(By Alec Drake) Everyone wants to protect the value of Radio, especially during the prime time dayparts. Unfortunately, the prime time myopic thinking and strategies of the past have undermined the value of most radio stations and led to a content wasteland in the evenings and weekends.
This approach equates to eating a pie filling and leaving the crust. However, the crust and filling are needed to bake the pie and complement each other. The filling alone is not a pie; it’s pudding. Is it too late for Radio to sell the whole pie?
Programming can point to sales as the cause of too much focus on prime time, and sales can point to a marketplace that will not eat the crust when the pie comes out of the oven. Ultimately, the blame can be spread from top to bottom, although the catalyst for a prime time-only focus started with the massive consolidation of station ownership in 1996.
Sales Reacted to Deregulation
The “Prime-Time Rate Generation” strategy in sales resulted from the increased supply as owners had more stations in a single market after consolidation took hold. Sales managers used prime-time pricing strategies to hit a monthly budget using the inventory in prime (Monday to Friday, 6 am to 7 pm) and an AUR target tied to budgets. Any inventory outside of prime was not counted in the calculations; therefore, the ads could be sold at any rate or be used as bonus inventory to leverage an order. So began the discarding of the value of evenings and weekends.
The Power of a Word
Unfortunately, the word “fringe” was partly definitive when used and subtracted value as sales teams referenced nonprime dayparts to buyers and prospects. “Alternative Prime” would have been a better choice, suggesting something more valuable. If sales training focused on driving demand for hours outside of prime and Radio offered unique and locally produced, there might be hope to reverse course. We should have talked more about the listeners available to buy from advertisers and less about the time they listen.
Programming Suffered Too
Programming support was the next domino to fall as less emphasis was placed on ratings outside of prime by sales, and inventory packaging led to bloated stop sets filled with bonus spots. Syndicated programs took hold in the fringe dayparts, and the national fill or local discounts had to match the format clocks. The effort to create and build local destination listening in dayparts outside of prime was abandoned due to cost-cutting from the top. Streaming music options for the teens and younger demographics who used to support evenings added to the overall listener erosion, and now the downward cycle is in full swing.
The Prime Hangover
The will to reverse value perceptions takes time, offering more compelling content takes investment, and fighting audio fragmentation overwhelms many broadcasters. The big corporations do not have the will or flexibility, and the small owners are limited in what they can invest as they try to survive on local dollars and support from Main Street. Should we surrender to AI or Radio GPT to take over evenings and weekends to shore up revenues, lower costs, and add value beyond a jukebox?
Prime-time dayparts are the remaining ramparts around the radio revenue castle that protect potential dollars and keep radio stations open for business. The ongoing dominance in commute hours and automobiles (for now) still dictates that prime time is money time. Hopefully, there is enough runway left in a changing audio landscape to save prime time with renewed investment in on-air talent, engaging content, and fewer commercials clogging up each hour.
Alec Drake advises and writes on revenue management. He founded T.R.I.P. “The Radio Invigoration Project” group and publishes a monthly newsletter, The Sales T.R.I.P. both on LinkedIn. Alec can be reached at [email protected]. His previous Radio Ink posts are at Radioink.com/author/adrake.
