What You Don't Play CAN Hurt You

It's an expression as old as radio programming: "What you don't play can't hurt you." But is it time to revisit this truism?

For the record, I come to you as a thoughtful guy with knowledge in marketing and branding and years of experience on the radio sidelines. But I am not a programmer. Never have been. Never have pretended to be. But maybe that makes me the perfect vehicle for this message:

Sure, what you don't play can't hurt you. But what you don't play also can't help you.

Playing risky (i.e., primarily new) songs was an unforgivable rookie error once upon a time. A time when everyone listened to the radio at home, at work, and in their cars - when they weren't listening to 8-tracks or cassettes or CD's. Indeed, your station's only competition in those days was other radio stations or the hard work of reaching up over your car visor and fumbling with one of ten CD's to pop into the CD player, thus reducing your chances of variety from hundreds of songs down to about a dozen.

That's why any lost listening was generally lost to other radio stations. What else was there? Pretty much nothing.

And what is there today?

Infinite varieties of streaming songs from Spotify and its kind which are full of risky songs. As well as good songs, bad songs, and songs you're tired of.

In other words, when a listener is limited to a variety of music sources which abhor risky songs, a risky song is much more risky than when their choices include oceans of new and risky titles.

The definition of "risky" has changed and programming wisdom has not changed with it. See, what you don't play actually can hurt you. Because it signals to the listener that the novelty they want is available anywhere but here.

Now I know what you're thinking: "But we test our music and our listeners vote down the new and risky stuff."

And who are these listeners? They are the long-time fans of your station. They are not the new listeners. They are not the younger demos that create and establish music trends. They are not even necessarily representative of your audience. They are likely to be flush with donors (who are definitely not representative of your audience). They are likely voting on your music because of what you always have been, not because of what you might become tomorrow. In fact, they don't want tomorrow. They only want yesterday. If they wanted you to change they wouldn't be voting on your music.

This is not to critique music research. The fact is that there are only so many ways to gather feedback on our songs from listeners and almost no ways to make it affordable and effective for you. So the effort is not at all wasted. But how you interpret the outcome of that effort may be the problem.

"Risky" is not what it used to be. Chances are, you are not taking enough risks.

Can you be hurt by a mix which is tuned too current? Of course. But what I see out there in the programming ether is not a bunch of stations taking too many risks. What I see is a bunch taking almost none.

The larger risk is to fear change and play it too safe. Do you know what too much safety buys you? It buys you a format that grows grayer every year. A format that sheds listeners to digital alternatives.

So what's the best recipe to manage risk? It's to try more new stuff more often. And then stand back and ask yourself: How'd that work?

Mark Ramsey Media does audience research for Christian Media - Perceptual research, digital studies, donor studies, music studies, etc. Learn more here. Call Mark at 858-414-4191 or email markramsey@mac.com.

And if you want a strategy to solicit major donors to pay for your research, look here and download this Listener Impact Study solicitation for donors from WAKW-FM.

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