It was a sign of the times when the term Top 40 gave way to CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio). It was in the 1950s when stations started to build formats around music and because juke boxes generally held 40 records the term Top 40 was coined. Today stations play a lot less of the chart and so we have CHR.

Also changing is the way people listen to the radio and the description of listeners. For many years we have talked about P1/P2 listeners, categorising people according to their first and second choice radio stations. It simply used to describe the station behind each program position button in a car radio (P1 – P6).

 The reality in today’s fragmenting and pluralistic market with digital and analogue competing in the same space offering more listening opportunities, the difference between P1s and P2s is often non existent for many listeners. Of course listeners have a favourite station, often as a result of a certain programming ingredient like a great breakfast show, news or a specific personality. This however doesn’t necessarily reflect the true TSL and from one day to the next a second favourite can generate more listening hours than the favourite.

This isn’t new. Music TV has already experienced the loss of the favourite viewer, the P1. There’s no more “watch most often” loyalty. It’s all about who’s playing my tunes, how often and how many in a row.

We’re witnessing something similar in radio. Increasing choice is fuelling the tension between the listeners’ perspective of their favourite station lasting only as long as the next song and the stations that have to run programming strategies that unify most of their potential audience.

So how can audience and listening hours be grown whilst satisfying the listener? If we start with the premise that everyone in a station’s market who has an affinity to the music format is a potential listener then it’s probably time to adjust the research strategy and stop focusing upon disappearing P1s and P2s.

In research terms, screening for a favourite station is increasingly fruitless because you find they don’t listen that long or actually listen to another station for longer while screening for time spent listening in the last week is already out of date.

The most powerful alternative is to look at a core format sample; people that love the music you play identified through a simple screener. This way the station can identify the big songs for a big audience without having to worry about super serving the wrong audience or a non existing P1 segment and sacrificing potential audience growth. Being the station that plays ” the best songs for the many” works. Easy still does it.