The Top 5 Tuneouts for CCM Listeners
The Finney Media Why Listen?® Survey 2018 is out with results from 26,800 respondents in four different formats – Music stations, Music and Teaching stations, all-Teaching stations, and Teaching programs.
One of the questions asked was about tuneouts – things your listener perceives you might do that would cause her to tune away or turn off the radio. The list of tuneouts below is focused on just the respondents who came from Music stations. The percentages are the total of “very likely to turn off” and “somewhat likely to turn off”.
1) They have a negative, angry, judgmental tone 85%
2) Announcer talks too much 50%
3) Plays songs you don’t like 48%
4) They talk about a topic I’m not interested in 44%
5) They play commercials 42%
We discussed in this column last month (link here) how the main listener reasons for listening to Christian radio could be summed up in two words – spiritual encouragement. Our top tuneout confirms this. The #1 tuneout – and it isn’t even close – is a negative, angry judgmental tone.
Your listener is looking for spiritual encouragement without negativity, without anger, without judgment.
We believe that doesn’t just mean we take out things that are negative, angry, judgmental, but also that we’re proactive about including “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control*.”
Other tuneouts are important (“talking too much about something that’s not interesting” comes to mind), but none quite as important as your station or program being the loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled channel in an otherwise negative, angry, judgmental world.
Coming in October – Another look at the Top 5 Main Reasons Christian Radio listeners listen. This time, we review the Main Reasons in the whole survey – all formats – and discover how listeners to Music Stations are similar to – and different from – listeners to Teaching stations and programs.
*”The Fruits Of The Spirit” – Galatians 5:22