The Tyranny of the Target Audience

I cringe every time I hear a well-meaning PD or GM instruct a personality to focus everything they create and present on "our target audience." It often goes something like this:

"Our target audience is a woman 25-44. I want everything you create or put on the radio to appeal to her. Figure out what she cares about. Find out what she's talking about. Imagine what she's thinking about. Find out what she likes to do. Everything on your show should be about her. Just to remind you, I've put a big picture of her on the control room wall so you'll see her every time you open the mic."

These instructions are debilitating and dehumanizing. Without saying it, they strongly imply that the life the radio personality is living has little in common with the "target audience" and doesn't really matter when it comes to creating stuff to put on the radio. The effect is corrosive. When radio personalities are constantly told, subtly or directly, to look outside themselves for ideas for their shows, they suffer a loss of self-awareness and self-esteem. Their individuality and even their humanity are diminished. They gravitate to safe stereotypes about the "target audience." They rely on trending topics on social media and syndicated prep services. They begin doing a show to please their bosses and not themselves. They end up doing a show that excites almost no one, including themselves. It's not distinctive. It's not personal. It's not intimate. It's not memorable. It's not important. The lack of energy, enthusiasm, and passion is palpable. And sadly, the show sounds just like every other morning radio show. For example, when was the last time you heard a morning radio show with a female "target audience" that didn't have a woman reporting celebrity news and gossip each day. The exact same celebrity news and gossip heard up and down the radio dial and widely available on Facebook and other social media. You know, the ever present trending topics.

The tyranny of the "target audience" instruction has created countless victims within the radio business. It's also caused many really talented and interesting personalities to flee traditional AM and FM radio for places like the world of podcasting that allow more creative freedom and encourage innovation and experimentation. I've talked to many of the victims over the years.  Regrettably, what they all seem to have in common is a loss of their individuality and personal identity. When I ask them what kind of show they want to do, they always tell me, "I can do whatever kind of show you want me to do." They often ask me, "What is your target audience?" If I give them an answer, no matter what it is, they nearly always tell me, "I can do a show for that audience."

There are other big problems with the "target audience" instructions. They assume every woman or man is living their life as part of a homogenous demographic group. Like every woman 25-44 has the exact same life with the same interests, wants and needs. They also assume that it's possible to predict, with some certainty, what every man or woman wants to hear on the radio because they belong to a demographic group. That's a myth. If it were true, every song would be a hit, every movie a blockbuster, every book a bestseller, and every radio show would be killing it in PPM.

So why not forget the mythical "target audience" and instead encourage personalities to focus their creative efforts on the one thing they all have in common with their listeners? Male or female, no matter our age, we all share the same set of emotions. Joy and sadness. Love and hate. Doubt and fear. Emotion is the universal human connector. The surest way for a radio personality to create the most distinctive, appealing, and relevant content and attract the largest and most loyal audience possible is to pay attention to what rings their emotional bell in every event and circumstance of their lives. What makes them laugh, cry, or marvel. What generates a sense of wonder and awe. What causes them to think or feel differently or completely change their mood. What inspires them. What gets them truly excited and arouses their curiosity. This is the source of great content because it springs from what we all have in common. Not our age, sex or demographic group, but our humanity, our human emotions.

Don't let the tyranny of the "target audience" claim another victim, produce another bland and disposable radio show, or chase another talented artist from AM and FM radio.

Lessons from Rebuilding a Struggling Radio News Station

Competition, ownership and on-air personnel changes, misguided attempts to attract a younger audience and location on the AM band combined to reduce a former major market-leading news station to an also-ran. There was hope that moving the station from AM to FM might help things. Nope. That’s when the rebuild began.

Here are some lessons learned from the rebuilding process that influenced changes in the station’s content, presentation style and relationship with its listeners that helped the station return to consistent ratings prominence – top 5 AQH share for adults 25-54 in all dayparts 6A-7P Monday through Friday:

• News is what a news station does, but not why it does it. News stations are actually in the life enrichment business. News merely provides the vehicle and fuel for helping to make listeners’ lives more interesting, meaningful and fun.
• Listeners highly value stories that provide meaningful emotional experiences that challenge them to think, feel and grow.
• Listeners prefer stories about people and their behavior over stories about stuff and things; stories about life's struggles and triumphs, joys and sorrows, mysteries and big questions.
• Human behavior is a subject with universal appeal. Why do people think and feel the way they do? Why do people do what they do? These real-life questions and mysteries are things every human being seeks to answer and solve.
• Complex and controversial stories are ideal fuel for providing life enrichment.
• Listeners want more than a quick superficial headline summary of stories, particularly those that are complex or controversial. The main facts of these stories and opposing soundbites are available on demand on every smart phone and computer from multiple sources.
• The ideal length of a story should be determined by the time it takes to tell a complete story that is meaningful to listeners.
• Listeners enjoy and prefer an informal, intimate, authentic conversation style presentation of the news.
• Hosts and reporters that fully engage intellectually and emotionally with the stories they present, sharing relevant personal experiences and feelings about how the stories are effecting them.
• Hosts and reporters that have a sense of humor and fun.
• Hosts and reporters that provide context and blend analysis and informed commentary with the facts of the stories to help further the listeners’ understanding of what’s really going on.
• Listeners love participating in the journalistic process and the search for truth. When hosts and reporters share their questions, theories, suspicions, speculations, doubts, frustrations, conclusions, successes and failures it makes storytelling more interesting and allows listeners to follow along and contribute if they so desire.
• News people tend to view news reporting in terms of events rather than stories. This causes them to miss stories contained in events and drop stories prematurely when events end. Events are obvious and easy to report. Stories not so much. The execution of a criminal is an event. Not much life enrichment in the details of the event. The criminal’s life story and what inspired his or her crime or life of crime as well as the victim or victims’ stories are often loaded with life enriching possibilities.
• Reporters and journalists are frequently trapped in the current "news cycle" when determining what is news. If it didn't happen in the last 24 to 48 hours somehow it's no longer news.
• The best stories don’t expire. Their themes and messages are timeless, always relevant.
• Story relevance to listeners is not necessarily related to the geographic proximity of the story.
• Traditional radio and television news contains far too much common crime, ordinary human misfortune, politics, and political process events. Convenience store robberies, house fires and car crashes don’t offer much in the way of life enrichment.
• It’s becoming increasingly difficult to attract a loyal audience that can be monetized being a news generalist. “News” is available everywhere. If a news program or station doesn’t have a distinctive and identifiable news specialty or point of view its likely to get lost in a world of smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and countless “news” websites delivering all kinds of “news” on demand 24/7.