Music Makes the Workload Easier

This blog isn't about what you and I might think our listeners ought to be hearing. It is about how a portion of our listeners spend their time listening to the music.  I've been through this discussion many times, but in order to serve your audience, you must have your audience in mind. You are here to serve the audience. There is no service of nobody is listening.

Core Values of Music

If you were part of the discovery of the Core Values Project, you might remember the revelation that the classical core used music as a way to help them concentrate on work and other tasks. Classical music has intensive and ambient qualities depending on what the listener brings to the music.

There's plenty of research to support that assumption.

The research was done by the Public Radio Program Directors Association. If you look at Qualities of the Heart and Spirit notice the top two qualities.

• Internal State (peaceful, soothing, relaxing)
• Inspired by Beauty and Majesty (of the music)

Head Clearing Experience

The Station Research Group published listener comments from the focus groups. Among them:

(3. CLASSICAL MUSIC CLEARS THE MIND AND HELPS LISTENERS FOCUS ON THEIR TASK)

• Classical music does alter your brain waves. 
• Has anybody else seen that? it has a physical reaction 
• …Lowers your blood pressure. 
• Yes, you can concentrate better. 
• ...Or whether it’s writing a poem and you just need the feeling. So then you want to listen to feeling. 
• It seems to be enjoyable yet you can achieve what you want to. 
• It just seems to help clear the way and make it easier. 
• It gives me something to focus on; it brings order into chaos. 
• If you listen to Bach, it just orders your mind. For some reason, if I have to do a lot of paperwork I love classical music
• I've heard they’ve done studies like Mozart stimulates your intellect or something.

Music Helps You Concentrate

Chad Grills, CEO of the Mission and publisher of the podcast The Story, wrote and article about 

The Science Backed Ways Music Affects Your Brain and Productivity

Among his findings:

• Music with lyrics works better with mundane tasks.
• Ambient music works better with more challenging tasks.
• Music can help relieve negative emotions like stress, anxiety and depression. 
• It can even decrease instances of confusion and delirium in elderly medical patients recovering from surgery.
• For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks.

There are even some lines in the article you might want to borrow for your next fund raiser. The benefits of music could be applied to any format and platform.

Building Barriers

Do good fences make good neighbors?

Jericho  -  Divine intervention brings down the wall.

Troy  -  Greeks bearing gifts breaks the deadlock.

Korean DMZ  -  The DMZ has not brought peace, just an uneasy truce and continuous threats of war.

Vietnam DMZ  -  ummm...the North won.

Great Wall of China  -  At several points throughout its history the Great Wall failed to stop enemies, including in 1644 when the Manchu Qing marched through the gates of Shanhai Pass and replaced the most ardent of the wall-building dynasties, the Ming, as rulers of China. (Wikipedia)

Berlin Wall  -  A failing economy and the internet brought the wall down.

Maginot Line  -  The Germans went over and around the wall like it wasn't even there.

The Siegfried Line  -  On the Western Front, but Hitler had a two front war.

Trump's Wall? Why? What's the point?

iHeartMedia Bankrupt

What Happened?

• Huge Debt
• Weak Revenue
• 2008 Recession
• A Decade of Losses
• Digital Platforms

iHeartMedia is filing for Chapter 11. That means they want to halve the debt load down to $10 Billion.

IHeartMedia, largest U.S. radio station operator, files for bankruptcy to cut huge debt load

In Connecticut, iHeartMedia owns 9 stations including KISS, The River and Country 92.5.

Perhaps they paid too much when they bought all these stations? 

Inflated Value

In 2004, a decent FM signal was selling for $20 million in the Hartford Market. We were looking for a signal at that time to split our news and classical formats. The price was too high for us to move forward. The price was inflated because of demand and a hot market driven in part by Clear Channel buying up available frequencies. We found that servicing the debt would have been too big of a load. Looking back, it was the right decision.

Why Weekends Don't Work

Think Audience

Ever think about why your public radio weekends don't seem to attract an audience? Look at your churn.

Look at the Numbers

Check out your Morning Edition Numbers. If you have a daily cume of 36K and an AQH of 12K, your turnover ratio on that particular day is 3 to 1. The audience churns three times. 

If your cume on a Tuesday between 6a and 7p is 70k and your AQH is 10k, your turnover ratio is 7 to 1. The audience churns seven time

If your cume on a Saturday from 6a to 7p is 50k and your AQH is 5k, your turnover is 10 times.  

If you cume weeknights is 35k and the AQH is 1k, your turnover is 35 to one. 

Delivering an Audience

Given these numbers, how effective is to place a program initiative during the evening or late in the day on Saturday or Sunday? If you have ever wondered why so many programs fail, it is because you're not delivering an audience to that program. 

And...consider what audience churn means to fundraising. If your audience is constantly churning, there is no loyalty to the programming. Your ability to raise funds from listeners diminishes. That's why it is so hard to raise member dollars at night and most of Saturday and Sunday.

What's the Hang Up?

It's pretty simple. That crazy quilt of patchwork programming is causing all sorts of seams and barriers to listening. Each program says hello and goodbye with theme music wrapped around the edges. About the time a program starts to build an audience, it's over. You're starting fresh with each new element.  Also consider that radio listening doesn't start conveniently at the top of the hour. Listeners are loading in and out all the time. Without consistency, building audience becomes difficult.