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Press Releases
HitPredictor.com: Radio's Secret Weapon

NEW YORK, April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Radio stations across the nation are utilizing a remarkable tool when deciding what songs to play; specifically a company called HitPredictor. HitPredictor has become the undisputed #1 brand of predictive music research in the nation, with charts featured in Billboard magazine and Radio and Records. HitPredictor performs online predictive music research with a huge nationwide database of music fans, identifying the "Hit" potential of new songs before they are released.

Tom Poleman, the Senior VP of Programming at Z100 in New York City says, "Before we add a song on Z100, we always check the HitPredictor score. It's remarkably accurate. There's no better way to get a quick read on the consumer, to reinforce your gut, before playing a song."

It all started in 2003 when HitPredictor unveiled its Internet based pre-testing music research company to the radio and record community, quietly turning to real music fans' opinions for the ultimate solution for finding the most viable songs to release. HitPredictor was ultimately ahead of the curve, utilizing the Internet in the wake of the dotcom bust in the development of a powerful online tool for the music industry. Now at 5 years of age, HitPredictor has achieved an impressive batting average in predicting which songs will do well with listeners across the U.S.. HitPredictor has helped a Who's Who of the music world at every format in finding their hits: Kelly Clarkson, Chris Brown, Daughtry, Kanye West, Brad Paisley, Foo Fighters, and newcomers like Sara Bareilles and Colbie Caillat just to name a few. HitPredictor remains the #1 research company in guiding record labels, managers, musical artists, and ultimately radio programmers in choosing their strongest music and biggest hits.

Radio, in particular, still remains the biggest factor in the discovery of new music and is a key component in the success of the HitPredictor system. Tim Richards, Clear Channel Regional VP Programming/KRQQ Tucson Program Director says, "Today's work schedule makes it more difficult to dedicate a lot of time to new music. HitPredictor is great tool for staying on top of music trends." Memphis's WHBQ Program Director Karson agrees, "HitPredictor provides valuable "real time" information that allows us to always be a step ahead." HitPredictor gives radio programmers a "heads up" on songs with hit potential as they come across their desk for the very first time, and radio pays attention.

Rick Vaughn, Program Director of Philadelphia's WIOQ 102.1 FM, voices his outlook directly to his fellow programmers in saying, "I think we all agree the listener is priority #1...but are you listening to them? Radio needs to continually be mindful of staying in touch with the consumer/listener. HitPredictor reaches them on their terms."

Bailey Coleman, Program Director of Milwaukee's Urban Radio station WKKV/V100.7 puts it clearly, "In a time when many stations are without viable research, HitPredictor is a great tool to gauge whether or not a particular record is really a hit! I use HitPredictor every week."

HitPredictor is clearly radio's secret weapon, and is utilized by many of the most influential radio programmers in the nation simply because it's very accurate in picking the hits.

"HitPredictor is a major tool I use as I oversee Country and Alternative music formats," says Jay Michaels, Operations Manager of Norfolk, Virginia's WUSH and WROX radio stations. "It's so right on that if I am on the fence about a song I can use HitPredictor as a deciding factor!"

SOURCE HitPredictor.com

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Promosquad HitPredictor and Crossfade: Music Industry's Secret Weapon Strikes Gold
NEW YORK, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- As record labels struggle to pull out of one of the worst slumps in their history by better relating to consumers and by cost-effectively releasing their strongest product, one company has quietly turned to the fans' opinions for the ultimate solution ... .and is succeeding in guiding labels and artists in choosing their strongest music and biggest hits. The company is promosquad HitPredictor, and it performs online predictive music research with a huge nationwide database of music fans on the "Hit" potential of new songs before they are released to the radio and retail. Lead by music industry veterans Rick Bisceglia, Guy Zapoleon, and Doug Ford, Promosquad HitPredictor over the past 2 years has become the undisputed #1 brand of predictive music research in the nation, with charts featured in Billboard magazine, the Billboard Radio Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly. Many major and independent record companies, artists, and artist managers now utilize promosquad HitPredictor's music research as a regular and essential part of their rollout of new music. HitPredictor's results are incredibly accurate, and are used to guide labels in picking which singles to release to radio, and even on which artists to sign to record deals. The fact is that there are countless examples of many labels that have literally changed their minds on which song to release to radio based on HitPredictor results, and have scored with some of their biggest hits ever as a result of following the opinions of promosquad.com's members. "It is a very competitive field, and labels spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and break their music," says Rick Bisceglia. "Getting actual music fans' opinions of music prior to release has now become a valuable part of the process" Guy Zapoleon says he hopes HitPredictor research results will "continue to encourage radio programmers to take more chances and stick with songs for longer periods of time." The latest proof that the HitPredictor model works comes in the form of the band Crossfade, a group that promosquad HitPredictor discovered, researched, and signed to Columbia Records. The group's first single "Cold" is now rapidly climbing the Mainstream Top 40 radio charts after hitting #2 at Alternative, #1 at active rock, and gaining status as the most played single of the year nationwide at that format. Their self titled debut release was just certified with Gold status by the RIAA. "We have worked this record for over a year and a half, and it continues to perform", says Columbia Records Group Executive VP Stu Bergen. "The radio research on the song "Cold" has been amazing; exactly as promosquad HitPredictor's system predicted it would be." "promosquad.com operates a "Get Famous" program, which accepts unsigned releases from its members. "Standouts are placed into the HitPredictor system for predictive testing. Artists whose songs show hit potential are then A&R'd more thoroughly and then considered for signing", according to promosquad HitPredictor's Doug Ford. Crossfade was discovered through this process, and brought to showcase for Sony Music Label Group President/CEO Don Ienner, who obviously was intrigued by the research, heard the hits with his own ears, and offered the band a deal on the spot. "It took the research of promosquad.com's HitPredictor and the undying support of that company to finally close our deal." says Crossfade's manager Chris Long. "This is proof that they have a way for unsigned bands to prove they not only deserve a deal, but can compete against the big bands." Crossfade's Ed Sloan agrees, "Promosquad HitPredictor was there from day one, and was the primary reason we were brought to Columbia records. Without them, we never would have gotten where we are today". http://www.promosquad.com http://www.crossfadeonline.com SOURCE Promosquad HitPredictor -0- 02/24/2005 /CONTACT: Doug Ford, Managing Partner, Promosquad HitPredictor, 1-518-792-8900/ /Web site: http://www.promosquad.com http://www.crossfadeonline.com / CO: Promosquad HitPredictor ST: New York IN: ENT MUS RAD SU: WS -- NYTH046 -- 0885 02/24/2005 11:30 EST http://www.prnewswire.com -- END

WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES WHO OVERLOOK GREAT MUSIC - The Hot Singles Radio Never Played
Dear Radio Industry Bigwigs: We like music. You like music. That's one thing we agree on. We're not playing the blame game. After all, there was some excellent music on the radio in '04 - Green Day, U2, and anything with Kanye West on it. Much Respect. But here's the hammer: You're sleepin' dudes! There are a ton of great hit singles waiting to happen that never made headway on the radio. During the past 12 months, we're been obsessing over a fistful of tracks that should have - and more importantly - could have been radio smashes. And we can prove it. Really. Meet the Promosquad. Founded by music-industry vets Guy Zapoleon and Rick Bisceglia, Promosquad works as a predictive song-testing tool for record labels, and it's got a darn good track record, too - like a Magic 8 Ball, powered by statistics and data. We sent Promosquad six songs we love by the Walkmen, Phoenix, the Faint, Rilo Kiley, Simple Kid, and Ambulance LTD. They're a mix of indie - and major-label tunes, all with great hooks, smart lyrics, and tasty production - hit material, baby! Promosquad asked 1,000 of its online members (anyone can join at Promosquad.com) to listen to the songs at its site. The members rated each clip, and Promosquad then gave each song a corresponding score between 1 and 100. The higher the ranking, the more likely the track is to become a top 20 radio hit. Here's what they discovered - drumroll, please! For an 18-24 audience, no song tested strongly enough to crack the top 20. But for an older audience (25-34), Phoenix's "Everything Is Everything" scored a 71.5 and the Walkmen's "The Rat" got a 75.1, which, in the word's of Promosquad's Bob Smith, would make either of them "a smash" (a.k.a. a top 10 hit) in that demographic. That means there are a whole lotta radio listeners out there who aren't being served. Not everyone who deals with monthly mortgage payments and carpooling duties wants to hear sleepy-time fave Norah Jones. Instead, they're ready for snarling rock kick-offs (the Walkmen), peppy French disco-pop (Phoenix), and all sorts of eclectic sounds that aren't being spun by the average Modern Rock corporate radio behemoth. Call it Adult Alternative. It's a real demographic and worth wooing. To sum up: It's all about bringing a more diverse palette to the grayscale color of American radio. So how about it? Take a chance on something new. Okay, maybe we are playing the blame game. But "The Rat" is a really good song - a hit, even - and we're not the only people who think so. BFF and KIT. Your pal, E-Dubya (From Entertainment Weekly December 24th, 2004 issue #798) -- END

'Cold' Track Heats Up Act - FG/Columbia Band Crossfade Scores With New Name, Single
Crossfade is finding its new name much luckier than its old moniker of Sugardaddy Superstar. As Crossfade, the Columbia, S.C.-based quartet has seen its self-titled FG/Columbia debut earn its sixth week atop the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. The album's success is fueled primarily by the first single, "Cold," which reached No. 1 on Billboard Radio Monitor's Active Rock chart and is No. 5 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart this issue. Just three years ago, Crossfade released the same single, along with seven other tracks, on its self-released set "Cold" as Sugardaddy Superstar. That disc found its way to FG Records principals Doug Ford, Rick Bisceglia and Guy Zapoleon. The trio also runs PromoSquad, which supplies Billboard and Billboard Radio Monitor with its HitPredictor chart data. Promosquad.com operates the Get Famous program, which accepts releases from unsigned artists. According to Ford, "the standouts are placed into the HitPredictor system for predictive testing. Artists whose songs show hit potential are A&R'd more thoroughly, and subsequently considered for signing." Crossfade was discovered through this process. FG then signed the band and brought it to Columbia parent Sony BMG. Columbia brought in veteran rock engineer Randy Staub to remix the group's previous set and record two new songs, "So Far Away" and "The Unknown." Columbia Records Group executive VP of rock music Stu Bergen says the label focused its early marketing efforts on radio. The subsequent airplay success of the "Cold" single led to supporting tour slots with Shinedown and Alter Bridge. The band—which comprises singer/guitarist Ed Sloan, bassist Mitch James, drummer Brian Geiger and turntablist Tony Byroads—will headline its own dates in December. Bergen says the label will now concentrate on promoting the video for "Cold," which is getting airplay at VH1. At the same time, second single "So Far Away" is starting to climb the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It moves to No. 25 this week. "We always thought it would be like that," Sloan says. "Not quite an overnight success, but everything happening at a good pace where we just get to really look around and enjoy ourselves." [Billboard Magazine] -- END

Articles
Dixie Chicks: Country fans want 'em back
[from: USA Today, Listen Up] I haven't done an actual tally, but my impression of the hundreds of Dixie Chicks-related comments this blog has spawned would be that they run about 2-1 unfavorable toward the group, their political statements and their conduct in general. Country radio has not generally been eager to play new (or sometimes old) Chicks songs, and the group has not been actively embracing country radio or fans in its own right. But a new survey indicates that both sides may be shooting themselves in the foot. Sixty-two percent of country radio listeners want to hear the Chicks on the air. Details follow. The survey was conducted by the well-respected Promosquad HitPredictor music research firm, which continually polls tens of thousands of radio listeners and music consumers, usually to get their opinions on specific songs so as to gauge their hit potential. Sometimes the company does more general polling, and recently they asked a sample of country listeners: "Many country radio stations decided not to play the Dixie Chicks' single Not Ready to Make Nice. The reason was that the radio stations claimed you, the country music listeners, did not want to hear them. Do you agree or disagree?" The result, as I mentioned above, was a 62% disagree response and 38% agreement. The wording of the question makes it a slightly squishy referendum for liking/disliking the group itself, since some people presumably disagreed with the notion of radio pre-emptively making playlist decisions on behalf of listeners. But it's still an interesting indication that the people that radio has decided in its wisdom should not get to hear the Dixie Chicks -- and that the Dixie Chicks have decided in their wisdom that they don't particularly want to be "in their CD changers," as the now-famous quote goes -- mostly would like to hear the group on their favorite radio stations. Kind of sad that it doesn't seem it's going to happen. Source URL (USA Today, Listen Up): http://blogs.usatoday.com/listenup/2006/06/dixie_chicks_co.html -- END

Understanding what makes pop music popular
[from: ars technica] Back in the day, hits were tracked by record sales and predicted by how they sounded to music industry veterans. If you really wanted to test the waters, you could let Dick Clark play a soon-to-be-released single on American Bandstand and see if people moved to it. ("It's got a good beat and you can dance to it. I'll give it a 93, Dick.") Even today, the tastes of the record-buying public are something of a mystery to the labels. A couple of PhDs at MIT may change that with a program that mimics the musical tastes of the public. The application, written by Brian Whitman and Tristan Jehan of MIT's Media Laboratory, "listens" to music, analyzes elements of a song (e.g., pitch, beat, tempo, melody) and gives it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. When compared to the Billboard charts, the software is "surprisingly accurate." Predicting which music will get listeners on the dance floor, and more importantly, to buy CDs or individual tracks from online music stores has become big business. One company, HitPredictor, scored big in 2002 when it hit gold with its advice on how to stagger releases from a Christina Aguilera album to maximize sales. Unlike Whitman's and Jehan's application, HitPredictor uses a combination of focus groups and other market data to determine how the public will respond to new music. Music retailers of all stripes would love to have reliable data on consumers' musical tastes. All of us have had recommendations thrust at us on Amazon or one of the online music stories. Those are hit and miss, and in my case, more often miss. Having an application that is able to analyze the songs or CDs in your shopping carts and then use a reliable algorithm to come up with suggestions that you would actually like would thrill retailers. Will software that can nail the musical tastes of the public lead to even more homogenized-sounding airwaves? If Whitman and Jehan have their way, it won't. Their goal is to actually broaden the musical tastes of the public by using data gleaned from the application to get a wider variety of music on the radio. Anything that results in less bubblegum pop and whiny rock is fine by me. Source URL (ars technica): http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051113-5560.html -- END

A Hit is a Hit
It’s widely talked about and written about these days… the new "promotion rules" placed on all record labels have supposedly leveled the playing field for independent labels. One of the greatest examples of what can happen when the "hit playing field" is evened out occurred during a similar set of circumstances in the industry in 1986. During this time all of a sudden a little record label released “Rumors” by Timex Social Club and the song jumped from nowhere to #1 at Urban Radio in only a few weeks time, and from there became a top 10 pop hit. All in all the final effect is good as it helps both the radio and record industries as the hit music process is allowed to work on its own without manipulation, so the real hits rise to the top! The fact is that at the end of the day radio programmers truly want to play hits, and if they would slow down a little bit and not just focus on national numbers…and take the opportunity to invest in a song regardless of the size of the label behind it…then some great songs with hit potential from independent labels could actually have the chance to make their way up the charts and become bona fide hits. At HitPredictor we have the heads up on songs with hit potential by testing and researching the potential of every song that impacts radio at 7 major formats prior to airplay. We perform this testing with a national database of carefully screened P1 radio listeners. What have we witnessed? Numerous songs from independent sources have shown hit potential prior to airplay but ultimately never ended up with the same airplay success of songs with similar or lesser scores from their larger label counterparts. Don’t just take our word for it. Last year the folks at Entertainment Weekly were so frustrated with the fact that some of their favorite songs which “should have-and even more importantly could have become radio smashes” were not given a fighting chance at radio, that they had us test several of them just to see if they were justified. And you know what? Listeners agreed. (From Entertainment Weekly December 24th, 2004 issue #798: “We’re Not The Only Ones Who Overlook Great Music:The Hot Singles Radio Never Played”) This isn’t to say that songs from Independent Labels don’t find their way at times. Robbins Entertainment’s “Listen To Your Heart” redux by DHT is a prime recent example (a song which just so happened to test with hit potential prior to airplay in our research). However, this seems to be the exception, rather than the rule. Victory Records head Tony Brummel had this to share with HitPredictor: “Victory Records has grown in every year of its existence. We are the #1 Independent Rock label according to sales and market share. Unfortunately, you would never know this if you listened to the radio. Aside from our fabulous roster of artists Victory is a brand. We can super serve our artists and brand to the stations but they still say “No.” The offer is here, for them now on a silver platter. I have four, passionate radio people in my radio promotion department. They have great music by real, credible artists with enthusiastic, rabid supporters in every market. 99.5% (possibly more) of what radio programs is major label content. Over 20% of the US market share is independent content.” In the accompanying chart are examples of songs from independent labels which tested with high scores prior to airplay, in comparison to similarly scoring songs from major labels. The resulting chart peaks are also listed, and the discrepancies are obvious. Ashlee Simpson - Pieces Of Me (Geffen) 70.9 - Peaked at #1 at Top 40 Angel City - Love Me Right (Ultra) - 71.5 - Peaked at 57 at Top 40 Usher - Yeah (Zomba) 93.7 - Peaked at #1 at R&B/Hip Hop Amel Larrieux - For Real (Bliss Life) - 92.9 - Peaked at 90 at R&B Hip Hop Three Days Grace - Just Like You (Jive) 68.8 - Peaked at #1 at Modern Rock Taking Back Sunday - This Photograph is Proof (Victory) 69.4 - Peaked at #41 at Modern Rock Snoop Dogg and Pharell - Drop It Like It's Hot (Geffen) - 66.1 - Peaked at #1 Na’sha Fire (Pure Records) -68.4 currently # 99 at Rhy top 40 We realize, now more than ever, that time and airplay are both precious commodities at radio. Obviously there are only so many new songs that a programmer can evaluate, and limits on how many new songs can be put into rotation. That is why we believe that predictive research is an important tool that should be recognized and factored in more often. Each week HitPredictor reports on impacting singles in multiple formats that show Hit potential in testing prior to airplay with a representative sample of radio listeners. We are giving programmers a heads up on songs with hit potential as they come across their desk. Radio programmers should continue to look at the songs and the scores each week in our charts, and listen passionately to the music without necessarily focusing on the company logo on the promo cd. And you know what.. listeners will react. A lot of these independent labels have great artists and amazing music, and more diverse and interesting rosters than you may realize. We see it through our testing. Maybe it's a good time to be open to listening to what they have and communicate with them more. Eventually, if given their shot, hit songs will find their way regardless of the size of the label behind them. -- END

What does Jack mean for radio and especially Hot AC--Is Jack Tomorrow's Hot AC?
There is a new Jack station popping up in a market almost every day now...Why did it take so long for American radio to embrace this format when it was such a success across the Canadian border over two years ago? Mark Ramsey, of Mercury Research in the US, started showing that there was room for a wide variety music format centered in the 70s and 80s, however most research companies didnt show this hole existed. It took Canada to think outside the US format box to come up with Jack. What happened to Radio? Anybody in radio who has the smallest modicum of a social life has heard the repetition complaints from their friends and neighbors for years. Those of us with Top 40 backgrounds are accustomed to such comments, as the nature of our format involves repetition. But when you start hearing these kinds of complaints about Rock, Oldies, and even Triple A stations (!)… shouldn’t we have woken up and smelled the coffee long before now? Since the Telecom bill in 1995 as our industry got gobbled up by consolidators, we threw any long term thinking and a lot of the common sense we had out the window. As an industry we did stop listening and feeling our radio stations with our emotions and started analyzing them on paper...Our industry got the "tighter is righter" fever and we overplayed music. With their hands forced by the high prices that were paid in the mad scramble for radio stations, consolidators cut radio station staffs, and cut budgets and starved our radio stations of the tools they needed to create great entertainment. We fired or shut down personalities and took the remaining staffs and doubled their workload and responsibility. The final result being that we took a lot the passion out of radio station staffs, and that took the passion out of what came out of the speakers. Radio has survived just fine, but now there are iPods, music on the Internet, and Satellite Radio and the public woke up to the fact that radio has changed and other compelling music options exist without commercials. Now radio owners have to pick up the gauntlet and reinvest in their stations in order to be ready to face the challenge that is coming fast to threaten radio. The Search For Variety We drove listeners to their iPods and satellite radio for musical variety over the last 10 years. We program radio stations to Arbitron diary keepers not to the mass audience that’s out there (and they aren’t necessarily the same) In an effort to garner lots of TSL in order to get big ratings, you have to program a music mix that builds this consensus among a wide audience. When you do auditorium research you see about 200 songs that ALOT of people love, so around 200-250 titles is where programmers stop filling out their libraries Problem is those GREAT songs people love become songs people are tired of given a ton of airplay. The sad thing is that research never told us to play 200 song play lists...it was the interpretation of what was a good score and the lack of patience in reading the signs of what a good developing score with new music to determine whether to hold on to a new song. All we had to do was listen to our radio stations like a listener and we would know they were too tight...musically this misreading the research has gotten us in the trouble we're in, especially with variety formats (Oldies, AC, Hot AC, Classic Hits/Rock). Listeners would rather hear the songs they like, not love, in the mix so they don't hear “Jack & Diane,” or “Good Lovin’,” or “Stairway to Heaven” over and over again without relief. The success of Jack is proof of this. Looking back to the beginning of Hot AC When I was part of the team that built KHMX in 1990, I remember apartment shopping in Houston, looking through a resident’s album collection while taking a tour, and realizing that the music in that collection wasn’t being played on the radio. That mentality was incorporated into the music that went into the highly successful launch of KHMX. That experience seems to mirror the current iPod-inspired mix of the Jack-type formats. In 1990 I had a sound in my head that I passionately felt was missing from radio at the time. There were not any upbeat, fun, radio stations that played Pop-Rock (with some Pop) music for women 25-39 who grew up with the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. These were listeners who grew up with Top 40 in the 70s and early 80s and the music mix is really very similar to the essence of what Jack is today. One major difference is that I strongly believed in personalities who were involved with listeners on the air and off the air, sweepers were at a minimum and personalities and listeners on the air were dominant. What's funny when you look at a play list from 1990's KHMX Houston, the first 80s-centric Mix Hot AC. I see a balance of fun upbeat Pop & Rock currents from Rod Stewart, Mariah Carey, Robert Palmer, Poison, Taylor Dayne and a gold library filled with a lot of 80s titles and some 70s titles from U2, Eddie Money, Bangles, Eurythmics, Journey, Boston, and Fleetwood Mac. All songs and artists that are the core of what Jack is today. Its just another example of what happened to this format as programmers abandoned the original 25-34 females fans who loved the radio station when they reached their upper 30's, and as this music didn’t have the same appeal to the new 25-34 female audience (as did Pop Alternative music) and so many of these songs were put on the shelf or were played lightly by Mainstream AC. Also the KHMX library during the early 90s was 500 titles, in an effort to deliver on the Variety Promise, something that was during the late 90s Modern AC phase of Hot AC. The cultural differences we faced in 1990 vs. today are dramatically different, the competition for a radio listener's attention is dramatically more competitive than in 1990, but our job of capturing pop culture with our radio content and keeping listeners in touch still remains job #1 for us as programmers. Programming to ARB diary keepers not the mass listeners Ratings and TSL have been sagging for years. In many ways consolidation has caused a lot of the problems we face today. It is difficult to take risks when you look at the millions upon millions of dollars that a radio station is worth. Its difficult to spend money on programming and talent when you operate on half of the budget your radio station operated on 10 years ago. And if its not part of your budget, and your operating is based on quarterly results, when you run a major corporation (in any field) its so much easier to preserve the status quo. However we all know "programming by the numbers" doesn’t work...great entertainment has to be created using great intuition and great creativity. We don't allow experimentation these days--there is too much at stake, plus our creative people are saddled with so much programming, administrative or production responsibility that they don't have time just sit, brainstorm, and create. Taking Risks There have been radio stations that have taken chances and done things differently over the past 15 years, as mentioned previously KHMX Houston, Triple A WMMO, Z100 in New York City, WKTU New York, Triple A KPIG in Northern California, and Music/Talk WKXW in Trenton New Jersey. All these stations took chances to create magic. Great radio stations of the past had great personalities, great contesting and outstanding theatre of the mind production that captured listener’s imagination and listening loyalty marketing. Great radio stations great are unique, local and all know how important great personalities are to their success. They also know that while they have a long term strategy, the programming staff/air staff have to be empowered to work their magic on the spot and not forced to follow a stagnant never changing cookie cutter blueprint layed out by an ivory tower directive. Hot AC: Adapting and Doing the Basics WMMO and KHMX made adjustment to adapt as listeners tastes changed and market conditions changed. Many of the Hot AC's struggling today didn’t adapt and didn’t do the basics that upbeat adult formats must do to survive. There are basics that must be done for Hot AC to survive especially in the crisis mode this format is in now with the Jack format at its throat... Here are the basics needed for Hot AC to survive as described in my article Hot AC=Mercedes Benz from 2003.. -Marketing: Some form of outside Marketing is essential during Spring and Fall -Mornings: A strong morning show is essential -Research: the radio station target’s needs and music and implement the results wisely For the last few years, most companies starved Hot AC radio stations instead of heeding the warnings. The format was struggling due to not following this formula, taking hits due to the 80s format, and it got hit again in 2005 with Jack. Now, unless Hot AC takes immediate action to correct itself, the format is in serious trouble, because: The Jack format done properly and marketed well is poised to become the upbeat Variety station in the market, a position held by the successful Hot AC's in their markets. Because Jack is a broader variety format, this has put Hot AC on the endangered species list of formats. Jack is already produced with great production values that are a lot more "fun" than a majority of Hot ACs and although Jack has no DJ's it has a lot more personality than many Hot AC's do with a full time air staff. -- END

Callout: A Case of Domestic Abuse? (part 1)
A few weeks ago I promised in my MusicBiz column that I would seek out Todd Wallace. Todd?s the Godfather of radio music research. I wanted to get some insight into how he first developed callout. Todd and I have known each other for well over 25 years. We worked together as programmer and consultant on different projects many times, including my stint as PD at both KIIS Los Angeles and WXKS-FM Boston. He?s helped me fine tune my music systems and has always been a great sounding board for good ideas as well as creating effective ratings promotions. What follows is two-way dialogue about my interest in finding out how it all started. Steve Rivers: Todd, you?re acknowledged to be the originator of callout music research. In fact, any callout system in play today is an offshoot of your idea. Tell me, when did you come up with the concept and where was the first place it was used? Todd Wallace: It?s actually a long story that evolved over several years. The original germ was an idea I had been thinking about and developing when I was working as the young all night jock at CKLW in Windsor/Detroit. I wrote a memo to PD Paul Drew outlining how flawed request-line tabulations and record store sales were as an indicator of actual popularity (since there was a limit on how many songs a consumer could or would buy, and the fact that once they bought it, their .one vote. was already spent. In addition, neither requests nor sales took into account listeners ?dislikes?, or what we now call ?burn?.) I suggested to Paul that we might want to do some in person record store research to ask record buyers what other songs they would also buy if money was no object. Also, going further we?d have our request line operators ask about other favorite songs and if there were any songs which callers did NOT like. My reasoning was that most listeners, especially adults, were a ?passive? majority that often didn?t get ?counted? or heard from because they didn?t regularly purchase singles or didn?t have the time to call radio stations to make requests. Well, that was pretty revolutionary stuff for 1969, so Paul politely told me it was an idea way ahead of its time and we left it at that. But he encouraged me to keep developing the concept on paper, which I did, hoping for a chance to implement it somewhere. Anyway, that?s where the idea was born. Flash forward to KRUX in Phoenix 1971, where I had become morning DJ and PD. GM George Lasley was intrigued by some of my ideas on how to get to know our audience better. Back in those days, there was no budget line item allocated for ?research? since most radio stations didn?t do it. But, I was able to get a few dollars of slush from other budgets and we figured out ways to do the proverbial ?more with less? on several levels. We commissioned a local university?s marketing class to do a random survey of key perceptual questions as a mall intercept project. The results were among the first of their kind and surprisingly accurate (even by today?s standards). It was very revealing insight into how listeners actually listened. Some of the most seminal truths of ?radio listening basics? were uncovered in that study. We also conducted several what we called, ?Listener Advisory Board? luncheons, which were like informal focus groups. We discussed every aspect of what we did on-the-air with average listeners (especially teens), asking what they liked and didn?t (and why) and taking note how they described things. Those too, were eye-opening, because it added another camera angle to any fuzzy statistics and most of all it clearly confirmed the ?passivity? of the audience that I?d long suspected. We also pioneered weekly tracking research at KRUX. One of the DJs on the staff was the perennial ?Chicken Little?, always worrying that the sky (and our ratings) were falling if he didn?t hear the station blaring everywhere he went. Well, after experiencing one too many of his paranoid rants, I figured that doing some quick and dirty random callouts would give us ?instant ratings? every week which could tell us precisely where we stood between books. (Remember, in those days, an Arbitron sweep occurred just twice a year.for four weeks in April/May, and for 4 weeks in October/November.) So, my wife made 150 random calls a week (from our ?kitchen table research department?) which gave us a clear indication of where we stood relative to our direct competition. And in that way, whenever Chicken Little sensed from his anecdotal ?surveys of one? that we were going to hell in a hand basket, I could whip out last week.s Radio Index research and show him, ?No, see, we actually increased from 10.7 to 11.2%?. That shut him up rather smartly. That was where we stumbled upon the concept of ?Preference? listeners (or P1 partisans as they later became known) in relationship to various different levels of cumulative listening. That was where I discovered a pocket of listeners that I called ?Invisible cume? (which was later also known as ?phantom? cume or ?long-term? cume) and how it could be awakened quickly to produce quick ratings gains. All of which, brings us around to music research. Every week, like most radio stations, we dutifully called all the major record stores in the Phoenix area to get their report about what we assumed was their Top 20 selling songs. I was finally able to allocate a few dollars to do the record store project I?d pitched to Paul Drew a couple of years earlier. So, we targeted the largest record store in Phoenix, and got permission from them to ask more in-depth questions of record buyers (about what other songs they?d buy if they could afford it, and any songs they didn?t like or were getting tired of.) That is where we had a major mind-boggling breakthrough. For several weeks, we spent Saturdays there (figuring Saturday would be their biggest sales day, so we?d be able to talk with the most people.) Mind you, this was the largest store in Phoenix. To our amazement, they only made something like 15 or 20 actual sales of singles on a typical Saturday, their busiest day! In other words, we suddenly realized that, when they were giving us their Tuesday sales reports, they were basically just reading back our chart to us?there?s no way they could have actually calculated a true ?Top 20? from their actual sales. And of course, the smaller stores had to be totally fabricating their reports?outright lying to us. We also realized that from interviewing just the 15 or 20 so called ?record buyers? we talked with, we didn?t really have much to tabulate in terms of what else they would have bought or what they didn?t like. That was a real eye opener?realizing that record sales reports we were getting every Tuesday were essentially bogus (and not worth the time we spent doing them.) The store clerks were just telling us what we wanted to hear or probably, what their personal favorites were. It was totally worthless as quote, unquote ?research?. But I wasn?t ready to give up on the idea of ?Q-scoring? our music. I felt that the premise of asking people what they liked and didn?t like was still a very sound one. I just realized that it wasn?t going to happen in a record store; it had to be taken to another level. Since we were already doing in house callouts very successfully to track our week-by-week ratings progress, it was a logical extension to apply that callout methodology to the music research. Zero in on ?our? listeners, both P1s and cumers, and ask for their opinions about every song. Only problem: again, we didn?t have any budget for such a new and untried concept. So the idea sat on the shelf awhile. I moved on to become PD of KTSA in San Antonio, where we further perfected the Radio Index weekly ratings tracking concept. Then a year later, Gary Stevens, who was GM of Doubleday?s KRIZ, lured me back to Phoenix as PD and Morning Man with the promise that he would allocate a small budget for the callout music research project. This was late 1973. Another big breakthrough for the system came when I decided to clone the diary keeper mentality for the music research project, which at that time I was calling MARS (Mass Acceptance Research Study.) After considering various methods, my reasoning was that, since we were in a diary measured world (the way Arbitron measured radio listening), wouldn?t it be great if we could find out what songs diary keepers, as opposed to mere ?listeners,? liked or didn?t like? It was easy enough to do. We were already making the Radio Index tracking calls, we just isolated ?our? core listeners and, just like Arbitron, asked them if we could send them a ?music diary?. It was a simple list of about 45 songs and we asked the respondent to rate each song in their diary, using a 1 to 7 semantic differential scale of fixed values. Our scale had two levels of positives, two levels of negatives, one level of neutrality, one value to reflect unfamiliarity, and one that pinpointed formerly ?liked or loved? songs that they were getting ?tired of?. Basically, there was no other way that a listener could feel about a song. Later, we discovered this same scale of positive familiarity could be applied to measuring the relative popularity of other things too: like DJs, contests, programming features, artist images, and a whole lot more. Now, the music diary was actually quite an efficient way of checking lots of songs, but to speed up the turnaround, we would call the respondents back to retrieve their answers. We figured that when we?re dealing with a perishable product like cutting edge ?current? music, you don?t want to waste a week of a song?s life cycle just waiting for a respondent to get around to mailing back their diary. Doing it this way, with ?callout? retrieval or to be more precise, ?call-back? retrieval, our response rates increased because our calls also served as ?reminder? calls. -- END

Callout: A Case of Domestic Abuse? (part 2)
A Must-Read...Part II in a series of articles from Steve Rivers with Todd Wallace. Steve Rivers: At that time, it was well before any personal computers were available. I'm guessing that all the math was crunched by hand? How long did that take each week? Todd Wallace: You?re right, in those early day?s, computer technology was in its infancy. I was literally hand tallying the results and using a calculator the size of today?s laptops to crunch all the percentages (in order to put it into a trackable perspective.) It usually took a 10 or 12-hour day just to do the math. But even with those rudimentary calculations, the results were truly stunning, especially when it told us about the true lifecycle of a song and when a critical mass of burnout occurred. In short, we found that listeners had a much longer tolerance for songs than everyone ever presumed they did pre-callout. Then in 1975, I launched Radio Index as a full-blown research company. My partners were Ken Greenwood and Gery Swanson (of Swanson Broadcasting). At this point, we were able to computerize the whole operation and MARS really took off. We ended up selling the concept to over 150 stations. SR: What were the results in the ratings? TW: There was an immediate impact. We had dramatically improved the music selection. We set several one book, turn around records back in the day (both at stations where I was the hands on programmer and stations I was consulting.) I guess that's where the nickname "One-Book" Wallace came from. Back in those days, music changes were more perceivable by even the so-called "average" listeners (especially when your station was suddenly playing more of their favorite songs more often.) The results were sometimes very spectacular, particularly when you were competing against a station that wasn't as clued in to what I liked to call, "listener responsive" radio. Oftentimes the reason music changes were more readily noticed, had more to do with the new angle of attack, as compared to what used to be the music policy on a station. For example, when I plugged my MARS system into KLIF Dallas in 1974, I had inherited a station with a 60-song playlist, which consisted of only upwardly mobile songs. Once a song peaked, it was "retired" to make room for another "new" song. It was a record promoter's dream! Well, we were quickly able to find out that the most popular songs in the Metroplex (songs that had supposedly already "peaked") were not being played on the radio. Suddenly, we were able to offer KLIF listeners all the songs they really loved. The comparison, even to the average listener, was night and day, black and white. If James Carville were running a campaign about what we did, he would have said "It?s the music, stupid". Duh! More than anything, what the MARS system did was give a PD the confidence to be able to implement a very tight playlist with very hot rotations. If you put the wrong song in a 90 minute or hour-and-45-minute rotation it?ll kill your TSL. But now with callout on your side, you felt more at ease with tight rotations, which served to both build cume and strengthen TSL. You could do this because you absolutely knew that every song was a mass-accepted proven hit. Song for song, over the course of a typical listen-span, your 20 record list of winners could easily beat a competitor who had a 45 song playlist full of midchart hunches or "favors" or "mercy bookings" for the record promotion community. As you can imagine, I wasn't exactly popular with the record promoters of the day. They just couldn?t understand why I wouldn't want to add a song right out-of-the-box so I could get a Gold Record. One of the amusing little stories I like to tell is that when I left KLIF, the record promoters threw a "Todd Wallace Going Away Party," and I wasn't invited! I still wear that as a badge of honor... having the guts and the focus to stand up for what was right regarding the stations programming. To this day, I have no Gold records hanging on my office wall, but I do have a track record full of big ratings wins in over 100 markets worldwide. I'll take that any day. SR: Certainly, at the beginning it was a secret weapon. You were doing research, when your competitors weren't. Today, most radio stations have some form of music research available. If there is one tip you can pass along to today's programmers regarding callout, what would it be? TW: Don't downsize it or cut it back. There's a tendency at many radio station's to chop the research budget, especially music research. It's an easy way to improve the bottom line. It's wrong to think though that it's something that can be done without or won?t be obviously missed. Some stations that built their very images and reputations by being intensely listener responsive and doing four Oldies tests a year as well as weekly callout 45 weeks a year are now only doing half that. Still, other stations are trimming budgets by cutting their sample sizes to below acceptable levels. In some cases, sample sizes are only 40 or 50 respondents. Spreading a sample over several weeks, defeats one of the great benefits of callout research. Getting an edge on "local timing". Skimping on the number of songs tested also. To which I say, "remember, you get what you pay for". Some of these stations are justifying these cutbacks (or total cutoffs) with both eyes open, knowing full well that they can "get away with it" because they no longer have a direct competitor (since most market matrixes are very nichy these days). But the one who really loses in this scenario is the listener. And when the listeners aren't fully satisfied, they tend to listen less, which sooner or later will affect your TSL and they'll start looking to new technology as well as other media for amusement or satisfaction (as we've seen with Teens over the past few years). The scary thing about the Teen erosion, by the way, is that this will cause a demographic echo in about 5 or 10 years that could be absolutely devastating to radio listening as we know it. Another tip: Use some logic in what you measure. I can't tell you how many times I've come across Hot AC stations that were, say, 70% current. They prided themselves in doing two auditorium tests a year (to make sure that 30% of their music was right) but said they "couldn?t afford" weekly or biweekly callout, making 70% of their product guesswork. For the amount they spent on their library testing, they could have better than doubled their accuracy (in terms of how much of their daily music flow was tested vs. not). Conversely, I've seen situations where a Soft AC station that was 80% Gold was doing weekly callout to get their currents and recurrents perfect, but would only test their gold every year or two. If you apply some common sense, you can avoid these traps. -- END

Callout: A Case of Domestic Abuse? (part 3)
A Must-Read...Part III in a series of articles from Steve Rivers with Todd Wallace. Steve Rivers: A few weeks back, the MusicBiz crew visited some record labels in New York. One of the hot button topics that came up was callout. How are programmers using it? Are they using it as excuse for not adding a song because it doesn?t test well? The frustration, I think, comes not from callout itself, but the fact that programmers throw it up as an excuse for songs they?ve placed in callout after only a small number of spins on their station. How do you respond to that? Todd Wallace: Well, it is true, callout is most effective in measuring a product that has established a reasonable pattern of familiarity. The closest we've ever come to addressing this, is a function of our MARS system called, "Hit Potential" which analyzes a song's favoriteness in relationship to its familiarity and projects a score that can call a programmers attention to a song that's starting off strong. It really is very accurate in spotting a hit that?s fast out of the chutes. But, that doesn't apply to all songs. Some songs are first listen hits that wow you from the beginning, yet other songs are slow to burn in and very slow to burn out. So, here again, a programmer needs to apply a dose of common sense and interpret results with a grain of salt. One of my pet peeves as a researcher is the PD who institutes an arbitrary score threshold before a song receives airplay or has been played in any significant rotation. They'll say, "Well, after 3 weeks, it's only achieved a PosAcc reading of 39.2%, and my cutoff line is at 40%." How short-sighted! Meanwhile, he'll keep on playing some midchart stiff that's been stalled at 43% for 9 or 10 weeks, but which meets his silly over 40% or nothing rule. Some PD's just can't quite see that there's something wrong with that picture. One of the ways you can illuminate the interpretation process is to start testing a song even before you?re playing it. That way you can establish an early track on its Q-score progress to see if it?s gaining in Hit Potential. Also, if your competitor is playing the song and you aren't, you might check the other station's cross tab numbers instead of the total line, since it's going to be more familiar to their P1s than to yours. SR: As a programmer interested in generating the highest ratings possible, I would not only use callout to put together my song rotations each week, but I would also tabulate requests, look at sales and seek the commonality with all of these to put together the strongest power rotations possible. I'd look at it from different camera angles, as you would say. TW: I love getting different camera angles on everything! The trick is in knowing just how much weight to attach to each angle when you interpret the overall big picture. Frankly, I wouldn't put requests or record sales on a par with a properly executed callout program, but I would certainly take note of any breakouts from either requests or sales. If a song is Top 10 in either sales or requests, you?d better be testing it and probably playing it. SR: My experience is that at any given time there are no more than three to five true smashes, and that the rest is filler for the most part. I used several layers of recurrents and some limited power gold, but with the secondary currents and the news, I think you must try and focus on using songs you feel have the potential to become powers, and that fit the sound of your station. Are you finding that it takes longer these days for a song to surface as a hit than say, 10 years ago? If so, why? TW: I like the way you think. And I agree with your figures. Actually, I've found that it usually is three bona fide hits and three or four almost hits. I always used to tell my Top 40 clients, "Any record we play is, was, or will be a hit." Actually, I guess that applies to just about any hit axis format. A soft AC station plays the hits for 25-54s or 35-64s, a Country station plays the hits for that life group, and so on. The quick answer to your question is, yes, I think it does take a little longer for a hit to make it, which is largely the result of the fragmented marketplace you find in most Top 50 or even Top 100 markets these days. And with these lines of format demarcation, we don't see as many multi-format crossovers as we used to. That having been said, however, I would submit that if you super-focus on only your station?s super-core, you'll probably find that the hit-process life-cycle is very similar to what it was ten years ago. One reason it might be a bit slower is that the older an adult gets, the less important music is in their lives. They become less inclined to get excited about a new song. For example, a Soft AC station might find true hits slower in developing than, say, a younger targeted Triple A or Hot AC would. SR: How long would you say is enough time to give a song before giving up on it? TW: I don't think you can put an arbitrary time window on exposure of a new song. There are so many variables. I think you would be shortsighted in just looking at number of weeks. I think you need to take on board various factors. Mostly, I think it's a function of the number of cumulative spins you?ve given a song or perhaps the cumulative spins in your market and your format, especially if it's a song with crossover potential. You should also take into consideration your station's efficiency in converting cume into quarter-hour listens, and how that will impact on an OES plan of Optimum Effective Scheduling. You can track that just like you would the effectiveness of a commercial campaign. Then there's one of my favorite old adages: Some of the very best radio today is still gut-feel radio. The corollary to that, of course, is: It's just how well informed you keep your gut. -- END

Callout: A Case of Domestic Abuse? (part 4)
A Must-Read...Part IV in a series of articles from Steve Rivers with Todd Wallace. Steve Rivers: As we both know, when it comes to music research design, the screener has to be constructed properly to be effective. Otherwise, it?s garbage in, garbage out. What tips can you offer programmers in this area? Todd Wallace: I think, in our respective travels as trouble shooters, we?ve both witnessed some music research samples that are more full of shit than a Christmas goose! And you?re right, snorkeling for the right respondents really is one of the most important considerations when it comes to music research. The first thing you want to do is make sure you have a sufficient number of your P1 core partisans represented, since those are the listeners who are going to give you the most greatest TSL lift. Just as there are different horses for different courses, your competitive environment, and what you?re trying to achieve in your programming action plan for the near term, should dictate the ultimate composition of P1s in your sample. In some cases, especially where you have the luxury of being the only station in your format, you may want to test only P1s. The downside to that is that it may inhibit cume growth, since you?re preaching only to the choir. But the upside is that you?ll end up super-serving your core which usually more than compensates for any mistakes you might make trying to expand your cume and, of course, there are many other ways to grow your cume. In a direct head-on battle, I generally like to make sure that the sample is made up of a 2:1 ratio of core to cumers, which is usually the way the Arbitron P1 hierarchy stacks up. The important thing to remember when including other stations? core listeners in your sample is to make absolutely sure they indeed do cume your station on at least a weekly basis. You don?t want phantom cumers in your sample. Nor do you want non-cumers. That will only serve to contaminate your overall pool. But it?s amazing how many stations ignore this rule, they?ll just accept respondents willy-nilly, based on an Arbitron cume duplication table, with no forethought about whether they pass the OKOP test (Our Kind Of People). SR: Reading the results of any research has to be done the right way, otherwise you could be chasing away listeners. I?ve always tried to look for songs that appeal to the core and the cume with a high degree of passion. Any thoughts? You?re right on the mark. I?ve always believed, and preached anytime a soapbox was near, that favorite ness rules! And therefore, in my opinion, it has to drive all phases of your interpretive process. My way of dealing with that has been to add several proprietary evaluators to my MARS system computer program, so that they are there automatically for you, every time. The first one is what we call the Skewed Average. Basically, it enables you to keep three eyes on your target audience at once. You always want to keep one eyeball on your P1 core listeners, the ones who listen to your station the most. At the same time, without taking your eye off your core, you also want to keep an eye on your total target including your cumers who also listen elsewhere. And finally, you want to keep an eye on your long span listeners, who contribute the most quarter-hours to your TSL. Then, we combine these three cross tabs, the total tab, your station?s core tab, and long-span TSL tab, into one enhanced cross tab that extends your overview with a positive skew. The next evaluator is what I call the Hit Pattern Calculus, which is perhaps one of my biggest breakthroughs in music research. What I did here was to quantify all of the ingredients I found myself looking at in the interpretive process, rate them on a Bo Derek 10-scale in terms of what constitutes a true hit, and then factor them into one score that is more meaningful than any other reading. We do that for each song and then provide various rank-order summaries that make it more meaningful. This is the real bottom-line, so to speak, because it really simplifies the process since it takes so many factors into consideration. Using the earlier ?eyeball? analogy, it enables you to keep about 20 eyeballs on the audience. And it?s all driven by listeners ?passions?. Then there?s an essence-testing cross tab I call Def-check, which is short for Definition-check. We target up to three defining songs that any or our true core listeners should like or love and offer a cross-tab of only those listeners who fit within that criterion. It?s just one more way to size things up, which can often be very illuminating. Frankly, I think some stations go a little bit overboard when it comes to defining compatibility and we?ve both seen instances where some research consultants have literally ruined successful stations by insisting on an overzealous adherence to this kind of evaluation. But, properly used, it?s another useful tool to help you define your station?s essence every week. And finally, our MARS system?s Precision Dayparting Control lets you isolate cross tabs for up to dayparts to help shine a light on all those dayparting decisions or questions. It?s funny, what we?ve actually experienced over the years is that this PDC function usually results in less dayparting on a station, since it shoots holes in many of the old dayparting myths that were based on wives tales and hearsay. And that?s a good thing. Basically the message here is: in my experience, a hit is a hit is a hit, no matter what time of the day or night it gets played, so the less dayparting you do, the better. SR: Right on the money. Play the hits. You are one smart mother Todd. Thank you for sharing so much of the true history behind callout. Hopefully, it?s taken some of the mystery out of the process. Todd Wallace launched his consulting practice, Todd Wallace/Associates in 1975 and his track record of success-stories includes over 100 radio stations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the UK. In addition to being internationally recognized as the founding father of ?callout? music research, he is one of the pioneers of modern radio programming and format theory, having introduced such concepts as weekly tracking research, the ?P1? level of preferential listening, ?phantom? cume, and many more. His research company, Radio Index, has conducted perceptual and tracking research for some of the largest stations in America (including KIIS-FM, Kiss 108, WGCI, and many others). He also publishes a programming theory and promotional ideabank newsletter, Programmer?s Digest (with subscribers in 22 countries). Reach TW by e-mail at ToddWallaceTW@aol.com or by phone at 623-362-TODD (8633). -- END

Spin factor - RADIO: Infinity, XM, Clear Channel, Sirius ... Is anybody ready to make radio cool again?
Music radio, once a radical force in shaping popular culture, has become all but irrelevant -- or hadn't you noticed? The medium that brought us bell-bottoms, Jimi Hendrix and closer to each other through the acquaintance of mutual friends (DJs) has been turned into computerized wallpaper, a programmable backdrop whose cards are punched by format consultants. Is it any wonder that the record industry is on life support, its pulsing blood flow reduced to an icy drizzle? Other media have stepped in to replace music radio as purveyor of tunes to the masses: music videos; the opportunity to break acts through television or movies, of which labels increasingly have availed themselves (cool, but lacking radio's ubiquity); and Internet streaming and satellite radio, which ultimately could save the music business but remain in their infancy on an adaptive scale. But listeners also have become disenchanted with music radio itself, according to one of the industry's most-respected consultants. "We all think that by doing research, we're delivering what listeners want, but in an effort to reach consensus with a large group of people, we cease pleasing passionate people and stop delivering enough variety for their tastes," says Guy Zapoleon, a consultant and former program director at Nationwide Communication Group. "Add to that the disappearance of the 'personality' and green personalities (who) haven't been coached, and we have some serious issues in radio." Focus-group studies reveal listener discontent in several critical areas, including complaints about a lack of musical variety, too many commercials and meaningless on-air chatter. Unless radio addresses those and other audience concerns, Zapoleon warns, the medium "will continue to lose listeners and be primarily (for those age 30 and older) in a few years." Those listeners, most of whom are old enough to be comfortable with purchasing music at retail, are indicating that they want more, better and more intelligently presented music -- which they are not receiving from mainstream radio. "Music stations sound prepackaged and aren't giving any incentive to stick around," says Steve Wonsiewicz, who publishes the music industry-centered financial newsletter Sound Values and adds that listeners might stick around for a bad sports or news radio segment, "but won't (do the same) for a bad music segment." In particular, children -- once considered the pillar of the commercial music business -- have fled radio for greener pastures. "(Radio is) much more predictable, and kids have picked up on that," Wonsiewicz says. "They gravitate to what's new, exciting and edgy; radio just isn't it these days." Instead of buying music for his two preteen sons, Wonsiewicz opts for video games. "That's what they want," he says. "(But) a 44-year-old father 20 years ago would be buying singles for his kids." Of course, children and other radio listeners have migrated in large numbers to the Internet during recent years. Ironically, though, the medium that has done the most to hurt the music industry also offers its greatest hope. "(America Online) is doing a great job of exposing new music," says Zapoleon, who believes that while radio still possesses tremendous potential, "the Internet (may) become the primary way to break music in a few years." Internet music piracy is the primary culprit in the recent downfall of the record business -- but it is a problem that the labels saw coming. "We talked about downloading in the mid-1990s," former Columbia Records and Capitol Records executive Burt Baumgartner says. "Egos were involved, and record companies couldn't agree on a unanimous downloading decision, (so they chose) to move like turtles on it. Times were great, money was flowing and we were selling CDs -- they didn't pay attention to (downloading) and just let it go." Baumgartner believes that the record industry can rebound if it devises a consensus encoding system and stops worrying about its catalog material. "It's over; it's done: Catalog brought in a lot of money, but it's in the system, and companies won't be able to protect their old records," he says. But Jeff Smulyan -- president and CEO of Emmis Communications, the nation's seventh-largest radio station owner -- does not believe that the Internet will salvage the record business. "It will be impossible to aggregate enough listeners or viewers to make (the Internet) salable to advertisers, especially in concentrated areas," he says. "Therefore, it will never reach the aggregate masses necessary to sustain it as a commercial vehicle." In addition, Smulyan notes, "everyone who uses the Internet believes they shouldn't pay for it -- that's certainly a challenging business model." Meanwhile, radio remains a solid business, if not one that can boast of spectacular growth. Last year saw a 6% increase on 2001 figures -- with revenue estimated at $19 billion by analysts Miller, Kaplan, Arase & Co. -- and first-quarter 2003 billings reflected a 2% improvement on the comparable 2002 period. "There's a certain resilience out there among the advertising community, particularly the local ad community," Radio Advertising Bureau president and CEO Gary Fries says. Theoretically, radio's advertising-on-the-cheap business model is viable, even during these financially challenged times. "Tough times breed upticks in advertising," Fries says. "Radio would be in the most trouble when stores have all the business they need and products are moving off the shelves." Fries also believes that station-ownership consolidation has benefited the radio market. "It's made a dramatic improvement in the overall product," he says. "The top three stations in a market might not be any better than they were before, but the 10th, 11th and 12th stations are contenders. The bottom 25% of stations has noticeably improved, which has actually given listeners more choices." Why, then, does it not sound that way? Why has music radio devolved into what often seems like mind-numbing sameness, whether it be rock songs, pop tunes or the sophomoric banter of hosts? Most industry figures interviewed for this report deny the existence of ironclad playlists that push corporate agendas by requiring stations to play only certain songs. Zapoleon, whose Houston-based Zapoleon Media Strategies consults about 30 stations in six radio formats, claims that neither consultants nor station-group owners operate with standard playlists. His company's "suggested rotation list," Zapoleon says, is based "strictly on (Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems airplay) numbers, callout (research) and upward-moving songs in the top 100." He notes, though, that "lists can become tighter, depending on the group (program director's) power base." There is no question that the corporatization of radio has had a chilling effect on its imagination and creativity -- and therefore on its "fun quotient" and selling power. But despite all of the knocks, Wonsiewicz says, record labels believe that radio remains the place to break music. "They need a full-frontal assault, and that's what radio gives them," he says. Mike Kinosian contributed to this report. Beam me in Not long ago, FM program directors fought tooth and nail with station general managers to adhere strictly to a maximum of eight commercial minutes an hour. But the likelihood these days of locating stations with such "format clocks" and ambitious philosophies is similar to that of finding teenagers who prefer pay phones to cellular. But for demanding listeners who feel alienated from commercial radio and can afford it, satellite radio is picking up the slack. For a monthly fee, satellite consumers can listen to a virtual smorgasbord of formats -- from pop to hip-hop to classical -- with little or no commercial interruption. Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio are the main players in this space. The former celebrates its first birthday next month with 100,000 subscribers, a number the company hopes to grow to 300,000 by year's end. Subscriptions cost $12.95 a month from Sirius, which offers 60 commercial-free music channels and a library of more than 500,000 songs, and $9.99 a month from XM, which boasts about 500,000 subscribers. "We (hope to be) right around 1 million subscribers -- or 3 million listeners -- at the end of the year," XM chief programming officer Lee Abrams says. Both companies have inked deals with car companies that load their subscription services into new models: Sirius has pacts with DaimlerChrysler, Ford, BMW and their associated brands; and XM has an exclusive deal with General Motors and has been working with Honda. But XM takes an on-air approach slightly different from that of Sirius, accepting advertising and playing within a more conventional format realm -- including some DJs that can be characterized as aggressive. Sirius vp programming and market development Larry Rebich says satellite and terrestrial radio cannot really be compared because "they're two different animals. Sirius would compare to radio in the same way that HBO or Showtime would compare to broadcast television. Our business model makes it possible for our programming to be different." Rebich and Abrams believe that the approach now taken by commercial radio broadcasters leaves ample room for opportunity for their firms. Abrams characterizes as "absurd" the fact that enormous amounts of music and countless artists receive no commercial airplay. "BB King closes down the (1996 Atlanta) Olympics in front of a billion people on television; Wendy's and Northwest Airlines use him on commercials," he says. "He's an icon who can't get arrested on (commercial) radio." -- Mike Kinosian -- END

When The Going Gets Weird...
"When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro". - Hunter S. Thompson Well, it certainly has gotten weird out there. The Hillary Clinton spin machine has been reactivated ... Cats now have a TV show just for them on cable ... There's a dictator in North Korea that looks like a member of The Talking Heads and his hand is on the big red button just itching for a fight. Chicago Cubs homerun powerhouse, Sammy Sosa pops a cork, sits out eight games as a league suspension and gets a role model award from Congress. Elvis Costello marries beautiful jazz diva, Diana Krall; proving that love is truly blind. Scott Peterson's defense team, in the Laci Peterson murder case seems to come up with new theories daily on who actually committed the crime. Anything from a mysterious "Donnie" to a satanic cult driving around Modesto, to a rape victim telling her sexual abuse councilor that her attackers last November muttered something about a murder that would take place on Christmas Day. Not to be outdone, top gun George dub-ya played Tom Cruise for a day, landing aboard an aircraft carrier. And on a recent flight I took to Detroit, a couple in coach were wearing their Michael Jackson SARS masks, proving that once again Michael is a trendsetter. Last but not least, six local guys from New York pool their $75,000 over a few beers and buy a racehorse named Funny Cide. It won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness! But, as a gelding, the poor horse can't even get it up anymore. Just plain weird. Then there's radio, which has taken on its own dysfunctional strange quirks. We've got owners who proudly wear their Century 21 jackets pretending to be broadcasters. They get upset because the new FCC rulings will not allow them to buy more stations. Doesn't Congress realize that resistance is futile? Let's face it Yogi: The future just ain't what it used to be. All of this ... well, perhaps some of it ... sparked me to speak with respected radio consultant Guy Zapoleon, President of Zapoleon Media Strategies about a paper he has written titled, Radio's Dilemma -- The Solution (Part 2) How do we get out of the current state of the industry and create truly compelling radio once again? Guy writes: So, how are we going to save what once was a great industry? "First, like being an alcoholic, you have to admit there is a problem. While it may start with the jocks and programmers, it has to reach all the way to owners, stockholders and Wall Street. We need to be like the newscaster from Network and scream from the roof tops "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" All of us in programming need to keep on screaming until our owners and Wall Street listen or we'll all be working in another industry in five years. The solutions are easy, but the road back is long and hard ... and starts with eight basic steps: Admit there is a problem and take a hard look at ourselves. Build a brain trust to create and execute your strategy. Get to know your listener and ask them what you can do to be better. Create custom solutions for listeners. Make a promise and deliver on it RELENTLESSLY. Give the consumer better variety and a better product. Create a unique radio station with great live personalities dedicated to serving ALL the needs of the local community. Tell the listener about how you listened to them and how you improved, both on the station and most especially with outside marketing ALL THE TIME ? market ... market ... market!!!" Steve Rivers: This eight step program sounds great. Maybe you add four additional points and turn it into a 12 Step Program where you could make millions! Seriously, it makes total sense to me. We are seeing declining PUR (persons using radio) levels and generally, it seems that listeners are really pissed off that "The Man" has taken over their favorite radio station. While today's radio conditions may drive product specialists like you and I crazy, the financial state of radio isn't that bad. How do we get the attention of Owners and Wall Street with what you've outlined and would it make a difference? Guy Zapolean: Basically the radio business is very lucky right now. Steve, anyone out there with any real radio experience or someone in the business who has been a fan of radio for 15 years or more can listen to radio and know that 99% of the stations pale in comparison to the great radio of the past. The scary thing is that the evaporation of listening will continue in small doses until everyone has an I-Pod, Satellite radio is in every car and someone like AOL creates a strong indispensable Internet radio brand. Until these options are a part of the American radio consumer's daily life, radio will continue to be viable. When these options do hit, (and they may all hit at around the same time) it will be the same effect that a stand alone Top 40 has in a market place of only a few signals before a 2nd Top 40, Hot AC and Rock station came in. The PUR will take a huge drop. Then someone will write multiple articles in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today about radio being in big trouble, and the owners will wake up. Unfortunately, those of us who see this in the future can write articles and scream about this until we're blue in the face, but no one will do anything until it hits their pocket book. SR: Do you feel that radio's biggest problem has been the result of The 1996 Telecom Act, which has allowed massive consolidation? When it was explained to me way back in the mid-90s, I remember hearing how it was going to keep Mom and Pop stations from going dark because we'll just buy them! There will be an economy of scale savings by having people like General Managers, Sales Managers, Engineers and Program Directors doing more than one job. What has gone wrong with the plan for world domination? GZ: There is no doubt that the biggest enemy of good radio has been consolidation. Not because these companies couldn't do good radio, but because the people running them are beholden to Wall Street and the expectation of cash flow were inflated to a ridiculous extreme. When the main motivation is the business instead of the show, you no longer have a healthy environment for creating great radio. When radio companies promised Wall Street its operating results, there was no long term plan to scale the percentage of cash flow once these initial cost savings were in place. Instead of stopping with economies scales of radio stations in the same building and consolidated positions in support departments (i.e. Traffic, Engineering etc.,) they continued to consolidate every position. When you consolidate programming and management you have a loss of time and ability to focus on one radio station and managing the creative individual. Add to that a lack of money which cost radio much of its research resources, marketing money and of course outside experts. SR: If today's problem is that we've learned how to buy stations and consolidate companies to form bigger ones but are still learning how to operate and manage clusters of multiple stations in a market, do you feel that a lot of the problems are at the local level, or higher up the food chain? GZ: Its starts at the top which forces the consolidation template, but there are a lot of problems happening at the local level too and that has a lot to do with the amount of time a GM and PD have to devote to one station as well as the people in charge of making station great. When a GM and PD have more than one station to focus on, they lose focus and creativity plus, human nature has them playing favorites inside the cluster. So, creativity and managing people is put on a stop watch killing the internal spirit in any radio station. John Gehron told me a few years ago when he was overseeing Infinity's programming that every radio programmer should have only one station to worry about as his fulltime responsibility. He's right of course ... this would never happen in another competitive business. Take a look at sports for example. Why doesn't a football player play both offense and defense? Because to be truly great, that player has to focus on learning his skills in one or the other as well as practice all year to be good enough to stay in the league. Why doesn't a coach work with several teams to save money? Because each player on the team needs coaching and the coach needs time to evaluate each player to see who is developing, who is a weak link and make adjustments for the next game. Each week that coach needs to create a unique gameplan for the next game in order to win. Mediocrity is rewarded with the firing of the coach and his team, so there is a lot at stake. Radio no longer has that kind of pressure being put on programming since share losses in Arbitron don't matter as much when a company sells all the stations in a cluster vs. one. Individual stations don't have the same pressure to perform. Who is the big loser? The public, who gets less quality from radio and for the past 5 year's has been actively searching other music and programming choices outside of radio. SR: I've been saying for the past five years that the biggest enemy of programmers is simply the lack of time to actually to do their jobs. With PDs shuttling back and forth across town to their sister stations and becoming deluged with too many meetings, I know that it makes it harder to give even one station enough personal attention, let alone two or more. What is your advice for today's stressed out programming departments? GZ: Programmers today have to be the best time managers in radio history. I'd say a Time Power seminar and a Steven Covey management course are the best tools a PD could get these days. Learning to prioritize what's most important vs. what's most urgent are critical for a programmers survival as well as the radio stations they're in charge of. Also, managing upward to the Group PD and Manager is absolutely essential when they need some slack in accomplishing what they see as the priority vs. what their direct superior may have on the agenda for that day. That takes constant communication to keep those people informed of all the important information so they can ease up on meetings, reports and allow that PD to focus on his priorities. It seems to me that life itself has been pushed into fifth gear. People today want everything now. It's truly the age of "instant gratification." Today's hottest act will become the cut-out queen at the local Wal-Mart in six months and watching the embedded reporters in Gulf War II was like watching the ultimate reality television show. So, with things in our business world spinning faster every day, how do PDs find quicker methods of tapping audience opinions about music and pop culture? GZ: PDs still have to have the same resources as we did when we programmed Steve. Most of the information any PD needs is available quickly over the internet, but they still are missing the key ingredients ... Time and Experts. Programmers need to find other bright minds to network with, idea people to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. That's what consultants and other experts are for. Now there are certainly bright minds inside the companies, but these same bright minds have the same time constraints on their time as they do, so it's doubtful they are going to be able to make regular calls to pick their brain. Also, getting the information doesn't solve the entire problem because that PD then needs the time it takes to process and create once they have the information they need. SR: What trends are you seeing in the research you've been privy to this year? Any new formats bubbling under? GZ: Sure, there are lots of new and "bring back" formats out there, but it will take certain factors to make them viable. For some like AAA, Dance, 70's stations and 80's stations, it will take more share compression inside the Top 10, which will make these new formats capable of succeeding with a 2 share 12 . There are some huge formats that are dormant and capable of being Top 10 players right now like MOR, Traditional Oldies and Oldies AC, but these formats require a shift in the thinking of advertising agencies who need to realize that people over 45 have a lot of money to spend and that age group is greatly underserved by today's radio companies. SR: Finally, do you feel that Senators like John McCain will be able to force the clock back to pre-1996 with some modified form of consolidation, where stations are held more accountable to the markets they serve? Will he get backstage with Don Henley? GZ: No, I don't. It reminds me of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington where one good man is trying to do what he was voted into office to do ... Representing the people and to serve the public good. But there is so much greed in our country, that "the good man" is swallowed up and stifled by big business and the elected officials under their influence. Right now, there is such pressure from big business to make a profit at all costs and remove any and all restrictions in ownership and serving the public good, that there is nothing that the good men in our nation's capital like Senator McCain can do. Honestly, I said a major prayer the night before the FCC decision on ownership limits came down. I expected what we all did, that it would be opened to 10 stations. I prayed a major thank you to Him, Monday when it was only 8, and we weren't looking at a complete removal of ownership limits in radio and Television. While radio got somewhat of a reprieve, what happened with the update of the communications act was that one company could own up to 3 TV stations in a market. The act also allows newspaper companies to own other mediums in a marketplace. We all know that's on the horizon and we'll be looking at the few instead of the many in control of America's communication and the opinions that shape our nation. This puts the power in a few hands and if those companies subject to the same lobbying pressures from major groups and businesses that our government is, it creates a threat that a balance of opinion representing all of America's voices will be removed from our nation. Thanks Guy for your insight. It's always a pleasure to speak with someone who truly still loves the biz after all these years. Maybe you'll get backstage with Henley. -- END

MUSIC BY THE SLICE: The single, written off as a dead format, is starting to make a comeback -- thanks to the DVD
Music singles put the pop in popular music. Ever since that fateful day when Bill Haley rocked around that clock at 45 revolutions-per-minute, singles provided the pulse of the music industry. The hallowed single -- once a seven-inch vinyl 45-rpm record with a big hole in the middle, later on cassette and then CD -- summed up a summer, a new love, the shedding of an ex. Spin forward and the music industry, battered by declining sales and an uncertain future, can trace some of its current problems to the near mass murder of the retail single in the '90s. Music fans, faced with the prospect of popping $18 to buy an entire album to get the one or two tracks they really want, opt for snagging songs illegally for free off the Internet. Singles may have flatlined but -- while no one would accuse the music industry of responding quickly to a problem -- there are signs the single format is struggling back to life. Digital download singles for 99 cents per song are available on sanctioned sites such as iTunes (from the Apple computer company), Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Rhapsody, Best Buy and Yahoo and others to come in the fall. In March, Fleetwood Mac's online release of Peacekeeper became the first single to enter Billboard's Hot 100 based on download sales alone. Madonna's digital American Life track duplicated the feat a week later. As a result, sales of downloaded singles and albums will now be compiled by SoundScan and included on Billboard's charts. American Idol's Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, Kid Rock and Cameltoe from novelty newcomers Fannypack can be had on CD-singles at about $5 apiece. DVD-singles, which include videos, are another addition, with titles from Avril Lavigne, Foo Fighters, Whitney Houston and Pink selling for about $8. Still, there are no retail singles for current Top 10 hits by Beyonc鬠Lil' Kim or Matchbox Twenty. "There's a rumbling going on right now," confirms Jordan Katz, senior vice president of sales for Arista. "It hasn't reached any critical mass but you can feel the effort happening [among labels]." "It's like ER," Katz jokes on the phone from his office. "Someone saw [the single] lying on the side of the road and got a heartbeat. Hopefully the patient will thrive again after recovery." IGNORING MARKET That's if the once mighty single recovers. "The [record companies] taught kids not to look for them," worries Geoff Mayfield, Billboard magazine's director of charts and senior analyst. Mayfield cites an example. Nickelback's office. "It has been driving me nuts that record companies so willingly walked away from... a meaningful product," he adds. "The single is an important tool that does help teach the young person to become a consumer of music. The precipitous decline of availability may have something to do with the phenomenon of peer-to-peer file copying." Some illegal downloading and burning to blank CDs would happen anyway, Mayfield allows -- "Free is a difficult price point to compete with" -- but "consumers are not getting what they want the way they want. There has been dissatisfaction experienced by consumers for a decade. There are too many albums that only have one or two good songs on them. Perhaps there's a need for more albums with thought put into the material but there's a market for songs as opposed to collections." When a single is properly set up and released when an artist is in the public eye, the results can prove impressive. Mere weeks after winning the title of American Idol on the top-rated TV show, Studdard sold a swift 286,000 copies of his single, Flying Without Wings, and came in at No. 2 on the June 28 Billboard Hot 100. Aiken, who lost the Idol title to Studdard by a minuscule margin, handily won the retail battle, landing at No. 1 that same week with 393,000 copies for his ballad, Candle in the Wind 1997. John sold 3.4 million copies in a single week with that one. Curiously, pop radio is not playing Studdard or Aiken to any great degree. Fans are buying their singles anyway and Aiken's upcoming debut album currently ranks No. 1 on Amazon.com's sales list based on pre-orders alone. "You can't look at the Idols as common for every single -- they had exposure on a top-rated TV show," Mayfield points out. "But you can look at it and see that it can work, can't it?" INDUSTRY CONCERN That's why a number of label executives and trade organization the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), led by chairman Glen Ward, will meet in this week to discuss rebirthing the single. "Singles, only four years ago, sold over 100 million copies. Last year, 10 million were. That's a huge decline," cites Ward, who is also the president and CEO of Virgin. "As retailers we have the unenviable task to tell our consumers [singles] are not available." Singles help introduce listeners to a new artist at a minimal initial investment. Back in the day, B-sides -- or the popular euphemism "flip sides," often gave fans -- and the artists -- an unexpected treat. For instance, in 1973 The Spinners' first Top 10 hit, I'll Be Around, was initially the platter's throwaway B-side. Today, CD-singles for artists such as Madonna and Jewel offer bonus remixes of the favored song and land the artists' music into trendy clubs. Often customers will wind up buying the full album once hooked on the artist. "I used to buy 45s all the time and cassingles. I've always been a record buyer, whether it's an album or a single," says 33-year-old George A. Vazquez, Jr., a media relations specialist with 's PR Newswire. "Very rarely will I download a song and not buy the album. I use downloading as sampling, like you sample ice cream at an ice cream shop." Makes you wonder why labels sought to stifle singles in the first place. Owen Sloane, a entertainment lawyer who has represented Elton John, Matchbox Twenty, Suzanne Vega and Jane's Addiction, suggests that cost was a factor. Singles were basically loss-leaders for the labels. "Singles were never big moneymakers -- they were always looked at as promotional tools for albums," Sloane says on the phone from his office. To break a mainstream act and land a hit single, Sloane figures it costs about $1 million to $2 million -- not counting the cost to produce a recording. In the '90s, CD-singles by high-profile pop stars like Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez were priced as low as 49 cents and sold near cash registers like chewing gum. The promotions were designed to artificially ensure a high chart placement on Billboard's Hot 100. That gimmick cost labels a bundle, however, and ultimately wounded the single as a format. CANNIBALIZATIONThriller 21 years ago. Seven Top 10 singles were released from that nine-track LP. With 26 million copies floating around the , Thriller is the second best-selling album in music history -- two million behind the Eagles' first Greatest Hits album, a collection of 10 previously released singles, no less. "Worrying about cannibalization is hard to take seriously," Mayfield says. "Album sales are down for three years. The decline isn't as bad this year but an 8 percent decline is still expected. What are we worried about? This is something that is happening anyway. Shouldn't we put something out there people want to buy? Wouldn't that be a weapon in labels' fight against digital media?" Arista's Katz concedes the cannibalizing fear was unfounded. "The dwindling availability of singles was because of a fear of cannibalization, but the data doesn't show that to be much of a factor -- if at all a factor," he says. "A little more than a year ago a test was done with Universal and [BMG's] Arista releasing singles titles in , and . We tracked them against album sales and there was virtually no cannibalization at all." The under-a-buck "aggressive promotions" of the '90s won't happen again either, Katz adds. The single's future isn't so bright fans will have to wear shades like the band Timbuk 3 once said in a hit single, but it is promising. "I'm optimistic," Sloane says. "There is still nothing like a piece of music and the memories and associations you've had with music while growing up. The problem is how you adapt to the new technologies and distribution and the majors have been slow and invested in the old system. "It's happened too slowly to [attract] a whole generation of people that are used to getting their music for nothing. But those people can be brought back and certainly all these other people coming up." Author: Howard Cohen [hcohen@herald.com] -- END

Promo Squad: It's Not A Jingle Package - It's Hit Music Radar!
In a galaxy far, far away and a long time ago ... before there was BDS and MediaBase, programmers like me would do competitive SWAT. It was a competitive playlist analysis using primitive means like cassette radio recorders with timers set to go off every two minutes. Basically it would record snippets of songs. These snippets then be typed into lists, with all the plays calculated for spins and placed into what were thought to be Hots, Mediums, New and Gold categories. In the year 2003 ... We've come a long way baby. Spins are just a click away. Not only just for your market competitors, but also by format across the country and around the world. If you dig this sort of thing, then you're going to love what I think is a terrific secret programming weapon. The first time I saw it, I liked it so much that I invested in the company (just presenting full disclosure). This is not an advertisement, but it's an endorsement as an effective stealth weapon for programmers and music directors like you. The company: Promo Squad. Anyone who knows me, knows that the only thing I like better about playing hits, is finding them before anyone else. This is what Promo Squad does for labels and what HitPredictor.com does for radio. Rick Bisceglia, Doug Ford (who comes from a record production background having worked in the studio with people such as, Shania Twain, Ron Wood, Keith Richards, Puff Daddy, Cheap Trick, Jeff Beck, and Mavis Staples), Bob Smith in the IT department and Guy Zapoleon make up the Promo Squad and the HitPredictor.com teams. This week we'll be speaking with Rick Bisceglia to find out how the system came together, how it works and how it can work for you. Steve Rivers: Rick, the one thing I can honestly say about you is that you always believed that a programmer's time is a precious commodity. You never wasted time promoting me on stiffs. You were all about the hits and I've got to believe that you received that training from being in radio. Programming legend Bobby Rich clearly trained you well! Rick Bisceglia: Yes ... having a background at both radio and the labels has always given me an understanding and passion for both sides of the business. I think it helps me appreciate how important the hits are to all involved and on many different levels. Now, with this new business, I'm able to take this understanding and put it to use in helping out both sides. SR: Tell me about Promo Squad first and then we'll dig deeper to find out how PDs and MDs can use HitPredictor.com as a secret weapon. RB: Basically, PromoSquad.com is a huge nationwide database of regular people. They get to rate new music and participate in polls online and really make themselves heard. They know they are making a difference by helping out and they love it. They are our listeners, and we constantly strive to keep things fresh and interesting. Most importantly, the end result is that they are answering questions that labels and radio have about songs and artists ahead of time ... pre-market. In some cases they validate programmers' and labels' instincts and decisions and in many others, they offer truly great insight and surprises. SR: I know you've been able to switch song choices for a label based upon what you were seeing in the Promo Squad research. Can you give me a few examples? RB: Well, because we never break confidentiality with our clients, I don't want to be too specific, but I will say that many of the records that have reached top 10 in multiple formats over the past year were because labels paid attention to our predictive research. They initially picked or switched to these singles because of our results. SR: So, while the Promo Squad research is available only to record labels, if you see a song scoring above 70, you think it has the ability to go top 10, top 5? RB: Yes, in our system basically a score of 70 and above means that it has top 10 potential. We determine that number because we test everything impacting at radio. We know what the benchmark is. That's not to say that a song that scores a little better than top 20 won't work with all the other elements (press, touring, video, etc) working in its favor, which is the kind of insight we also share with the labels. But to your question, yes 70 and above is an almost guaranteed top 10 charter. SR: What kind of score does a number one hit have to be with Promo Squad? RB: Of course there are those cases where we'll see songs that score through the roof ... well beyond the cutoff scores for top 10 potential. Avrils' "I'm With You", Christina's "Beautiful," Three Doors Down "When I'm Gone," Evanescence "Bring me to Life" ... these are a few examples of songs that looked amazing in prerelease testing and eventually went on to No. 1. SR: Your predictive list is available in the Billboard Airplay Monitor? RB: Yes. In addition to helping labels that hire us in advance to help pick their singles, we also test nearly every song that is released to radio once a label has picked their single and decided upon an impact date (whether we were hired or not). We have a weekly HitPredictor chart in the Airplay Monitor and a website HitPredictor.com in which we show songs just impacting at radio with Top 10 potential. It is important to realize that in this process we see bad news too that we just don't print a lot of people mistakenly think that we only give the good news, because they see the hits we predict in the Monitor chart and at HitPredictor.com and not the misses. But remember we test everything. SR: How does it stand up against the regular Billboard charts, which are based upon sales and spins? RB: Obviously radio audience and sales are a result of a song's hit potential, which we believe we predict quite well. We have not directly tied sales into our song testing results, but I can tell you that we are in the process of making that happen in a big way. SR: Now, switching gears. If I'm a PD, how much can Hitpredictor.com help me each week? RB: With tons of music to choose from on a weekly basis and with these choices being made by artist perception, record company pushes, research made after airplay and mostly based on gut ... here is a tool that Guy Zapoleon and I have put together that will help show you how a song will perform for you in advance. We're happy to hear that more and more programmers are using us everyday in their decisions on what goes on the radio. SR: Would the same scoring apply? RB: Yes absolutely. Our scoring applies in all situations, the Monitor chart, HitPredictor.com is what we give labels. SR: How many songs do you run through the Promo Squad research each month? RB: We literally test hundreds and hundreds of songs each month ... impacting singles, album cuts, major labels, indie labels, unsigned stuff, recurrents ... it's unbelievable how much information we have at our fingertips on a daily basis. And it's not just song testing results either, we also use our database to conduct polls and perceptual studies. I can log in at anytime and see all kinds of things happening live that would blow your mind. It never ceases to amaze me. SR: These people are music freaks with no radio station bias and they are screened very carefully? RB: Not necessarily "music freaks," but they are very "radio friendly." We screen them very carefully. This is where Guy Zapoleon and Bob Smith are really amazing. They work daily to make sure our database is relevant and properly screened. SR: How carefully, without giving away trade secrets. RB: We have all kinds of detailed checks and balances; systems that qualify the people we use for the eventual end results of each test. And they are not just let in after being screened once, but are constantly checked to make sure they are voting within their formats correctly, with no conflicts. I can honestly say that we have the most balanced and accurate database around. SR: Doug Ford, who comes from a music production background, oversees the production of each song "hook" which is more than the typical 7-second snippet used in callout. Tell me about this. RB: Yes, it's also a really important part of our system. How can anyone get real results by using a 7 second clip of music? To me that's just bull. We put together professional quality mini-versions of each song with multiple listens before voting. SR: And I can access by simply clicking HitPredictor.com and if I want to vote on songs myself, I go to promosquad.com? RB: Right, that's all you have to do and it's fun if you're really into music. SR: Anything else you want to add? RB: I think that covers it. Thanks Steve for the opportunity. -- END

Guy Zapoleon: Phone Callout vs. Online Callout
There was a time 15 years ago when callout wasn't a programmer's standard tool and final tool of the Hits! Back then most programmers didnt haven't have a comfort zone with callout and instead still relied on at national charts single sales and requests to determine rotations...A handful of programmers in the know rode callout scores and library music testing to big successes...We found that on a 1 to 10 scale, where 1 is the most conservative light listener and 10 is the most active heavy listener and 5 was where the majority of your listeners were ...Callout captured the majority with a good representative balance of light medium and heavy listeners After those notable successes the industry embraced callout and for the last 10 years, its has become the norm for determining Hit songs... However because of the onslaught of telemarketing and other calls to the household, and the development of caller ID, its nearly impossible to reach your average person, instead you reach the person who has time to talk to anyone who calls, and that ain't average these days...where the majority of a callout sample represented the majority 10 years ago, I believe today the majority of callout partisans are the light and medium light listeners but doesnt really represent enough of your medium and heavy listners People considered Online research very very active and not representative of your average listener 3 years ago, when some of the initial online research companies started. However as the majority of your listeners have an email address, and are more and more internet savvy...online research is representative of that huge chunk of your listeners, that callout now misses,..your medium and heavy listeners. These are the people who have busy lifestyles(as most of us do) because they can signon and rate a song anytime they want to day or night. They will participate in an online survey when they'd never welcome a phone call from a callout company let alone be around when that company called them. Many people also questioned the methodology, calling it polling...but if its done correctly it's just as random with select quotas as any callout companies, which has a database that they work over and over again for their sample...They key to both of these systems is to continue to build your database which online research companies do thru a radio stations own airwaves or thru a databasing program if the radio station has that. So people say that the person who takes a callout research call is also the person who will accept a diary. This may be true to some extent but regardless this person and the ARB diary keeper is less and less indicatitve of your real audiences, and thats the people in the know keep pushing ARB on using the people meter (with a bigger sample then initially proposed) Also if you play to these most conservative people then you are playing to the past, and a new more targeted station that appeals to your medium and heavy listeners can steal your franchise... Tradtional callout has become so frustrating for most programmers because it takes up to 10 weeks to identify a hit, Sad thing is most programmers are projecting songs to powers and medium based on national spins....a huge mistake since national spins is just one programmer watching another and less and less based on real research. I know many many songs recently that made it Top 10 that never ever tested in research either traditional callout or online research. Thats one huge advantage that online research has is that it identifys a hit so much faster than traditional callout, I watch so many people who don't have online research, prepare to dump a song that becomes a hit for that station 3-4 weeks later, For the time being, I recommend using both methodologies, since traditional callout tracks down the most conservative part of your audience and internet research tracks down the more active medium and heavy listeners..with your powers being songs that do well in both. -- END

Can You Spend Too Much on Marketing?
We're in a time where broadcasters with the top five stations in a market are finding themselves on an ever-evening playing field where tenths of a point make the difference between being top five and out of the top 10. At a time when satellite radio and downloading are immediate threats to radio's audience, why do broadcasters refuse to continue to pour the money that they once put into radio to compete? There are, in fact, several reasons: * Wall Street demanding more from the bottom line * The bad economy * No need to pour money into radio to improve ratings when you own the majority of leading stations in a market. While understaffing and lack of research or outside experts are two of the biggest problems, one key that can make an immediate ratings difference is outside marketing, and yet that is being cut dramatically. I asked Mercury Research president Mark Ramsey a key question about the value of marketing: Do we think marketing our station makes us money, or is marketing a waste? Do we, in other words, think marketing doesn't work? He replies, "The less money we spend advertising and marketing our stations, the more we're saying we don't believe marketing and advertising works. Surely, if it worked we would spend more money on it, right? If it worked, we would throw money at it, right? Not everyone feels this way, of course. Some folks feel that advertising and marketing, done well, can work and make them more money than it costs to advertise. Those people are called our clients, and God bless every one. "If I tell you an investment of $1 will return more than $1, you call that a sound investment, right? Should we expect any less of our marketing? Certainly not. Then there are stations that say they're spending too much money, even if it works, because they've exceeded their budget. But why do we set a marketing budget before we define our marketing goals? That makes no sense whatsoever. In order to achieve your goals you need to budget accordingly, not vice versa. Lofty ratings goals and nonexistent marketing resources are the same as surrendering your fate to the flukish whims of Arbitron. When the ratings fluke up, you'll conclude you never needed marketing anyway. When they fluke down, you'll conclude there's product trouble. "The value in marketing your station is that you regain control over the Arbitron swings and empower yourself to swing them in your station's direction. So spend money on marketing, but only where you can make it pay off. And spend plenty. Your market ranking will thank you." -- END

National Charts Or The Twilight Zone
This week I heard something disturbing and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. Here's the deal.... In a major radio group programmers are using MediaBase and BDS to construct their rotations without using any local callout. This is due to budget cuts I'm sure, but it's frightening. Imagine how many other program directors across the country are using national spins to put together their power rotations without local information. If everyone thinks the national charts are safe enough to do this, I ask you to give thought to the following: If more than just a few PDs are doing this and adjusting their rotations based upon the premise that the songs with the most spins are the actual hits, then how safe is the chart? It seems to open the possibility that we have created a system feeding back on itself creating dimensioning returns and misleading information. I think since BDS uses actual "song finger-prints" it's safer, but still, think about it.... If you're looking at a national chart, how do you know where a song is in its' lifecycle in your market, if I don't have in-market callout? Even using Internet callout, which is less expensive and caters only to the most active of your listeners, is safer than not having any local information at all. Hell, so are requests, if you have a decent tabulation system and responsible interns. When I was a PD, I looked at BDS scores and compared them with the local callout results, request tabulations and store information. I also looked at the playlists of people I respected as programmers who ran a clean list and those who were good at reading callout research. This way I could tell just how much momentum a song had. If it scored high across the board, the song went into power rotation. When you are putting together your rotations, you want to be sure the song is scoring high with your target audience and has a high degree of passion if it's to go into power rotation. To build higher TSL you will need to make sure that any song that is young in its lifecycle is buffered on either side with a stone cold hit. This lessens the chance of tune-out or being tagged in a research project as the station that "plays a lot of bad songs". Also, for what it's worth, my opinion is that no song should go into recurrent or stash rotation unless it has been in power rotation for weeks or months on your station. I feel the more different "camera angles" you can see gives you comfort that you truly are playing the hits. We may be creating a false sense of security doing it any other way and putting mid-charters into a higher rotation. You're probably saying to yourself, all right Mr. Smart-Ass how would you do it if your budget was cut for callout? I would use a combination of things. First, explore the Internet music research idea. There are several good ones out there, but keep in mind that you will only be looking at the hyper P1s, or the "sneezers." This is fine if you don't get too hip for the room. Secondly, I would start your own in-house callout system using interns to pluck people from your winners' database, request line callers, etc. You can buy software from Todd Wallace and Associates to do this and he can actually help you set up a two person in-house system. This will require your finding dependable people to do the calls and the tabulations. It's not pretty, but it works. I would also be looking at Callout America and HitPredictor.com weekly in addition to looking at BDS and MediaBase. Remember, the more commonality you find with a song looking at all the source information you can grab, the better. Just make sure you understand how the research you consider was constructed. If you go the in house and Internet research idea route...treat the Interneters as your P1s and all other song information as your P2s. To win the ratings battle it's critical you find the compatibility of P1 and P2 listeners. You'll end up doing a lot of cutting and pasting into Excel each week, but it is worth it. You keep in mind that while national spins have greatly reduced "paper adds," it is still possible to have record labels hype a song by encouraging PDs to give them a few more spins. No matter what method the industry uses you'll have to wade through the hype to get at the hits. I firmly believe that you must have accurate, local song research if you are expected to win the ratings. Print this column and leave it on your GM's desk. The term "playing the hits" may be tired or old school, but there's no other way to get ratings with a music station that doing just that. Burt Baumgartner once gave me a baseball cap that had the motto, "Number 11, 6 And 2 Don't Count." He was so right; you've got to win the ratings no matter what. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. E-mail me at steve@musicbiz.com. Until next time, keep playing the hits. -- END

NBC Scents Victory as Vivendi Board Meets
PARIS (Reuters) - Television network NBC looked set to win Vivendi Universal's multibillion dollar show business auction on Tuesday as the French media giant's board prepared to end mo