For Radio, Passion Exists Within a Context

Passion is a word used often in radio programming, and often used incorrectly.

Okay, perhaps not so much incorrectly as incompletely. Passion exists within a context.

If somebody loves a song they hear on your station, but they generally dislike the other music on your station, there is some "passion", but it probably won't translate to your station, or spending more time with your station.

If somebody hears 6 songs in a row that they like, and they find they generally like the other music on your station, there may be no one song that generated tremendous "passion". But they are likely to feel passion for your station, and it will translate to spending more time listening to you in the future.

As obvious as this is, many radio programmers insist in looking - in isolation - at the "favorite" rating for a song, and making a judgment as to how much airplay it should receive. But very few songs generate "favorite" ratings of more than 33%. So for most songs, over 67% or two thirds of the listeners are not generating this particular type of "passion". You can't build a successful station by playing enough songs with enough favorites to generate continuing passion. You must generate passion for the station itself. It is one of those simple (but perhaps difficult to accomplish) truths.

Whether we want to admit ii or not, the game we play is "don't leave". We are usually a background for a listener's life. Other things are going on. People are not breathlessly waiting, with passion, to hear the song that makes them dance with joy. No, they are listening for "their" kind of music, and mostly they expect it to be familiar and comfortable. They want it on as a soundtrack behind what they're doing. Violate that; jump out and grab their attention with too many things that stand out as odd, or which don't meet their expectations, and you'll see passion. You'll see a passionate turn of the knob to "off". Or to another station.

My thought today is that we should remember that listeners don’t hear our stations as a sequence of songs. They hear an environment. Within that environment, the songs must work together to reinforce why the listener chose to listen to us. There is a center to what position our programming occupies, to what we represent, and a circle of music around that center.

My work is focused on this reality. A modern music test should allow your music to work better to reinforce your programming vision. The chief tool I use to achieve that is the music fit analysis built into MusicVISTA. Regardless of who gathered your music opinion data, I would be happy to show you how your listeners' organize the songs to determine what best qualifies as their kind of music.