Radio 2013: Passion becomes Programming Factor

Story by Inside Radio

In the early years of PPM measurement, stations focused on attracting big cume to win the ratings war.  That remains essential but programmers say in 2012 that stimulating passion among listeners is increasingly important as well.

“It’s not just cume, you have to have P1 loyalty as well,” says Entercom SVP of programming Pat Paxton.  “Whatever can drive the biggest audience on a cume basis and create the most loyalty on a P1 basis will be the big winner.”

CBS Radio SVP of programming Greg Strassell agrees that high cume plus high passion will be a combustible combination in 2013.  “High passion formats are more and more critical in PPM,” he says.  

To help determine what instills passion, programmers have more data at their fingertips than ever before, from tools that gauge how listeners react to specific songs to the ability to track what’s trending in social circles.

No longer just the province of Pandora, Clear Channel  factors thumbs-up and thumbs down data from some 20 million registered iHeartRadio users into its programming equation.  “We get a ton of data from that and we look at it to understand where people are driving their listening,” Clear Channel president of digital Brian Lakamp says.