Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1946)

a moment and inspect the record of, let's say, the past five years. How many stations have had rate increases during the past five years? Frankly, I don't know and I haven't taken time to summarize the answer, but I'll bet it's 85 per cent or higher. Let's put it another way. How many stations do you know of that haven't had a rate increase in five years? How about your station? Well, those rate card increases are part of the problem. Every time the rate goes up, your station is delivering the advertising message to fewer people for each dollar spent. A good reason, incidentally, why your advertisers should think of re-allocating some of their radio budget to newspapers, isn't it? All right, all right! I can hear you screaming that you raised the rate card after you had a power increase, a lower frequency assignment, a new network affiliation, or saw the rest of the boys doing it, so why shouldn't you? I'm not going to argue that there isn't justification for raising rates, but remember that there are other things that tend to off-set this justification based on one or more of the above-mentioned factors. For instance, a change in your programming (beyond yotir control perhaps) may result in lost audiences. A change in your competition's programming. Increased nimiber of sponsored hours result in smaller audiences per program. Additional stations, ]30th AM and FM, encroach upon the audiences you are delivering. COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING Then there's the matter of talent costs which, while they haven't gone up as ridiculously on most local stations as they ha\e in network ]:)rogramming, have increased generally. Once again, this means fewer peo]>le getting the advertising message per dollar. Not that I think talent shouldn't get a fair wage and have their share of radio's wide profits, (I've carried an AFRA card myself for a number of years.) But when you add 10 per cent to the advertiser's talent cost you are chancing a leduction in his radio expenditure. He has to view advertising, not merely as timely or good programi)iing, but from a cold "hoiv many for Jioiv fniuli" attitude. I'm trying to point out that time and talent costs, and their trends, must be considered, along with other factors, in evaluating radio. For years, radio, having no adequate measuring stick, guessed its size of audience and got by. Then Hooper and the recently departed CAB came along and gave us as efficient a measuring stick as was economically practical. Hooper measurements, or Conlan's, made similarly, are not projectable ratings, yet we all know that they are used in this way to estimate audience size. You jiLst can't take a rating of 6.0 and projecting it to your stations coverage of 300,000 radio homes state flatly that the program delivers an audience of 21,600 homes. That's both incorrect and illogical. However, we can project ratings of two programs on the same station against the station's coverage and then introduce the cost of each program to ascertain quickly the comparative value of one program against the other. We can see, clearly and graphically, which reaches the most people at the least cost, in other words, cost-per-thousand. BiU that's only Jialf the job! REACHING THE RIGHT PEOPLE I HAVE referred but once to the fact that advertising in any media must not only reach people, but reach the riglit people. Well, that's just the point. Ever since "Hoop" started supplying ratings that people used (correctly or incorrectly), you boys selling station time and those of us who buy that time, have spent the major share of oiu' eflbrts in trving to piu the rating together with the program and once doing this, then trying to find out what it meant. VV^e've had little time left to use either our experience, logic or research as to whether the audience of that program was right. I'm sorry, but not hesitant to admit, that there are still far too many timebuyers, a((()inu execiuives, advertising managei s and others who make decisions, who don't really know what the ratings arc or how to use them correctly. Inhere are also too many who still don't know advertising can be elluieiuly (onducted on stations smaller than 50,000 watts. Finally there 300 RADIO SHOWMANSHIP