On-air teams must own listener engagement measurement.

(Extract from original article)

The old model of research in radio fails to turn audience insights into learning, into actionable information for on-air content professionals to improve their daily job. Why? Sven Lardon, Strategic Advisor at VRT and long experienced audience researcher, identifies a number of reasons:

1. Designed for marketing, not content: Traditional quantitative audience research measures the strength of a brand, not listening engagement with content during a live show.
2. Top-down distribution of insights: Learning happens far away from the on-air-team when results are presented in the meeting room at the presidential floor of the building. The message dilutes through several organisation layers before reaching on-air professionals.
3. Lack of granularity: On-air teams have difficulty in acting upon graphs with yearly resolution, showing market share trends per quarter. This information does not easily apply to their creative role, with the on-air professional day to day job.

In previous articles about Voizzup, I have focused on the impact of data-science in radio as we introduce continuous content evaluation. I haven’t tackled, though, how we approach these three issues mentioned above, which in Sven’s opinion, has been the most critical factor for the success story of MNM-Voizzup pilot at VRT Sandbox.

Voizzup, giving the wheel to the driver.

Just the introduction of data-analysis in radio and the consequent capacity to evaluate content daily, doesn’t provide a solution to the problems we are discussing today. Voizzup framework for continuous improvement in radio does. Our combination of technology, data-science, methodology and coaching gives the steering wheel (back?) to the driver:

1. We measure listeners’ engagement with on-air content based on listeners’ behaviours. For how long do they listen? When do they react increasing the volume of their headphones? In which exact second do they tune-out? Which element in your show polarises listeners? That is what Voizzup focuses on.
2. Insights reach the screen of the show host or producer, daily. A dashboard including an audio player for contextualisation shows how listeners behave. Best and worst performing elements of the show are ranked based on audio volume changes and tune-outs, two dimensions (passion vs. cold facts) of the same reality.
3. Millions of listeners’ reactions to on-air content, second by second, are intelligibly displayed for the observation of the show team. In a matter of days, your team will already get familiarised with trends and curves. You will start finding patterns and having conversations about your listeners’ reactions. You can start making small tweaks to improve the content, and later confirm or disprove your assumptions.

If you are an on-air presenter, a show host, show producer, or similar, there’s no one who knows both your content and your audience better than you. Nothing will have a deeper impact in your performance or the performance of your show, than your team learning from the consequences in listening hours and listeners behaviours of everything you do and say on-air. Your team is the only possible engine for continuous content improvement in your radio show or station. On-air teams must own listener engagement measurement.