Are Your Audience Recycling Efforts Working?

One easy way to identify opportunities for TSL growth is to track the percentage of your total cume that is listening in a given daypart and compare it to prior books. It’s relatively easy to calculate, and the dayparts that are underperforming are easy to spot. Those are your opportunities for TSL growth.

You can compile this information yourself, or use Research Director, Inc.’s Instant Answer℠ report to show you EXACTLY how much of your cume is tuning into each of your dayparts.

Instantly, you can see if you are doing an effective job or if there is an opportunity for growth. There are two angles:

First – How are you trending? Books can (and will) fluctuate but is your station staying within a certain range over time? Keeping an eye on this will tell you about the health of your cume recycling. Lower recycling levels are opportunities for TSL growth. On the flip side, if you’re tracking at a high number – say above 50% – you probably cannot get that many more people to tune into that daypart. Your growth possibilities are limited. This allows you to focus on the dayparts with the greatest chance of moving the TSL needle.

Second – Where are the disparities this survey? For example, if 56% of your cume tunes in on the weekends but only 32% checks you out in Morning Drive, how can you get more of that weekend cume to listen on Monday morning? You can leverage the cume strength of one daypart to grow others. In the end, you increase the likelihood of growing your total week share.

What should your goals be for percent of cume by daypart? Every format is different. Every market is different. If you have a market-leading morning show you’re more likely to have a higher percentage of your cume listening to that daypart. If you’re an 18-34 skewing station you’re more likely to have a higher percentage of your cume tune in at night. And, of course, if you’re an “at work” AC you would expect a midday bulge.

Recognizing all the caveats of format, age cell, market conditions, etc., we feel comfortable using the following benchmarks for the percentage of your cume tuning in each daypart:

• Mornings – Great stations are in the upper 40s to low 50s. The average is closer to 40%.
• Middays – 50% is a good goal. Getting to the upper 50s is very powerful.
• Afternoons – In the PPM world this is generally the most tuned-to daypart. Most healthy stations routinely get listening in the mid 50% range.
• Nights – This is demo-dependent as younger stations will hit the 40% threshold while older skewing stations are closer to 30%.
• Weekends – Quite often we see this as the second most tuned-to daypart. Because weekends represent more elective listening you should be eclipsing 50% on a consistent basis.

Research Director, Inc.’s Instant Answer℠ service makes it easy for you to track this information. We completed a study that compiled normative data for this important information by demo and format. For more information about Instant Answer℠ and a copy of the norms for your format, complete the form below (include your format in the comment field) and we’ll connect with you to show you how we can help.