Announcers Presenting the News

A programmer friend let me know that his company was thinking of having the presenters also do the newscasts.

He asked me what I know about stations that work that way.

I can’t really think of any station where the announcer also does the news. In my experience, this is never done.

There are a number of reasons, all of which are very well known.

1. For all but teen stations, listeners need to be given a credible and properly prioritized view of what is happening in the world that affects them. That is a skill, and it is also a process that takes a lot of time between each newscast. The announcer does not have the time, the focus or the training.

2. Announcers serve a ‘buddy” role in most cases. They are not “authoritative”. But usually, that is what you need from the newscaster. At the very least, you need to know that the joking is over for a bit, and we are now serious.

3. The news, for credibility, needs to be rewritten from the original sources (newspaper, Internet, etc.) and put in the voice of the newsperson. And it needs to be both updated and rephrased from newscast to newscast. This is also a job for which the presenter could not possibly have the time and focus.

If it is felt that part of the service you offer is news, I’d suggest that doing it well is one of the most basic things you must do.

But what about you? Do you know of a station that combined the music presentation and news reading roles? Does it sound professional, credible, entertaining and compelling?

Does Pure Core Balance Your Radio Station's Demos?

A client asked, "Will Pure Core realign males and females to be equal (like it realigns demographic imbalances) if in the AMT we had more females liking the format than the males?

For those not familiar with the term Pure Core, let me pause and explain.

In every music library test sample, we identify the respondents who are most in agreement with each other regarding music taste. These are the people who best define the format, and so we use the term "Pure Core format fans". When we then look at where they want the music to be centered, we have created a powerful tool. We are able to properly position our music. And we are able to control the presentation of the music much more intelligently.

The answer to the question is that Pure Core will realign males and females to be optimally balanced. It will look at the most compatible males and the most compatible females, and empower them to guide the station.

It balances them out as much as possible given how interested they are in the format. This is not the same as balancing them equally. Formats often have a natural lean toward females or males, and toward people of a certain age.

For example, many stations that target 25-44 adults have a problem with 25-34 males. They just don’t align as well with the other 3 demos. So only the 25-34 males who do have an interest play a strong role in determining the Pure Core center. The 25-34 males who are off the reservation are not allowed to skew the calculation.  We don't allow them to destroy your identity and appeal for the larger target.

We must never forget that not everybody who shows up at our AMT is of equal value to our station. We try hard to make sure that everybody in the room is a potential P1, high TSL, super loyal listener. But we won't succeed.

Fortunately, once we finish the music test, respondent opinions about hundreds of songs give us the needed input to determine which respondents are our best prospects.

Without this extra effort, our music tests can easily do more damage than good to our station's ratings and reputation. Given the high cost of research, that is a shame.

Equal isn’t what we’re going for. Optimum is what we’re going for. And sometimes, like with those sometimes weird 25-34 males I referred to above, there is a real difference.

Fortunately, there is no need to limit ourselves to bad research. It is easy to optimize the data we get back.