Dear Radio Executive:

You may have read or head about a recent Bridge Ratings study which took a good hard look at audience attrition as it relates to the number of commercials in station stop sets. I wanted to add some perspective to what you may have already heard.

These "Attrition Studies" (see the "What's New" page article "Where Did My Listeners Go?") were conducted betweeen April 1 and July 1, 2004 in eight markets where we have Bridge Ratings Reports clients. Markets included: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Boise, Idaho, Houston, Oxnard-Ventura, California, Dallas, Las Vegas and Chicago. The attrition module was conducted as an add-on to our usual four-minute Bridge Ratings audience measurement questionnaire. In essence, the report confirmed what many of us have feared or suspected: Listeners no longer wait around for commericals to end. As a matter of fact, in general, this report showed that even after just three spots, almost half of the audience has gone on to other alternatives.

The Motivation. Late in 2003 I began to hear repeated concern from advertising agencies and buyers about the proliferation of "jumbo" stop sets. The natives were definitely restless. Concern was focused on primarily two areas: a) Too many spots in a single commerical break and what impact that was having on their clients' campaigns and b) too many commercials in each hour. No one had done any work picking the minds of our listeners about these topics, so we at Bridge Ratings developed the questionnaire and methodology and decided to put it in the field this Spring to see what was really going on. The results, in black and white, obviously had impact.

I continue to receive email, phone calls and letters from advertising agencies and station operators seeking further insight. There is deep concern about this, but I want to make sure you don't shoot the messenger.

Radio, in general, has unintentionally trained our audiences to expect multiple commercials when they hear the first one in a commercial break. All stations do this at some point or another. It is an industry-wide problem. The tipping point may have come as a result of more accountability on the part of agencies and more competition for terrestrial radio.

And radio is responding to the concern and the results of our studies. We have been advising our clients in the above mentioned markets to trim spot loads as much as they can bear, make shorter commercial breaks and promote the fact as often as possible. Congratulations to WSNI, Philadelphia for making the bold move of reducing hourly spot loads to eight units in four two-unit breaks.This should help WSNI, but from a listener perspective, it's not enough.

Listeners must hear these shorter breaks and must hear about them on every staton they tune in to. The more they hear it the more rapidly radio will retrain the listening public and, in turn, listener retention will be discussed in research studies and broadcast publications which in turn will have a positive effect on how our friends on the buying side view our business.

One last thought. We also found that while listeners have been tuning out in large percentages, they do come back - in droves. The samples we studied showed that a solid percentage of listeners who tuned out, tuned back in to their favorite stations frequently to "test" whether the content airing was relevant or that the station had returned to its regular programming. Radio can deliver a more enjoyable listening experience. However, in the short term, broadcast companies may have to learn how to budget and operate smarter and with some patience.

Your feedback is vital to our company's on-going success. I look forward to hearing from you regarding this very important issue.

Sincerely,

Dave Van Dyke - President