Sponsor (May-Aug 1957)

NETWORK RADIO . . . continued opposing camps to CBS and NBC. which tend to stress programs and audience first and station affiliation second. The ABC and MBS view: follow the local station program trend and supplement it. The CBS and NBC approach: pace the local station trend l>\ giving variety and diversification. NBC's biggest change has been in its top management lineup, now under the direction of Matt Culligan. NBC's most marked departures from the network radio norm have been (1) further intensification of peak automobile traffic time programing, (2) development of the Hot Line with hourly news and the Nightline, (3) the application of psychological concepts to what Culligan calls Imagery Transfer. Imagery Transfer Q. What is Imagery Transfer? A. In high-falutin" technical language, Imagery Transfer as bally hooed by Culligan and NBC involves perceptual phenomena such as synesthesia (the common feeling-tone in different sense modalities) and partial closure (listeners' tendency to complete perceptions). And what does this mean? Culligan has a simpler explanation. He describes the process by which a radio listener transfers an image after the stimulus of the commercial. There's a public pool of memory, he says. Everyone stores away everything to which he has ever been exposed in his lifetime. So the whiff of perfume may bring romantic reminders; the sound of screeching brakes may recall a horrible accident; the Star Spangled Banner may evoke a patriotic fervor. "The human mind is really quite orderly," he says. "A partial experience — such as a sound effect on radio — leads to a re-living of the entire experience. Listeners are therefore working with us on the completion of a thought. Other media destroy rather than enhance the imagination." How does this apply to copy? Can you automatically use the same copy lines and themes appearing in print and tv and transpose them without alteration to radio? No, says Culligan. He recommends the principle be used as a guide in integrating all media and in getting maximum impression from each advertisement, be it print or broadcast. It's the sound in radio which distin guishes the medium. Sound, therefore, must get the emphasis, he says. Here's what this sound should include: • The commercial must epitomize key points, not simply talk around them. • It should emplo) sound material which contains feeling-tone qualities of the tv or magazine visual. The advertiser should prepare his tv or print ads with visual characteristics especially adaptable to aural translation. • The commercial should invoke the image of closure, leave something for the listener's imagination so he brings something to the recall process. • Each commercial should stress one motivating value, but the campaign should cover an entire set of values rather than merely one. This kind of integration is an ordinary device used by advertisers. A trademark or logo or identification figure will be used in all print advertising. Transference to radio could include sound effects or voice effects. Audience Q. Who listens when? A. Ninety-six per cent of all U. S. families have radios. This huge audience defected to television at a rapid rate until about a year and a half ago. when listening leveled off from a decline. At that time, one network spokesman says, the toll of tv was measurable for the first time. He figures radio has lost about 69% of its former nighttime audience, about 27% of its former daytime listeners. But this is still a sizable number for an advertiser to conjure with. Radio listening is estimated to total 1.4 billion hours weekly by the Mutual network. Look at these Nielsen Radio Index figures for the first report in May. The average evening once-a-week show reached 433,000 homes, the evening multi-weekly program, 626,000. Average weekday program went into 963,000 houses. During the daytime on Sunday the average audience was 385,000 homes; on Saturday, 578,000. One of the biggest bonanzas for networks and buyers alike is the huge incar radio audience available throughout the entire week at almost any given hour. SPONSOR tabbed some averages based on this same Nielsen report for May, a month selected because it hits a balance between the peak driving vacation months during the summer and the low period of dead winter. The size of the in-car audience today is so valuable to many advertisers that they consider the in-home audience a bonus and the automobile listeners their prime targets. For this reason, some networks have taken to pitching for a radio allocation from the outdoor advertising budget. They argue that a billboard will, perhaps, get a maximum of four seconds' attention as the driver goes by. Radio, in contrast, gives many times that. On a weekday between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., the automobile audience is 21.9% as big as the in-home audience — more than one car listener free for every five home listeners purchased. On a week night from 6 to 11 p.m., the plus is 22.5%. On Saturdays and Sundays the averages rise, of course, because of shopping trips and pleasure driving. Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., 28.8% ; from 6 to 11 p.m., 34.2%. On Sunday, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., 29.9% The highest single Auto-Plus rating was 53.4% between 8:15 and 8:30 of a Sunday evening. Q. How important is the in-car audience? A. It's the most sought after single segment of radio's audience in this buying era. Here are some reasons for this incar demand. The car radio listening group is a captive audience, unexposed to other media except for a fleeting glimpse toward billboards. The person or family on the go consumes more, spends more money, is less conservative in buying habits. The automobile passenger is a natural target for such products as restaurants, movies, places of entertainment, automobiles and gas and oil products, soft drinks and foods. The family with a car. being mobile, is able — physically — to move from one place to another in response to advertising. The size and potential of this audience on wheels is so significant that many local stations as well as networks are carrying news and feature angled particularly toward drivers. Mutual reports, after a recent affiliate summan, that 95.691 ()f i<s affiliates schedule driver-appeal programing. 174 T\ AND RADIO BASICS