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April 16, 2026

I was listening to a sports radio morning show the other day. It was the seven o’clock hour. As the hosts meandered towards their break, they invited me to “stick around” because they had a guest coming up at…wait for it…9:15.

Image by congerdesign of Pixabay.

I listen from home so, if motivated, I could wait for two hours for that guest to come on. However, I’m willing to wager that the vast majority of their audience was in their cars. Likely commuting to work. The chances of them “tuning in” at 9:15 were probably somewhere between slim and none.

If you are an on-air performer, you control a very important component of your show’s ratings—Time Spent Listening (Average Weekly Time Exposed to you Nielsen nerds).

As a reminder, TSL (AWTE) is composed of two elements:

Occasions: This is how many times a listener (or diary keeper or meter) tunes in to your station. If someone listens to you two days a week, getting them to come back one more time during the week can dramatically affect your AQH share.

This type of recycling can be horizontal or vertical. Vertically, you might try to get a morning listener to return in the afternoon. There is a logical flow to that as their commuting pattern is usually the same every day.

In Horizontal recycling, your goal is getting them to tune in during the same time tomorrow. That has a higher potential success rate as it fits THEIR listening habits.

Durations: This is how long someone listens to you in a given occasion. In PPM world that has to be at least three minutes inside a given quarter hour (it’s five minutes for you diary players). We know that the average duration in PPM is somewhere between eight and twelve minutes.

Durations can be determined by two factors: what you are doing on the radio and a listener’s real life. Great content could extend a duration. A 17 unit stop set will diminish it. Regardless, if your listener gets to their destination (or receives a call from their kids), the duration ends.

Every time on-air performers key the mic, they are in complete control of the product.  You may not control the music or the spot load, but what you do between those elements can make a huge difference in how successful you (and your station) are. Make the most out of those moments.

Feel free to tell me I’m full of it: sallan@researchdirectorinc.com

PS—In the above sports radio scenario, the hosts could help their ratings by inviting their listeners to listen to a podcast version of that interview. If the “get” is big or newsworthy enough, people might actually make the effort to find the content and click on it.

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