by Thomas Giger of www.radioiloveit.com

Spinning lots of Gold? This programming approach for your Classic Hits station (or similar music format) may make your station shine.

Following our earlier series on CHR formats, some of you asked to receive ideas for Classic Hits stations as well. So this is part 1 of a new series on Gold-based formats. We’re starting with ideas to set up categories to support your strategy for ratings and revenue, and creating a flow to serve your full demo while focusing your effort on your core.

‘Think of format core in terms of audience and taste’

Eurodance, Grunge and other styles that mark the 90s music era may make it challenging to find suitable songs for today’s Classic Hits (image: Thomas Giger, source material: Byte, DGC)

Serve your entire demographic

The mother of all music formats is based on decade categories, such as one category for songs from the 1960s, another one for 1970s, and so on. I used to do the same in my early radio years, being really precise (close to autistic) with it. A song that was a hit in 1979, went into my ‘70s’; a song that charted (mainly) in 1980, went into my ‘80s’ category.

I then created a category flow to spread decades out for broad audience appeal. If two classic hits went back to back, a 1960s song would play next to an 80s (not a 70s), and a 70s track next to a 90s (not an 80s), engaging every segment of our total listener demo (and having music variety as a nice additional benefit). This was around 2000. The station I programmed, aimed at 25-54.

Consider your music cycles

Sometimes, during specialty shows, there would be instances where a 70s classic would play next to an 80s song, or an 80s hit would be adjacent to a 90s track. That would sometimes create a challenge, as many works from 1978 and ’79 sounded like those from ’80 and ’81 (as there were many Disco songs in the charts in those years), so we looked beyond the usual category borders.

We introduced era categories based on music cycles, a natural way to separate songs with a similar sound. Our (former) 70s category now went until 1982, and our (former) 80s category, which now started in 1983, now went till 1992 (because of a Dance wave, around 1990). It helped us to naturally ‘pre-separate’ music genres by category, before separating them by sound codes.

Define your era periods

The concept of (rounded-up) era-based categories can be taken further by looking at a larger period. In 2020, a station aimed at 35-54 will probably play mostly music from between 1976 (when a 54-year-old was 10, and was getting involved in pop culture) and 1995 (when a 35-year old was 10), so with a middle around 1985 / 1986, where we could split it into 2 subcategories.

Although we now could simply balance Old Classics (1976-1985) and Young Classics (1986-1995) in our clocks, we also want to think of format core in terms of audience and taste. In this case, we would ask questions like: is our core audience 35-44, 45-54, or in the middle with 40-49? And: can we find enough great-testing songs from the extreme 90s with their Eurodance and Grunge?

‘Precise control over song rotation can only be gained through separate categories’

Combining demographic-based main categories and popularity-based sub categories allows us to create category sequences such as this one (image: Thomas Giger, source material: Warner Bros., Atlantic)

Establish your era categories

Let’s assume that we’ve done our research (so we know which songs appeal most to our entire 35-54 year-old target audience), and we’ve divided our library in 3 categories for 3 subgroups:

Young Classics: attractive for the younger end of our listenership (35-39, music: (first half of) 90s)

Core Classics: aimed at the main core of our desired audience (40-49, music: full period of 80s)

Old Classics: relating to the older end of our demographic (50-54, music: second half of 70s)

and let’s assume that we aim for the main core and the younger end (which has a potential of becoming our future main core, and is sexy for advertisers), then we can move to the next step.

Build your category sequence

As we’ll play mostly 80s and first-half 90s music with a bit of second-half 70s music, we can create a category sequence based on correct ratios for desired exposure, in this case:

3 Core Classics : 2 Young Classics : 1 Old Classic

resulting in a basic format sequence that goes like this:

Core — Young — Core — Young — Core — Old — (repeat pattern)

As Young Classics would be frequently exposed, we would need enough good-testing songs from a short 1990-1995 period (compared to a way larger 1980-1989 library). The solution could be to extend Young Classics with great 1996-2000 songs, or to redefine Core Classics as songs from 1980-1987 and Young Classics as songs from 1988-1995, thus including 8 music years in each.

Play your powers frequently

There are several approaches to playing ‘top-testers’ frequently. We can tell our music scheduling software to, after airplay, put a song intended as Secondary all the way back into the stack, so it will take its time to show up again, and place a song feeling like a Power not that far back, so it’ll repeat sooner. (As it was done manually, in the old days, using index cards for song rotations.)

However, precise control over song rotation can only be gained through separate categories, for example: splitting ‘Core’ into ‘Core Power’ and ‘Core Secondary’ (and so on). That allows you to create a rotation based on demographic subgroups and song popularity, thus a sequence with mainly ‘Power’ popularity songs and mostly ‘Core’ or ‘Young’ demography songs, like this:

1. Core Power
2. Young Power

3. Core Secondary
4. Young Power

5. Core Power
6. Old Secondary

7. Core Power
8. Young Secondary

9. Core Power
10. Young Power

11. Core Secondary
12. Old Power

13. Core Power
14. Young Secondary

15. Core Power

Of course, all of the above is still based on music eras, while there are other ways to structure the music flow on your station. The upcoming part 2 will showcase another way of music scheduling for Classic Hits (alike) formats, one that actually may surprise you as it’s working from a completely different angle. Stay tuned!

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by Thomas Giger of www.radioiloveit.com

Looking for ways to get your target audience to tune in more often and listen longer? Give them a better sense of your station’s sound.

Our ‘Format X-Ray’ of an AC station might give you ideas to optimize your music. Thoughtful category setups and smart format designs can greatly improve your logs and further enhance your flow to then increase your tune-in occasions and expand your Time Spent Listening. So, let’s have a look at rotations & clocks!

‘PLAY THE HITS; NOT MAKE THE HITS’

AC is trend following; not trend setting in terms of playlist adds (image: Island Records)

ANALYZE YOUR MUSIC MARKET

Before we can analyze this station in terms of music category sequence, we have to know which songs are in which category. We can get an idea of tracks rotating frequently (and therefore currents or recurrents) by counting how often a song appears in a day. There are several airplay monitor tools out there, but we did this exercise manually. Apart from taking notes from a three-hour recording, we relied on the station’s website, which allows users to enter a certain time to see which songs played around that time.

The site didn’t show which songs (if any) were played between midnight and 4 a.m., and also the final half hour of that day (between 11:30 and midnight) wasn’t available for this analysis. But we do have a nice 19.5 hours of music data available, which is sufficient to analyze song rotations within high-rotating categories on a basic level. If you don’t have an airplay monitor service (or would like to check its accuracy), you can apply this method to track competing stations on a regular basis, which is relatively easy if the website shows you the full playback history.

SEE YOUR COMPETITOR’S ROTATIONS

The following downloadable spreadsheets (in PDF format) will show you all songs played during these 19.5 hours, sorted in different ways for different purposes, so we can easily identify the most-frequently played songs on the station:

• Time order, all songs sorted by airtime (showing chronological order)
• Song order, all songs sorted by artist & title (showing popular artists & titles)
• Repeated plays, songs sorted by artist & title (showing repeatedly played songs)
• Possible categories 1, songs sorted by date of release (indicating possible music categories)
• Possible categories 2, songs sorted by frequency of play (indicating possible music categories)

PLAY YOUR ‘CURRENTS’ LONGER

The ‘Possible categories 2 overview’ includes 12 songs that played four or five times during the 19.5 monitored hours. Even if this is a limited sample, it’s likely that they were rotating at least three and possibly up to 12 (although that seems like a lot) Power Currents at the time. It’s indicated by three titles scheduled five times, and nine titles scheduled four times. Some of these nine tracks might have been scheduled one more time (during the 4.5-hour ‘blind spot’). The songs that were played two or three times during those 19.5 hours can, for now, be classified as Secondary Currents or New Songs, depending on their release date.

Obviously, AC stations usually play the hits; not make the hits. Adult Contemporary formats will often add currents later (and often play them longer) than the average CHR or Hot AC would do. An example is I Took a Pill in Ibiza by Mike Posner, which came out in July 2015, but still aired at least four times that day – therefore an apparent Power Current for this AC station, even if it was over a year old when we made this aircheck (Nov. 2016). So, we can now categorize songs that played two or three times a day like this:

New Songs: released during Sept., Oct., & Nov. of 2016 Secondary Currents: released in 2016 or in the second half of 2015

Power Recurrents: released in 2014 or in the first half of 2015

Power Golds: released in 2013 or earlier

‘THE CATEGORY RATIO SHOULD BE EQUAL FROM HOUR TO HOUR’

This category order & ratio could be more consistent (image: Thomas Giger)

STRENGTHEN YOUR MUSIC POWER

As you see in the ‘Possible categories (sorted by release)’ tab, focusing on tracks from 2013 or earlier, five songs that would usually be a Power Gold are getting the same amount of plays as four songs that would normally be a Power Recurrent. Even if Sportfreunde Stiller’s Applaus, Applaus (German hit song) and Bastille’s Pompeii, both from the first half of 2013, would still be running as Power Recurrents, you’d expect both Coldplay’s Viva la Vida and the two Sunrise Avenue songs on the list — especially their Fairytale Gone Bad from 2006 — to be Power Golds, right?

That Fairytale Gone Bad was played at least twice that day — as much as, for example, Ed Sheeran’s Photograph from 2015 — which could indicate that this station (temporarily) brought back some Power Gold songs as Power Recurrent titles to automatically increase their rotation. Maybe they couldn’t find enough Power Recurrents based on research, and therefore added top-testing Power Golds to the Power Recurrent category? It’s a nice idea, but it diffuses the desired clarity of ‘one theme per category’ and the listener’s (subconscious) natural distinction between songs that are just a few years old and (that therefore play more often than) songs that are older.

VISUALIZE YOUR CATEGORY SEQUENCE

Of course, it could be a coincidence. The music director may have used the extra Viva la Vida, Fairytale Gone Bad and Hollywood Hills tracks to manually replace other titles on the music log for a certain reason, and may have missed or disregarded that these songs were already scheduled elsewhere on that day. Or the scheduling software may have done it for some reason, like bypassing a ‘breakable’ rule?

In any case, we now have a global picture of which songs are likely to be Power Currents, Secondary Currents / New Songs, Power Recurrents, and Power Golds / Power Recurrents, which enables us to analyze this AC station’s music format on a basic level. Getting back to our three-hour aircheck, we can now assign possible music categories to every song played. Again, as we have monitored a single broadcast day, based on 19.5 hours of data, and as we don’t exactly know if these songs are actually in those categories, it’s an indication. But we’ll still get a pretty good insight into this station’s music exposure:

• Complete aircheck notes in PDF format

MAKE YOUR FORMAT CONSISTENT

It looks like each of these hours is built in a different way. While it’s okay to have some variety, making a format less predictable, you always want to follow balanced patterns that reflect your entire music format. In other words, while the category order may be slightly different from hour to hour, the category ratio should be basically equal from clock to clock. An improvement could be a better balance of older & newer songs, which now seems off with five versus six versus seven Golds played an hour.

Power Currents and Secondary Recurrents are balanced pretty well, but while Hour 1 and Hour 3 include as much as two Secondary Currents, there are none of those in Hour 2. That hour features a New Current, while the other two hours don’t include one (although it’s perfectly fine for an AC station to schedule an ‘unfamiliar song’ category every other hour; not every hour). Finally, there’s no Power Recurrent in Hour 3 versus Hour 1 and Hour 2. The category order can be better, too, as we see several older (or several newer) songs scheduled back to back on multiple occasions. So there’s a need for more balance and more consistency. Here’s one way to achieve it:

‘THE BEST MIX OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY’

This format could be a good base for this AC station (format & image: Thomas Giger)

STREAMLINE YOUR MUSIC CLOCK

The above format example includes what I call a RhythmicRatio™. In this case, older vs. newer songs (classic, contemporary — classic, contemporary) to communicate to listeners the essence of the format, like ‘the best mix of yesterday and today’ or ‘yesterday’s hits and today’s favourites’ (to quote frequently used format positioners). Even though recurrents may be up to a few years old, they’re included on the ‘contemporary’ side of the RhythmicRatio™ flow, as it creates a distinctive contrast with the ‘classic’ part of the music library.

By including only two Power Currents an hour (but with fewer songs in that category than we found in the analysis) and two Secondary Currents an hour (with more songs in that category), there should be an greater feeling of passion for the hottest currents thanks to greater distinction with other currents. The same solution has been applied to each hour’s Power Recurrent slot and Secondary Recurrent slot. New Current is placed in the middle of the hour as it’s now embedded in familiar songs — in this case, two Golds (of which at least one should be a Power Gold).

ROTATE YOUR FORMAT CLOCKS

Note that in one of the hours, one Secondary Current has been replaced by a New Current. Hours 1 & 2 are now based on one basic clock; hours 3 & 4 on another basic clock (where positions of Power Currents and Power Recurrents have been switched). It will help ensure songs from high-rotating categories don’t end up in the same slots within the hour, which would make logs too predictable over time.

A great way to increase this ‘shuffle effect’ is rotating your music clocks across the days of a week or ideally multiple weeks, as explained in previous articles on using format clock grids to rotate hot clocks. I hope this post will give you good ideas to further tweak the music format of your own (Adult Contemporary) station. We’ll do more Format X-Rays in the future. Let us know which format you’d love to have examined next!

(In this straightforward exposure of strengths & weaknesses, the station, show & presenter names, as well as the air check recordings, are not included for respectful discretion towards the radio professionals involved.)

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by Thomas Giger of www.radioiloveit.com

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by Thomas Giger of www.radioiloveit.com

A great flow in music scheduling captures the feeling of every daypart. How to offer a better listener experience by creating a mood-based tempo cycle?

While you can apply these concept to other aspects, like genre, energy, mood and texture, the following ideas are solely based on music tempo for ‘flow dynamics’. Three examples of ‘tempo tides’ to give your brand a competitive edge — even if you and your rival would play the exact same 500 songs. ‘Cause a better flow could result in a higher TSL and a winning share!

1.    Relaxed feeling in easy dayparts

 

Think ‘feel’, not ‘numbers’

Depending on your format strategy and brand imaging, you may wish to sound lighter during certain slots compared to your average music ‘excitement level’. Think of late nights in traditional AC with ‘easy listening’ through softer music, such as love songs with listener dedications. Such hours usually contain mostly slow-tempo songs (let’s call these level 1), some medium-tempo records (level 2), and hardly any up-tempo tracks (level 3).

You could certainly work with five tempo levels — level 1 (slow), 2 (medium slow), 3 (medium), 4 (medium fast), 5 (fast) — for more refined flow formats, but for the sake of this article, I’ll stick to slow, medium & fast. You may want to keep in mind that a 105 BPM track isn’t automatically a ‘medium’ one, as it may have an up-tempo feel (which is what listeners will perceive; no one is counting beats). So, which format is suitable for relaxing hours with lower excitement?

Use unbreakable rules carefully

After you have coded your library this way, you can create a tempo sequence where, in this case, a short ‘peak’ is followed by a longer ‘valley’. The speed pattern could therefore decrease lineally (level 3 — level 2 — level 1) or decrease gradually, and then stay on a low average tempo for some time, such as: level 3 — level 2 — level 1, followed by level 2 — level 1 — level 2 (before returning to level 3). Now, how to implement all of this in your music scheduling software?

Use smart tempo grids to achieve perfect flow, while avoiding scheduling conflicts and rotation inconsistencies. You may wish to combine an unbreakable rule (for example: every ‘level 3’ song has to be followed by a certain amount of songs that are either ‘level 2’ or ‘level 1’ before returning to another ‘level 3’) with a breakable rule (for example: every ‘level 2’ should ideally be followed by a ‘level 1’ (or ‘level 3’) to achieve tempo variety, while supporting song rotations.

2.  Consistent mood in average dayparts

Control your tempo patterns

In most dayparts, like office hours, you may wish to balance every up-tempo track (and every slow-tempo work) with a medium-tempo record, using ‘level 2’ songs as a connecting bridge (3 — 2 — 1 — 2, repeat) for natural transitions. Doing so during mornings would start people’s day not too slow and not too fast. However, if you’re a contemporary format with high excitement, like a (dynamic morning show on a) hit music station, you could switch to a higher gear (see further).

Zooming out to a larger scale, you can apply this principle from show to show. To control your flow from daypart to daypart, use medium-excitement hours to build a bridge (between high- energy shows and easy-listening segments). Without necessarily adjusting your format clocks, you can now segue from a powerful afternoon to a relaxed evening to a romantic night show, simply by stepping down your overall tempo.

Check your library content

There’s another major factor to schedule every position and ensure perfect rotations, which is your music library. Include enough songs of each tempo level in every music category that appears in your clocks, so your music scheduling software can always find a match. That’s easier with larger (‘library’) categories than with smaller (‘current’) categories, as your ‘current song’ playlist follows today’s music cycle.

You can tailor format clocks to fit your daypart flow. For example: program a smaller amount of current songs in easy-listening evening hours, where you’ll need many ‘level 1’ songs. Because otherwise, in weeks where you don’t have enough ‘level 1’ content in your ‘current’ categories, scheduling those hours would become rather challenging. Just make sure to pre-check if (and how) adjusting these clocks may affect your day-to-day ‘current song’ rotations.

3.  High momentum in active dayparts

Glue different songs together

Your station will sound exciting when you increase your music tempo throughout several different songs; then drop the tempo suddenly to start building it again. Basically: 1 — 2 — 3 (and repeat), ideally kicking off music sweeps (coming out of your Top of Hour, a commercial break, or a long talk) with a ‘level 3’ or ‘level 2’. You can create variants, depending on how many ‘level 3’ peaks you want. For example, 1 — 2 — 2 — 3 (and repeat) could work for slightly less energetic hours.

Instead of playing ‘level 1’ and ‘level 3’ songs (and vice versa) back to back in cold segues, you may wish to smoothen transitions with connective elements like station imaging or jock talks. Listeners, as we all know, dislike sudden changes (like jumping from a really slow to a super fast song), unless a perfect segue is integrating everything. It could be your reason to reinstall good- old transition jingles, and to use tempo-matching BPM sweepers.

Simplify your scheduling system

Instead of using tempo rules to create flow, there’s also another possibility — which means a different view on format clocks and music categories. You could, theoretically, attach tempo levels to song categories. Say your Gold category is called G, then you could split this category into G1, G2 and G3, for slow-, medium- and fast-paced classics. It allows you to create different clocks for different dayparts (like including, in terms of oldies, only G1s and G2s from 10pm to midnight).

However, it would also split this category’s rotations, as ‘G songs’ would no longer rotate through all G slots in your clocks, resulting in three different rotation patterns. And how would you make

sure that your ‘best testers’ come around often enough? You could add PG1, PG2, and PG3 (for ‘Power Gold’), but that would mean 6 sub-categories for Gold alone — and create a need for several clock variants to avoid that the same songs appear at the same position too often.

A beautiful dance of art and science

Define your tempo ratio

Music scheduling is a balancing act; a beautiful dance of art and science; a perfect combination of flow and rotation. I believe in format clocks with easy structures, so songs rotate naturally with the right exposure. At the same time, I love wonderful patterns of music flow; perfect segues for a great experience for your audience. How to use the best of both worlds; combine ‘left brain’ and ‘right brain’; logic and creativity? The answer might be surprisingly simple.
First, assign tempo ratios to certain hours. For example: you may want your afternoon drive show to include about 20% slow-tempo songs, 40% medium-tempo records, and 40% up-tempo tracks, which is a 1 : 2 : 2 ratio. Tempo grids (as explained earlier) allow you to define tempo-sequences like 1 — 2 — 3 — 2 — 3 (and repeat), if all categories (currents, recurrents, golds, etc.) contain enough songs of each level. But it all comes down to using the right (combination of) scheduling rules.
Make your scheduler’s day
Minimise (or zero) your number of unbreakable rules, because even a rule that there should be four ‘level 2’ or ‘level 3’ songs in between two ‘level 1’ songs could conflict with ‘forced’ scheduling of your power currents; your fastest-repeating category that (depending on your format and market) may include very few titles. Or, instruct your software to schedule along these (still breakable) rules only after your highest-spinning songs have been placed on their math-based positions.
Also, you can allow your software to schedule slow-spinning categories(like secondary golds, secondary recurrents, and maybe even secondary currents) more loosely, so the program doesn’t necessarily have to pick the first song that’s up next based on its rotation, but that it can ‘dig a few song cards deeper’ instead if necessary. This, along with the post-scheduling art of manual log editing, may help you to get (close to) your desired tempo flow pattern for every daypart!

Thomas Giger is a European radio broadcasting specialist and publisher of Radio))) ILOVEIT, based in the Netherlands, and serving the radio industry worldwide.

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by Thomas Giger of www.radioiloveit.com
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas :-). Time to double-check your holiday library coding & categories, and fine-tune your Christmas format rotations & clocks.
If your station is like most, you’ll launch your holiday music format somewhere between (American) Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Assuming you already know which songs you’re going to play, we’ll focus on how to give every Christmas song the right exposure, and share some ChristSTmas music format clocks which you may be able to use.

INCLUDE ENOUGH MUSIC VARIETY

CHECK YOUR SOUND CODES

You probably have coded your songs when you added them, but you may have done this a few months ago. It could be good to go over every song once again with fresh ears (and actually listen to it) so you can make sure that each and every title is perfectly coded according to essential criteria. These may include:

• Gender: male, female or duet (in terms of lead vocals)
• Sound: defined by genre (Contemporary, Traditional, Religious as well as Pop, Rock, Soul,
  etc.)
• Mood: defined by level (like 1 for very sad, 5 for very happy)
• Energy: defined by level (like 1 for very low, 5 for very high)
• Tempo: defined by level (like 1 for very slow, 5 for very fast)
• Daypart: defined by days & hours (when it can be played)

If you don’t play 100% Christmas music (yet), then your set of sound codes for Christmas music should be the same as the one for non-Christmas music, in order to make your scheduling rules work for every possible combination (e.g. a Christmas song followed by a non-Christmas song).

SET YOUR SCHEDULING RULES

Essential sound codes are the ones you’ll use to separate similar-sounding songs apart from song, artist & title separation. Just make every scheduling rule match your song exposure and library content (or vice versa). For example: when you’re playing 100% Christmas music and 70% of your Christmas library includes songs with female lead vocals, you may want to make your gender separation rule breakable instead of unbreakable (or take off some female / add some male lead vocal songs).

KEEP YOUR LIBRARY DIVERSE

Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You is obviously a contemporary-sounding song with (after the intro) pretty high mood, energy & tempo levels. Songs like these are great to include. They let you balance the character of the average Christmas song. You can play All I Want… anytime you want (maybe except from dinner time on Christmas Eve, when you might want to play background music, depending on your station format and image). White Christmas could be classified as a traditional song, and Drummer Boy as a religious song. A modern interpretation (like Justin Bieber’s cover) may be an exception. Bieber’s voice is very recognizable, and could give a traditional-religious standard a contemporary feel. After coding your songs with your rules in mind, analyze your Christmas playlist again. Does it include enough music variety for easy music scheduling? For example, does your library include enough songs from all genders, sounds, moods, energies, tempos and dayparts?

APPEAL TO MULTIPLE LISTENER GENERATIONS

DEFINE YOUR MUSIC CATEGORIES

Especially when you have a broad target audience which will appeal to multiple listener generations, you may want to split your music library into a younger and older part. If your target demo is 20-49, you can address 20-34 and 35-49 year-olds equally by creating 2 categories:

• X – Recent Christmas: songs from 1990-2016, mostly familiar to younger listeners
• Y – Classic Christmas: songs from before 1990, mostly familiar to older listeners

Of course, holiday music is a unique category because many of the most-played songs are (or have their origin in) older works. Winter Wonderland was composed in 1934 but everyone knows it because it’s been re-recorded about 200 times (!) and because it’s being played year after year. But even if younger people will know many of the Christmas Classics, you can use the X and Y categories alternately to achieve a good era balance (when that is what you want).

REGULATE YOUR SONG ROTATIONS

You already divide your Currents, Recurrents and Golds into power and secondary categories, so why not assign your Christmas songs to high-rotation and low-rotation categories as well? When you choose to separate Christmas Recent and Christmas Classics as seen above, you could then split those into 2 levels:

• X1 – Recent Christmas Power: most popular recent Christmas songs from 1990-2016
• X2 – Recent Christmas Secondary: additional recent Christmas songs from 1990-2016
• Y1 – Classic Christmas Power: most popular classic Christmas songs from before 1990
• Y2 – Classic Christmas Secondary: additional classic Christmas songs from before 1990

Check every category to make sure that you have enough songs in each one to create a good rotation pattern. And, in any case, you want to have more songs in your level 2 (secondary) categories than in your level 1 (power) categories, so even if you’ll position your level 1 and level 2 songs in your format clock equally, your most popular / best testing songs will appear more often.

CREATE YOUR FORMAT CLOCKS

When you choose to increase your holiday music percentage gradually (over the course of a couple of weeks leading up to Christmas Eve), the following 5 format clocks may give you inspiration for your holiday music scheduling. If you flip to a 100% Christmas format all at once, the final clock will be interesting for you. I’ve designed the clocks for a fictitious Modern AC station, serving a 20-49 audience (with an emphasis on 20-34) by playing a mix of Currents, Recurrents & Golds. (Talk & stopset positions are not included in order to focus on the songs.) The music categories are:

• N = New
• C = Current
• R = Recurrent
• G = Gold
• X = Recent Christmas (level 1 for Power, level 2 for Secondary)
• Y = Classic Christmas (level 1 for Power, level 2 for Secondary)

and this is how the main format clock looks like:

1. REPLACE YOUR OLDEST CATEGORIES

The above Modern AC format clock is built around a ‘Recurrent-Current-Gold-Current, Recurrent-Current-Gold-New’ category sequence. It could run on any day outside of holidays. This will be the master clock for the Christmas variants. You can replace Power/Secondary Gold positions by Power/Secondary Christmas slots, which is a nice fit, as most Christmas standards are basically Gold songs. It also keeps you sounding fresh as you’re still playing currents, recurrents and new music, thus maintaining your overall listener expectations for your station and format. You could introduce your holiday music subtlety, like 1 or 2 songs an hour. We’ve already moved a step ahead with the below clock, designed for 25% Christmas music = 1 out of 4 songs:

2. REPLACE YOUR MIDDLE CATEGORIES

A few weeks after introducing Christmas music, you may want to increase the hourly percentage of holiday music. We can achieve a level of 50% Christmas if we replace the Recurrent positions from the master clock by X slots, and turn the Christmas positions from the 25% clock into Y slots. To bring back 2 of the 4 lost Recurrent positions, we can replace the 2 positions for New songs from the 25% clock by Recurrent slots, based on 1) the fact that people generically prefer familiar music over unfamiliar music, and 2) the idea that holidays are inherently connected to honouring traditions and enjoying famil(iarit)y. And thanks to 6 positions for current songs, our Modern AC remains sounding contemporary:

3. REPLACE YOUR YOUNGEST CATEGORIES

A few days before Christmas, you may want to play 75% holiday music, which calls for another format clock variant. You can now replace some of your Current positions by Christmas slots. Because most of your holiday songs will no longer be separated by normal songs, it becomes extra important to create a good category sequence in terms of Recent versus Classic Christmas. You may want to re-assign the X and Y categories, like in the example format clock below. You’ll notice that each hour includes 8 recent and only 4 classic Christmas songs (meeting listener expectations for a Modern AC station), plus 2 Currents and 2 Recurrents for additional freshness:

OPTIMIZE YOUR SONG ROTATIONS

If you don’t flip your format to ‘all-Christmas’ as early as mid November, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are usually a good reason to play 100% holiday hits. Our format clock for all-Christmas music scheduling includes 8 recent as well as 8 classic songs, as holidays are celebrated in a family circle (so it makes sense to tailor our station towards a broad cume for top ratings). Adjust the ration according to your brand image, (usual) station format, target audience and market position. You also want the right balance in terms of Power vs. Secondary Christmas. The below format includes an equal amount of powers and secondaries, but because your power categories are smaller than your secondary categories, you can let your best songs turn around faster. Note that there’s a power song scheduled after the ‘top of hour’ and ‘top of half hour’ where, after a stopset, you may jingle back into the music:

ROTATE YOUR ROLLING CLOCKS

When you want to keep your music format recognisable without using the same clock endlessly, you can rotate your format clock 1 or 2 positions to the right (or left), and voilà… you’ve just created another version of this week’s format clock. When you have 5 of these sub clocks, you can rotate them through a 24-hour day. Beginning each day at midnight with another clock from the day before, it will take until day #6 in your week grid until the exact same clock appears in the exact same hour. The 100% Christmas format clock above would only allow for 4 variants, as it includes only 4 different music categories (X1, X2, Y1, Y2), but 4 clocks will do the trick as well. Simply skipping the first clock that would normally appear at midnight will achieve the same.
Merry Christmas & Happy Programming to you!
Thomas Giger is a European radio broadcasting specialist and publisher of Radio))) ILOVEIT, based in the Netherlands, and serving the radio industry worldwide.

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