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Watch Your Audience Grow
Here are two extracts from a forthcoming publication that will help you increase your audience by enabling you to keep listeners listening to your station instead of tuning away to other stations.

Keeping your listeners beats winning new ones
The most popular station isn't necessarily the one that most people tune to; it's the one least people tune away from. People are tuning to and away from stations all the time. So if you can keep more listeners, you'll be the most popular.

Imagine radio stations as rows and rows of baths with the taps all running. The water represents the audience. The bath with the most water will be the one with the smallest plug hole

Why do people channel hop?
-o- Because it's free, it's easy
curiosity - anything better on the other side?
-o- because you've just gone into an item/ad/song they don’t like
-o- they don’t feel any particular need to continue listening to the current station
-o- they feel the next station may have something better to offer at that time

What stops the channel hopper?
... (great expectations)

How to turn fact frisbees into hooks
One will lose you listeners, the other will let you hold on to your audience. Not only for the duration of your link. Not even only from one link, through a song and to the next link but also maybe, just maybe, across a whole ad break! The ad break's a real challenge. It's a metaphor for your whole show. In theory, if you can make a listener want to keep listening until the link that follows an ad break, you have it within your power to make her want to keep listening, if she has the time, until the end of your show. And that’s saying something.

Let's get one thing straight right from the start. The fact frisbee's the Big Bad Wolf (boo) and the hook's the Little Red Riding Hood (hooray). Here's an example of each, from TNL Radio's 'Office of the Day Competition' on the 'All Request Lunch Hour':

fact frisbee (bad) - "Up for grabs for my Office of the Day today is a Perma-Sharp Gift pack. Yes, coming up, a chance to win a Perma-Sharp gift pack which can be shared out with everyone at the office. The winner will be the third person who calls me when I play Enigma: The Sign. That's coming up after these messages. Keep it locked." > MUSIC.
(Fact, fact, fact. Yawn, yawn, yawn)

hook (good)- "How would you like to be the most popular person in your office today? Soon, I'll play Enigma: The Sign. When you hear it, call me on 078 68101. If you're caller number three, I'll send you ten Perma-Sharp Razors, ten tins of Perma-Sharp shave gel and ten bottles of Perma-Sharp cologne. Fancy being the star of your office this afternoon?" > MUSIC.
(Hook, hook, hook)

See the difference? Doesn't seem to be a big difference at first, does there? And then you read them again and notice that the fact frisbee is a series of factual statements. The traffic's all one way. ....

(Take me back to Melyn Media.)

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