DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

November, 1996

When we last left our story, I was in Rome for a couple of days as guest speaker at the NAB’s annual European Radio seminars. (I had been asked to present Morning Show Success Strategies and The Psychology Of Management). I completed my second seminar and returned to my hotel room, completely exhausted — where I witnessed an amazing performance by a huge flock of birds swooping over the city. (Details of that episode were in our last installment.)

After watching this breathtaking aerial display until the darkness swallowed up the birds, I collapsed onto my bed, turned on the TV, and found myself watching a music video: Nat King Cole and daughter Natalie Cole singing a (digitally engineered) duet on “When I Fall in Love,” with Natalie doing some of the lyrics in Italian. Although I knew such a video had been made, I had never seen it before.

Maybe it was due to the combination of my exhaustion, the just-concluded, near-mystical bird show, and the dramatic quiet of night over Rome. But for whatever reason, I found the video to be breathtakingly, achingly beautiful.

This version doesn’t have the Italian lyrics. But perhaps you’ll enjoy it.

Recently I wrote in this space about 30- vs. 60-second radio commercials.

But what about “cultural differences”?

I have worked with radio stations and advertising agencies in 36 different countries so far. And wherever I go, people tell me why their market is “different.”

In North America, most commercials run either 30 or 60 seconds. In some countries the standard is 20 seconds; in some places it’s 15 and in others it’s 40.

In some countries there is no standard; advertisers play a flat rate per second.

(In those countries, you tend to hear very short commercials that are crammed with copy, as advertisers foolishly try to measure the value of their investment by “words per second” rather than “impact per dollar.”)

I have been told (with great assurance) that “Dutch audiences absolutely will not listen to a commercial that lasts more than 20 seconds.”

I have been lectured to on almost every continent about how “people here” simply cannot concentrate for longer than whatever the standard commercial happens to be in that country.

And how did each of those countries determine the “optimum length” of the commercials it would present to its radio listeners? Was it via some double-blind, scientific test that compared various commercial lengths and carefully controlled for other, outside variables?

Well, no.

What happened was when commercials first aired in that country, whoever ran the first radio station(s) arbitrarily picked a number. And that arbitrary number magically became the “ideal” number of seconds for radio commercials in that country.

Isn’t it odd that thousands of Dutch TV viewers regularly sit through 22 minutes of The Simpsons...but don’t have the mental concentration to stick with a radio commercial for longer than 20 seconds?

The British, meanwhile, have 150% the attention span of the Dutch, because they regularly sit through :30s (and with increasing frequency, :60s).

Clearly, Colombia must have the most attention-deficit afflicted citizens. Most of their commercials last ten seconds.

Are American motion pictures — which invariably run at least 90 minutes — edited down to 20 or 30 seconds for other, “different” cultures?

“But wait,” you protest. “You can’t compare TV shows and movies to radio commercials. The programs and movies are interesting, so of course people will sit through them!”

And the truth lies within that protest: If your commercials are interesting to your target audience, they will listen for as long…as they remain interested.

You don’t maintain their interest solely by being “entertaining.” You maintain their interest by being relevant to their lives.

As long as your sales message speaks directly and relevantly to the lives of your target audience, it can’t last too long.

Here’s what I mean by relevance as it affects perceived length of message:

Probably you know there is a TV channel devoted, 24/7, to nothing but Golf?

With deepest apologies to the golf fanatics who are reading this, you couldn’t pay me to watch five minutes of The Golf Channel…because I don’t play or care about golf.

But for the only thing you could offer the golf enthusiasts of the world  that would be better than a 24-hour-a-day golf channel would be two 24-hour-a-day golf channels.

To them, anything about golf is fascinating…even if it lasts longer than 10/15/20/30/60 seconds.

Barbara Rosenblat

For 2 hours, 23 minutes on Tuesday night, Barbara Rosenblat delivered on her promise to share a ton of information about How To Become An Audiobook Narrator.

This posting is for people who attended “live” (or who got up very early Wednesday morning to listen to the mp3 recording) to post their candid reviews.

I’m making the mp3 recording available for download for just a few days.

(Eleventh in a series)

A Loyal Reader Asks:

“How can you teach young jocks to ‘be real’ — to break out of the ‘I’m a DJ’ persona and become communicators?”

Record them as they tell someone else a story.

The story might be something that happened while on vacation, an embarrassing moment, etc.

The person to whom they tell the story should be someone the jock knows and is comfortable with. The more comfortable the jock is, the more likely she is to speak like a person and not like an announcer.

If you get good results from this taping, play it back for her and say, “That is how I want you to be on the radio!”