"Pure Core Format Fans": How We Find the Listeners that Matter Most

Memos are flying. Blogs are being posted, on the subject of the “limits of P1”.  PPM, which gives us data from listeners from more than one week of listening, is showing us that many shift their P1 station from week to week.

Some radio programmers and researchers, because of the P1/P2 shift over multiple weeks, are now saying we should give up on “loyalty” altogether, and stop thinking about P1s. But that is not correct.

The problem is not new, and I have been pointing out the limitations of our research screening for at least a couple of decades. This problem of unstable or uncertain P1 (or "most listened to") information has plagued both our weekly current music research and our library studies for years. But  as long as a radio station can actually be liked more or less depending on how well it is programmed, we need to do our best to measure satisfaction.

What Is Pure Core?

Pure Core is our patent pending technique for finding the people who act in concert to define a format through their shared set of opinions about the music. It is, in effect, a more stable "P1"

Pure Core is "P1 to the format".

P1 allows to find the center of the format, as constructed by the listeners, not our personal preference. It is self evident that the people who are most loyal to the format are our best potential customers. So we need to continue to do our best, try to make our best even better using what we learn from PPM, and then use my proven and now obviously necessary “Pure Core’ analysis tools to correct the limitations of our loyalty screening.

• We should continue to invite our best customers to participate in our studies.
• We should work on ideas that improve the quality of our “loyalty” questions.
• We should completely resolve the problem, once the test is complete, by focusing on Pure Core format fans, which specifically solves the problems of P1/Most/Favorite screening questions.

Detail:

We have 3 common measures of satisfaction:

1.  “I listen to you most”

2.  “You are my favorite station”

3. giving us the most quarter-hours in a given week in a diary or metered survey (and we can’t use this one for screening research studies)

We know better than ever that none of these work perfectly.

But we have limited budget and sample size, so we need to do the best to recruit listeners who will help our fans stay fans, and hopefully add even more. So we screen in with some sort of “use a lot” or “like a lot” screener. And it would be great if we could experiment a little, and make the effort, no matter how imperfect, as good as possible. I’m sure there is room for improvement.

Still, when experienced researchers like Carolyn Gilbert and Bob Harper at Paragon point out the difficulties, they are right to do so.

Solution:

Today, the only way to clean this up is in the post-analysis. After the music test is complete, the Pure Core format fans can be determined. They are “P1” to the music. And not because they say so. Their pattern of responses to all the tested songs proves they are. We must get our station to appeal as much as possible to the people who create the widest possible consensus.

Pure Core is the tool that accomplishes this.

Steve Casey Research is the only research company in radio looking past P1 to the true definitions of loyalty and consensus.

Of course, I'm excited about that. Pure Core is the most powerful single programming tool I have discovered. It is something that I hope many more stations will take more advantage of.

Not every competitive situation is complex enough, or important enough for this extra effort. But many are, the cost is very reasonable, and Pure Core is only one of the state-of-the art tools applied to the analysis. And as we are seeing more clearly than ever, there is otherwise a huge price to pay in terms of reduced clarity and confidence.