Close to a hundred people filled the room at Arbitron’s Urban PD clinic, which took place Tuesday, December 7, in Baltimore. The morning’s panels were hosted by Inner City New York GM Deon Levingston and OM Skip Dillard, which covered various topics, including programming in a PPM world, now accepted more readily by the African American broadcasters, or at least that was the overall vibe at this year’s event. Even the presence and “partnership” with the once PPM-critical Inner City Broadcasting appears to illustrate a greater acceptance by African American broadcasters to the PPM. There were also several indepth and informative presentations by such researchers as Ken Smickle, President of TargetMarketNews; Tripp Eldredge, CEO/President of dmr; and Jon Coleman, President of Coleman Research.

Smickle illustrated his presentation with some recent stats from Nielsen, which found that African Americans spend more time on their mobile phones talking and texting, than any other group.

In a single month, African Americans on average use 1,300 minutes talking, compared to only 826 minutes by Hispanics, or 566 minutes by whites. African Americans send 780 text messages on average each month, whereas Hispanics send 767, and whites, 566. Smickle’s theory is that, “Mobile phones give African Americans the freedom of choice they lack elsewhere. What they might not be able to find offered on television, in entertainment or news, they can search it out on a mobile device, what they want and when they want it. It’s the same reason they choose Urban radio.”

“How do you make your brand different from everyone else?” is the question posed by Eldredge. He points out that radio believes that “What is between the records makes you different than the competition.” But in fact, PPM is showing that what’s between the records may be too much talk and too much information, thus pushing those “in between moments” to be more of the same that everyone else is doing. So how do you stand apart then? Eldredge said it’s really about “The moment of truth. When the consumer makes the choice to choose you, and ultimately, to choose you first. According to Arbitron, heavy users turn on the radio 31 times per week on average. Research says if you get that first listen, if you are the first station they tend to choose, then you win the most number of occasions of listening for that week. It’s about loyalty.”
He continued, “How do you build loyalty for your brand? By finding the opportunities to touch and connect with listeners, on air and off air. In fact, off air is just as important in order to develop that loyalty with your listener.”

One of the most common sense statements made during the course of the morning meetings came from researcher Jon Coleman, who stated that while PPM is now allowing us to see our rating information on a weekly basis, managers and PDs should not freak out over ratings results that go down. “Inevitably, the next ratings period will be back up again. It’s only when you have several trends down that you should become alarmed,” he said. Let’s make sure more Market Managers and GMs see that quote!