Traditionally, it seems that most stations wait until at least :17 to run their first stop set of the hour. They use the first QH to put their "best foot" forward to draw listeners in. But lately, I've been hearing a trend to run stop sets within the first 10 minutes, or even right on the hour after the ID. CC seems to be the worst offender of this right now.
Anybody know the reasoning behind this? It would seem to be a big tune out factor as people are just getting in their cars after work.
Top of Hour stop sets?
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AmpedNow
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Clay JD Walker
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Re: Top of Hour stop sets?
People don't get in their cars directly at the 'top of the hour' as we might presume. If indeed your day ends at a specific time (or mine that's flexible within 45 minutes or so), there's still the time it takes to get from the shop, out of the truck, out of your cube, etc before you get in your personal car to get home.
There's way more theory that goes into the science of stopset placement that, in PPM revelations, would make you throw out any preconceived radio programming practices.
There's way more theory that goes into the science of stopset placement that, in PPM revelations, would make you throw out any preconceived radio programming practices.
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Bob Campbell
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Re: Top of Hour stop sets?
Welcome to PPM world.
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Jay Nunley
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Re: Top of Hour stop sets?
We didn't need ppm to tell us that quarter hour stretching or "time warping" was a stupid idea in the first place.
The whole idea is based on two erroneous assumptions.
1. People tune away from a radio station when a stopset begins.
2. People report listening at the exact times they listen.
I stopped trying to stretch music across quarter hours during my second programming job when I got a look at some actual diaries for the first time. Not one single person reporting listening in from 7:57am to 8:17am. If they did break it down in quarters hours (most of them did not) it would be 8:00am to 8:15, 8:15am-8:30am, and etc.
Later on, anecdotal data and then ppm proved that people don't always tune out when a stopset begins. The last real data I saw, a few years ago, is that it tends to be the third or fourth unit before the tuneout really begins and not always even then. I'm not sure what current data shows.
You can still use stopset placement as a tactic. I was once in a market with far too many rock formatted footprints. All of my competitors did the usual :20, :35, and :50 stopsets with the :50 set backloaded with far too many units. So, I put stopsets at the top, bottom, and quarter hours. I made an on air guarantee of having shorter commercial breaks. This, of course, prevented being able to do however many in a row or a however many minute music sweep. I found it to be a no brainer trade off. The easy way to beat 6 in a row is to do 7 in a row. Music sweeps are attractive to listeners, but guaranteed short commercial breaks are more attractive and impossible to beat if your competitors have 4, 5, or 6 minute sets all the time.
The whole idea is based on two erroneous assumptions.
1. People tune away from a radio station when a stopset begins.
2. People report listening at the exact times they listen.
I stopped trying to stretch music across quarter hours during my second programming job when I got a look at some actual diaries for the first time. Not one single person reporting listening in from 7:57am to 8:17am. If they did break it down in quarters hours (most of them did not) it would be 8:00am to 8:15, 8:15am-8:30am, and etc.
Later on, anecdotal data and then ppm proved that people don't always tune out when a stopset begins. The last real data I saw, a few years ago, is that it tends to be the third or fourth unit before the tuneout really begins and not always even then. I'm not sure what current data shows.
You can still use stopset placement as a tactic. I was once in a market with far too many rock formatted footprints. All of my competitors did the usual :20, :35, and :50 stopsets with the :50 set backloaded with far too many units. So, I put stopsets at the top, bottom, and quarter hours. I made an on air guarantee of having shorter commercial breaks. This, of course, prevented being able to do however many in a row or a however many minute music sweep. I found it to be a no brainer trade off. The easy way to beat 6 in a row is to do 7 in a row. Music sweeps are attractive to listeners, but guaranteed short commercial breaks are more attractive and impossible to beat if your competitors have 4, 5, or 6 minute sets all the time.
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ralphallen
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Re: Top of Hour stop sets?
The reasoning about stop set placement stems from the fact that if you can control any five minute period in any quarter hour, you get credit for the entire quarter hour. So we programmers started thinking, "cover your quarters" as in back to back songs there give you a good shot at getting three minutes of that needed five minutes in TWO quarter hours!
So that is why you get the math that dictates where stop set placement pays off best and why most all music stations sound similar. The big secret is that listeners, despite our best efforts, are not sheep. In my experience, I much prefer the two minute stopset in two units, two 60's, a jingle and into a slamming good song...I don't like stacked stopsets and certainly the listener hates them.
Ponder this idea: The COMMERCIALS are also PROGRAMMING elements! And what do you get, some jackass scrawled chunk of copy that an untrained copywriter/sales exec wrote with the help of a client advertiser...and they bring this garbage to you...as the production director to get the thing on the air in nine hours or less...and it's a disaster...a DISASTER!!!
WHY do we as program directors allow that stuff to continue? A copy change every week? WHAT are we SELLING?
The commercials should sizzle just as much as any programming element and we fail miserably and have for years...
Programmers view commercial stopsets as interruptions to the "sound" of the station...and we need to re-think that...I will sometimes break up a stopset stack and run two songs in between which is a firing offense at some stations...believe me...it's not that critical to pop those stopsets in traditional places...just run the best radio you can...and get the commercials played sometime in the hour, and I say spread them out...and make it liatenable as possible...stop thinking "quarter hour" and start thinking...FOUR HOUR GIG!!! Cume will take care of itself, I promise!
Ralph Allen
So that is why you get the math that dictates where stop set placement pays off best and why most all music stations sound similar. The big secret is that listeners, despite our best efforts, are not sheep. In my experience, I much prefer the two minute stopset in two units, two 60's, a jingle and into a slamming good song...I don't like stacked stopsets and certainly the listener hates them.
Ponder this idea: The COMMERCIALS are also PROGRAMMING elements! And what do you get, some jackass scrawled chunk of copy that an untrained copywriter/sales exec wrote with the help of a client advertiser...and they bring this garbage to you...as the production director to get the thing on the air in nine hours or less...and it's a disaster...a DISASTER!!!
WHY do we as program directors allow that stuff to continue? A copy change every week? WHAT are we SELLING?
The commercials should sizzle just as much as any programming element and we fail miserably and have for years...
Programmers view commercial stopsets as interruptions to the "sound" of the station...and we need to re-think that...I will sometimes break up a stopset stack and run two songs in between which is a firing offense at some stations...believe me...it's not that critical to pop those stopsets in traditional places...just run the best radio you can...and get the commercials played sometime in the hour, and I say spread them out...and make it liatenable as possible...stop thinking "quarter hour" and start thinking...FOUR HOUR GIG!!! Cume will take care of itself, I promise!
Ralph Allen