Radio people are not generally numbers-nerds. We tend to be very creative, action oriented, and less inclined to pore over tables, graphs, and charts. The most successful among us learn to read and use data, but very few of us start out in the industry successful.
The challenge of delivering actionable data to radio people via a tool they use themselves is twofold:
- How to show it in a way that makes sense and is easy to read
- How to make the numbers easy to manipulate to see exactly what you want to, to a very granular level
There is a legend within the company that our CEO and founder used to test new functions on his mother: if she could use it, any of our clients could. I don’t know how much of that story is true. However, I do know from our clients that the ratings tool is one of the easiest and most exciting in the RadioAnalyzer toolbox.
How to use ratings
The basics are simple: choose a timeframe, choose which days you want to see, and what times. Then take your pick of viewing months, weeks, days, hours, or even down to a very granular individual minute. Done.
If you want to not only see how you are performing, but exactly how much better or worse that is to your normal listener behavior, you can add an average curve (in black). It allows you to better read the data. You can also add layers of regular and casual listeners, other stations within your group, and more.
Clients use Ratings to identify successful promotions, view data on special days, or just to keep an eye on the overall station development. If a problem or a positive result is spotted, they zoom in to a granular level. This helps to figure out what exactly works well and what doesn’t. I use ratings as a one stop 5-minute tool to identify overall station growth or loss. Furthermore, I can look into exemplary programming on individual days.
While every client receives individual training from us on site, we have a “refresher” video showing the function and usage of Ratings. Take a look and let us know what you think.
If you have any questions, please contact us. We are happy to answer all your questions and welcome you in the RadioAnalyzer family.
COO
You might say the poor guy never had a chance, being born to two radio-crazy ArmedForcesNetwork journalists that met in southeast Asia (think “Good Morning Vietnam” – and no, his dad is not Adrian Cronauer). Since discovering his love for music programming as a teenager, Bill has been obsessed with turning great ideas into numbers you can measure, and measured numbers into actionable programming strategies that make great radio. After touring Central Europe as a Music-Promotion-Programm- Director and a Research&Program Consultant for European and International Consulting firms, he has returned to the audio innovation trenches at RadioAnalyzer, and is loving every minute of it.