Based on the title of today’s post, you might be thinking I’m talking about all those radio relationships that have emanated from station remotes, concerts, and other gatherings. Radio is inherently a social business where it’s not hard to meet people and hook up.
But alas, the types of relationships I’m focused on are the ones that form between stations and listeners. Typically, we like to think in terms of “favorite radio station,” the ultimate measure of affection and loyalty a consumer has with a frequency and set of call letters. At least that’s how radio managers view it in research studies that stations routinely conduct.
Let’s not confuse the “favorite” tag with the other term that is often associated with loyalty – the “P1 station.” The latter is the way ratings companies designate the station a user spends the most time with during a typical week. That’s because there’s no assigned length of time to one’s most-listened to station. P1 duration can be 20 hours or two quarter-hours – as long as no other station exceeds the amount.
While it may seem like a question of semantics, I have always placed more importance on a listener who states a station is their favorite versus one that calculates out to be their P1. Being one’s preferred or favorite is declarative and connoted staying power. The P1 station is simply a calculation – one that often changes from one rating period to the next.
And that’s why I was intrigued when I read Katz Radio Group’s recent release:
“New Katz Study Explores What it Means to be a Favorite Station”
In a study of 900 U.S. radio listeners conducted earlier in 2023, nearly seven in ten respondents report they actually have a favorite station, a finding the Katz researchers rightfully interpret as a
positive. Yes, it’s lowest among 18-34 year-old listeners (63%), but still impressive.
And as we see each year in our Techsurveys, solid majorities of listeners derive emotional benefits from their favorite stations – mood elevation, caring about the local community, and a sense of loss if that station were to go away.
The Katz team also points to loyalty as a positive, noting nine in ten of those with a favorite have made the station a dashboard preset.
And then there’s longevity. The researchers tells us fans of stations have been listening for an average of 18 years, the indicators of an LTR – a long-term relationship. Among older adults (those 55+), it turns out they’ve been dutifully tuning that station in for a whopping quarter century – 23 years to be exact. Most people haven’t been married that long.
But there’s something potentially important the study doesn’t tell us about these connections between radio stations and the people who enjoy them:
How long does it take for a consumer to proudly declare a station is their favorite?
When considering relationships, we don’t typically think in terms of brands, but of other people. And for most of us, LTRs don’t meaningfully form, much less last, when we’ve only known each other a short period of time.
There’s usually a courtship, the period when you get to know that person. It is often followed by compromise and even a period of tolerance. More often that not, there will be bad days, when the
other person displays characteristics unseen before – anger, rashness, arrogance, or miserliness.
And when you think about it, many radio stations take on these same behaviors over time – firing a favorite air personality without explanation, playing too many commercials in June in order to make the Q2 budget, the cancellation of a favorite feature or program, or other transgressions that raises a listener’s ire.
For those “favorite station relationships” to survive these moments, the good must outweigh the bad. And the radio station must display truly consistently desirable behavior over time to retain its preferred status.
Usually that requires not days, weeks, or months – but years. That’s the part we simply don’t know from the Katz research – not just how long they’ve been listening to a station, but how long it took for a listener to make the favorite declaration.
Chances are, many of today’s “favorite radio station” leaders were products that were years in the making. In fact, the foundation of those relationships were likely built an owner or two ago, back when there may have been an entirely different team of managers, programmers, and air talent.
Sometimes, companies take these LTRs with listeners for granted because they don’t understand how long it required them to take shape and retain a sense of consistency. Or that it was their forerunners at the station who had the initial vision and the commitment and resilience necessary to see it through.
When a company buys a station or a new programmer takes the reins, it is essential they understand the fabric and architecture of those listener/station relationships. To take them for granted and/or misunderstand them is often the first sign of trouble that may not be reversible.
How often have we seen companies acquire a juggernaut station in a market – one with the ratings, the revenue, and the loyalty, only to see it all implode due to mismanagement, misunderstanding, or both? We ask, “How could they let this happen?” But the simple answer is that it’s easier to screw up a great relationship than it is to build one.
And it becomes far more difficult to repair one that’s gone awry. In most cases, turning around a station that is perceived to have screwed the audience or advertisers is a tall order and often not possible.
Sometimes, epic fails take place because a new management team has no clue what it took for the station to get to the dance – or they don’t want to know. In other cases, it’s when spreadsheets become the wallpaper in strategic meetings, where budget almost always trumps strategy and what’s good for the station.
Relationships are complex. It’s notable that on social media, one of the long-standing descriptive categories is “It’s complicated.” Because it is.
Long-term relationships are a lot like the young heir for whom it’s been said, “He
was born on third base, and thought he hit a triple.”
How often do even experienced executives, researchers, and yes, consultants look past the radio station data they see, only to miss how a great relationship originally was built, much less what it will require to hold it together especially during a time of declining human and financial resources?
And as many of us have learned in life and in radio, even the strongest relationships can be damaged, weakened, and eventually toppled. Sure there are competitive pressures to factor in and contend with. But more often than not, when a venerable brand goes down, its wounds are usually self-inflicted.
For radio companies still slugging it out with vast portfolios of stations around the country, it may come down to creating a hierarchy of importance. Not every brand was created equal.
Some are superheroes whose benefits over time may be incalculable. They may have been built to last by their patriarchs and matriarchs, but in 2023, every brand is vulnerable.
How will broadcasters prioritize in order to maintain, must less salvage, the great brands that can keep on giving, as long as there’s proper and strong brand stewardship?
For clarity, a visit to the shark tank:
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
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Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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Suppose we dig a little deeper: favorites for particular purposes. I have a favorite station for news, another for music, and a third (commercial) for music when my favorite (community) music station switches to what I call the “hair-on-fire news hour”–to which I retune when that hour has passed. But am I really a more promiscuous listener than the average? I like to think not. Your mileage may vary.
Good post. And I’d venture to say that Mr. Cuban has it right.
As you said, “Sometimes, epic fails take place because a new management team has no clue what it took for the station to get to the dance – or they don’t want to know”, and that is something that I experienced firsthand.
A powerful Spanish group ended up taking over the radio network in which I worked, and which was considered the most successful in Colombia, both with its news and conversation network as well as its music stations in 10 different formats.
They wanted to impose their Spanish formats, very different from the Colombian idiosyncrasy. They did not take into account the history, achievements and legacy of our network, and the changes they made ended up negatively impacting the audience and the loyalty of our listeners who, little by little, were finding other options that they had not looked at.
20 years later, that network is still trying to recover the audience it lost due to its capricious changes, convinced that only what they did was what was going to work for them, ignoring our history.
And the problem did not only occur in my country: something similar also happened in Chile, Panama, Costa Rica and even Miami and Los Angeles, where they wanted to force the implementation of their formats without taking into account local tastes and the successful past of their formats.
Finally, all these mistakes have helped me to appreciate the work of the stations with which I have worked outside my country, respecting the legacy, the past, the achievements obtained, and building changes based on those great achievements.