Are People Meters Good for Local Radio?
Posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 in platyBlog | No Comments »
By: Nancy Wilkes
July marked the first time People Meters were used in Milwaukee to track listenership. These are the new portable devices that clip to an individual’s clothing and record a station and the time spent listening. Radio stations encode an inaudible, unique signal as part of their broadcasts. It’s supposed to be much easier for respondents, who used to carry around diaries to write down their listening habits. Sounds like a good thing, right?
I felt the same way until I started noticing a disturbing trend. At first, I had a producer from one of the local stations inform me that they were no longer doing interviews from local guests. Apparently, the People Meter showed that when music played listenership was up. When interviews ran, the listenership dipped.
I didn’t think much about it because this was a radio station that attracted a young demo and we all know young people love music. However, when several other stations responded to interview requests saying that they were moving in a different direction and doing less interviews, I got to thinking, is this really a good idea for local radio? Are we in danger of turning Milwaukee into a market with a new breed of unremarkable, cookie-cutter music stations that all sound the same? What makes them any different than satellite radio? Is this knee-jerk reaction a bit short-sighted?
So that I’m completely transparent, I am admitting to be a publicist whose job description is to get publicity for my clients. Radio stations have always been a great venue for getting clients on the air to talk about events and stories that involve their company. We try not to be dry. We strive to offer spokespeople who can entertain, fascinate and compel the listening audience to want to attend an event. We tie in to trends that matter, or offer people who have done something so remarkable, listeners will want and need to hear more about their story.
Not every interview is great, some are definitely more compelling than others, but shouldn’t that be the gold standard for booking interviews? Let’s look for local people, events and stories that will entertain the heck out of the audience, as opposed to dismissing them altogether.
Local TV certainly recognizes the importance of bringing the story home to its audiences. They’ve expanded their local newscasts in the morning and on weekends. Their websites have become home to not only news stories that have aired, but also interactive sites to upload videos, photos, surveys and share comments from its viewers. In some cases, the information shared has become part of the content within a newscast.
If I were a radio programmer in the new era of People Meters, I’d be looking for ways to be more local and more relevant than ever before. Great morning show teams, live deejays, entertaining guests and topics, more news, and maybe even more direction to advertisers to create better commercials. I’d place much less emphasis on repetitive announcements of the station’s call letters, and non-stop music sets. With the People Meter, repetition is no longer necessary. Entertainment and local content is.
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