I hope that we have stations that are truly local, and I think the best model for the rest of them is to become truly national as opposed to fake local. I don't think fake local is helping anybody or fooling anybody. Welcome to Brand With On Demand, your guide to rebooting radio. Radio needs music. Radio needs to find a better way to find music because having delegated everything to TikTok hasn't worked.
BRANDwidth on Demand. Rebooting radio with a different take on all radio can be. Now your guides through the metamorphosis. David Martin and author of the book BRANDwidth, Media Branding, coach Kipper McGee.
As we've been doing the past few seasons, BRANDwidth on Demand kicks off 2024 with the always insightful Sean Ross for those unfamiliar Sean's seasoned Radio Pro. Having covered the industry for years as publications like Billboard and r and r, he then joined. Edison Research in 2003, lending his expertise to music testing and surveys as VP of Music and Programming. Today, Sean focuses on market trends, format evolution, and how radio adapts in the evolving audio landscape.
You'll find links to his insightful Ross on Radio column. In this show notes we read it every week and follow him online at Ross on Radio. We're thrilled to start the new year with an always unique perspective on the evolving world of audio. Railroad On Demand is proud to welcome back Sean Ross. Welcome
Sean. Thank you. Thank you. Always happy to start the year with a clean slate, when anything's still possible for radio.
There you go. Well, you recently wrote that a lot of your longer held beliefs were kind of shaken, if not completely sunk in 2023. So for those who have not been and following along at home, which observations most shattered your assumptions for that year?
Well, shaken, not shattered, which by the way, is how I feel about radio. Radio is diminished, not demolished. And what has been shaken is two things. One, Even though music goes through changes, I always think that when you put up tempo hit music, major chords, not too hard, not too wimpy. When you put that kind of record in front of people, it works. And when Top 40 goes through a bad patch, it's because it doesn't have a lot of that music.
And some of that music did work in 2023, Miley Cyrus Flowers is an up tempo hit record of the sort that I'm always talking about. On the other hand, Olivia Rodrigo, bad idea, right? And get him back to great up tempo hit songs and radio did not jump on them and if they are playing them. But not really embracing them. And it seemed to me that those were exactly the songs that Top 40 Radio needed. Cool up tempo records from a cool artist.
And we're so busy playing all these ballads that we don't know what to do with records like that when we get them. That was one! And the other is that top 40 radio, even in its current state, still sets the agenda. Certainly, radio sets the agenda. And you can't really have a hit without radio. But first of all, country has more audience and more share and more ability to set the agenda. And it's not all coming from radio.
I used to think that if you had even a phenomenal viral song like We Don't Talk About Bruno, it wasn't a hit without radio. This year you have something like Richmond, North of Richmond that, gets to number one with no radio, although people tried to play it later. And it was a national news story, and it was part of a presidential debate. And certainly people heard of it, so who am I to say it wasn't a hit? Who am I to say what's on the radio was a hit?
When the consumer press writes about hits, they write about the Billboard Hot 100 now, and the Hot 100 doesn't necessarily sound like any one radio station anymore. But it sets the agenda, partially because radio is not playing a lot of music. And doesn't have a lot of music and isn't so determined to set the agenda. Anyway, sometimes they'd rather the TikTok do it in the first place.
Right, but to your point, even when shows like The Voice or American Idol are talking about Perspective winners, they always say, I can hear that on the radio. Yeah. It's so wired into our whole gestalt that it really seems to be a factor in the industry as well as in
radio. Nobody flips out the moment that you hear their song on a playlist for the first time. Right. Or maybe they do now. For the most part, the excitement is still there. Making songs for the radio, but we also increasingly have a generation of artists who don't even have that as a frame of reference, not even when they were 10. So it's hard for them to make something that sounds like a great radio record if they have no frame of reference.
Sean, what changes are you anticipating for the new year, and what impact are you looking for in traditional music radio formats?
I don't know that these changes will happen. I have a want list. I have things that I think need to happen. And one is that I think radio needs to find more music and needs to work with the labels to find more music. I don't think the strategy of let TikTok decide, then if it gets TikTok engagement. Then it gets streams, maybe it will take it to radio, and then maybe radio will deal with it, and then possibly it will test power.
That's not working, it's left us with not a top 40 anymore, but with a top 15. Nobody tuned in to hear Casey Kasem count down American top 15 and I didn't go to the newsstand growing up to buy the Billboard Hot 20.
Right, right.
Radio needs music, radio needs to find a better way to find music because having delegated everything to TikTok hasn't worked. And I hope that radio and the labels figure that out in 2024. Yeah. Other thing that I hope happens as radio tries to figure out how it can still do the things that matter with less revenue and less budget and still being heavily leveraged in a lot of cases.
I still very much believe in a model where, in a given market, two or three stations are local brands, truly local 24 7, so that if the train derailment happens at ten o'clock on Sunday night, they can still report it.
Yeah, you're not voice tracked with yesterday's news. Right, absolutely.
Yeah. Or weekend broker programming or, or whatever, uh, or yesterday's celebrity, I hope that we have stations that are truly local. And I think the best model for the rest of them is to become truly national as opposed to fake local. I don't think fake local is helping anybody or fooling anybody. And if you look at K Love, which is a very good radio station, and which obviously has had enough money to be on a buying spree for 10 years, part of the model.
I think it's that they are trying to operate one radio station, not 200. Right. And I have said for years that KLUV is the WLS of this generation in terms of being. Yeah. Right. Right. y'know, a big national shared experience.
One of the columns that I found very intriguing last year was the one on whether ratings had become radio's participation trophy. So for folks who may have missed that column, could you explain what you mean there and what radio can or should be doing about it?
Yeah, specifically, we still tend to judge the success of our radio station in share. We look at the share of available listening, and what we don't look at is how much listening as an industry we're losing. That number is not published. You pretty much have to extrapolate those numbers. You don't see them in the trades. And by arguing about share, by judging our success in terms of share, we're only looking at what's left.
Yeah, I had a top 40 Program Director tell me that I was making a mistake quoting 6+ when 18 to 34 was all he cared about and all he got a bonus on. And that may be true, but there are Top 40 stations in some markets that have a 2. 5 share. And I don't know how efficient you can be in 18-34 that a two and a half translates to much more than that.
You mentioned that personally, Sean, you've been spending more time with classic radio air checks, including those posted by LSB Feaster on YouTube and Airchexx, noting a level of craftsmanship and quality that's less readily available now. What elements from those thrilling days of yesteryear inspire you most? And how can those principles be applied to elevate today's radio experience?
A lot of it is just the engagement. A lot of it is that there is something happening between the records. A lot of it is energy level. It's a lot of small things, but you certainly notice a difference in effort. stations have three contests going on and somebody wins them and it's not, listening for a national keyword that you won't hear a winner with until they give another national keyword next hour.
There was recently a retrospective of WLS and WCFL, and some of it was people like Larry Lujack and John Landecker and all time great jocks and certainly, you heard the kind of acts that you don't hear now. But, in general, some of it was just the greater level of engagement, even when it was station business, even when it was rote, even when it was nothing particularly distinctive by the standards of 1974 or 1987.
You just heard more going on, but you also heard more localism, and you also Heard more contesting and at the right moment, you would let, I listened to Dick Biondi on this WLS retrospective and he certainly made it sound like every teenager in Chicago was tuned in and that he was personally aware of what every high school and And the city in and in Chicagoland overall was doing, and I don't expect today's radio to sound like 1962.
Radio 1967, radio 1974, radio 1983, radio because 1983, radio didn't sound like 1973 radio. 1973 radio didn't sound like 60s WLS radio, and none of them sounded like Chuck Blore. I just think that we haven't quite found a new template yet. We haven't replaced creaky old radio with anything shiny and new. We just have Again, a diminished version of what we grew up with.
Um-hmmm...U-huh. One of radio's a students. Sean Ross, somebody you'd love to hear from. We'd love to hear from you. Just email show@brandwithondemand.com or reach out to us on social brand with plus on Insta, Facebook, and Twitter. That's X of course. That's BRANDwidthPlus PLUS BRANDwidthPlus
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Coming up, Sean shares one thing that works so well, radio just stopped doing it.
Music Master, less stress, more yes. Hi, this is Jerry Butler for the team at Musicmaster. One of my favorite tips for classic format programmers is to use the breakable one day, one hour offset rule for artist keywords. It's not just for songs. That way, your listeners won't have the same sampling of artists each time they tune in, and we turn the variety knob up to 11. Musicmaster. Music scheduling the way it should be.
If you want to know more easy ways to keep your station sounding fresh, contact us today. Learn more at musicmaster. com.
Stuff that worked so well, we stopped doing it. BRANDwidth on Demand.
We're talking to Sean Ross from Ross On Radio. Sean, what's one thing radio brands have done successfully in the past that works so well, we just stopped doing it?
I think the number one thing that anybody can do at this moment is address spot load. If you look at KMVQ in San Francisco, which is probably the most successful top 40 in the country, they have three and a half, four and a half minute stop sets. They have, only one hour in which they, have even a typical heavy spot load, mostly throughout the day.
It's a lot of music and very listenable, and I recently made them a button in my car radio, and when I punch them up, they're in music most of the time. Spotload is, the elephant in the room. If you are only dealing with the listening that we've got now, Spotload will allow you to have more listening, just from the people we've got, because you're not making them punch out as often, and you're not making them punch out to three or four other choices that are also running 10 minute stop sets.
That said, the thing that people haven't done that they can do again is market. And I don't know where you're going to find the money to do that, but if you don't ask for the order, it doesn't happen. People do have other choices. People are not necessarily aware that your station exists. People are not necessarily going to pick up on your format change because they weren't listening to the old station to begin with. The thing that we can all do again is market.
Yes. We're guaranteed of the answer if we don't ask. Absolutely true. And isn't it interesting that the one radio brand that seems to be advertising at least through the holidays of 23, is Sirius XM?
Yeah, the SiriusXM model is dependent on marketing, especially now, but. It is interesting because we're not asking people to pay for radio in most cases, we're just asking them to turn it on and maybe if we treated it like they did, that their survival depended on it, maybe we'd start marketing again.
Our thanks to Radio's A student, Sean Ross. We have links to Sean's Ross on Radio and more all in the show notes. Just scroll down on your phone.
As always, special thanks to our exec producer, Cindy Huber, who put this all together. And to Hannah B, our associate producer for booking. Speaking of which, coming up next,
Dave Beasing here on the next BRANDwidth On Demand. I want to talk with the guys about my company, Sound That Brands, that makes branded podcasts, and think about how local broadcasters can use on demand content to make money. We've got to get this stuff sold.
That's a wrap, Kipper. You'll need to invent your own invention, and we'll talk about it in One Minute Martinizing. Find it in the show notes at BRANDwidth on Demand. com. I'm
Dave Martin.
And I'm Kipper McGee. May all your BRANDwidth be wide.