Two driving forces generate higher ratings:
- Increased Cumulative Listening
- Building Time Spent Listening
An air talent has little control regarding increasing Cume; that’s driven by advertising, social media promotion, push notifications, and email marketing. However, talents can improve ratings by focusing efforts on increasing TSL through creative and effective teasing.
There is a difference between promoting ahead and effective teasing. The goal is to engage listeners and build curiosity to sustain listenership. Here are typical examples of promoting ahead:
> “Up next, Taylor Swift.”
> “Coming up another ten in a row.”
> “On the way, we’ve got Imagine Dragons tickets to give away.”
These phrases are merely announcements and do not require a resolution or pique curiosity. It brings reactions like:
> “Yeah, they play that artist all the time.”
> “I don’t want to count the number of songs.”
> “I’ll never win; big deal.”
Teasing, on the other hand, can make a difference in improving ratings. If you can motivate your P1 listener to listen for another ten minutes, it may mean another share point. Here are the principles of teasing:
- Tease only one element in the next segment. Imagine building a campfire. The more logs you pile up, the better the chance the fire will go out from being smothered.
- Show prep your teases. You only need a short sentence to be effective.
- Use the power of saying “you” to engage the audience in the first sentence of your tease.
- Deliver your tease after your content and before your commercial stopset. Teases between songs or after commercial stop sets are ineffective for delivering Time-Spent-Listening.
- Avoid saying the name of the artist or guest in your tease. For artist trivia, use websites like SongFacts.com and Wikipedia to craft a tease without mentioning the artist’s name. For news-talk guests, use a pressing topic the host will be addressing.
- Powerful teases have “hooks.” They require a resolution. You want to make the audience ask themselves, “What’s the answer?” Avoid vague teases, as you must give the audience enough to intrigue them to want to hear the payoff.
One of the biggest issues with stations today is the lack of effective teasing—our advice: Never go into a stopset without teasing what’s coming up next.
“Blake Shelton is next” is a less effective promo-ahead. Originally only known to Country fans, this artist became a household name thanks to the TV show The Voice. Instead of “weather is next,” tease the benefit: “You better find that umbrella you put in the closet.”
By focusing your show prep on writing compelling teases for every break in your show, you will have a powerful tool for driving longer listening spans – and you’ll make your show more interesting.
Did you find this article useful? You can leave a comment below or email him at John@Lundradio.com.
Pic designed YuriiAcursPeopleImages for Envato Elements.
John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming, broadcast consulting, and research firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats.