feel better to make adjustments and we feel like were making progress. However, there are many reasons for ratings vacillation. Realize that cume and TSL are inescapably related. As your cume goes up, its likely a result of adding new (non-core) listeners. Since core (P1) listeners contribute up to five times as many quarter hours as non-core listeners, it follows that as cume goes up, average time spent listening will decline. Conversely, if your cume drops, its probably not your core abandoning the station, but secondary and tertiary cumers. The result? Your TSL should increase. Yet as broadcasters, we tend to over-react to these symptoms and risk long-term damage to the core. In many cases, a loss in time spent listening is an indication of lessened awareness (recall) and have nothing to do with actual listening. This is analogous to the phantom cume phenomenon. They continue to use your station the way they normally do, but take you for granted and fail to record listening. The proper solution is not to make knee-jerk adjustments to the station, though it may certainly need an injection of freshness and energy. The real problem may be marketing and imaging. You have to make the station important to listeners again! Listeners choose their radio station with about as much care as they choose their gas stations (who has the cheapest gas right now). So, a loss in TSL may have nothing to do with your product (the first switch), and everything to do with your top-of-mind awareness (second switch). You wont find the answers analyzing ratings data. This is just one example of how we as programmers tend to simplify our problems. It would be great if life were simple. One cause, one effect. But its not. There isnt just one switch to flip, which will provide a simple answer to programming issues. In fact, most problems are full of subtleties and nuances that are even more confusing for programmers than the two power sources that baffled Alex with his train. Programming, marketing, positioning and promoting your station all require serious consideration. For every question, there are many possible answers. Use your resources to examine all the possibilities. Then put together a well-defined strategy to address the cause of the problem, not the symptom. Remembering the two-switch theory means the real cause is usually more than meets the eye.