Re-Thinking OES For Music

Optimum Efficiency Music Scheduling is an Arbitron formula utilized by advertisers in radio stations to determine how many exposures that a commercial needs for the audience to hear it 3.25 times in a week.  The purpose behind Optimum Efficiency Scheduling (OES) as the psychologist say a message needs to be heard 3.25 times before an individual can make a buying decision.  This formula is used mostly to determine the number of commercials that are aired in a week, based upon an advertising schedule over a period of time.  A week schedule may mean a X number of commercials will be heard where a multi-week schedule could decrease the number of commercials per week based on the overall number of exposures the message will receive.

The “Core Concentration” number depicts the percentage of cume in that day-part that lies within P25-54. For instance, if the core concentration for AM-Drive is 50%, that means that 50% of our cume in mornings lies within P25-54.

The part of the OES formula that needs re-thought is how it is applied to music rotations.  There are those broadcast programmers who believe that OES can tell you how tight a rotation should be and how many times a song needs to be played across the course of week in order for the listeners to hear it 3.25 times.  The problem or challenge, for such a theory is that an advertising schedule may be for 6 weeks.  There are Gold songs that air on a radio station for as much as 52 weeks per year.  If you’re going to utilize the OES formula to gauge how often a song should play, then you need to base it across 52 weeks.  Playing a Gold song 4x a day totally serves to burn out your music.  There is no value to exposing a song that is already over exposed.

The utilization of OES for Currents on a CHR station, or a Country radio station that treats new music as CHR does, does have value.  Utilization of OES would support an argument that a brand new song should receive more spins initially and the number of spins would decrease as the song is exposed.  There are some stations that we work with who do call out research where the programmer will increase number of spins on a new song prior to researching the title.  That purpose is different in that OES, what the programmer is attempting to do is familiarize the audience with the song so he/she can receive valid research on the title.

The bottom line:  OES is a formula that is utilized for commercials.  If you do utilize it to determine exposure of a song, then base it on a 26 or a 52 week schedule for Gold and use a 6 week schedule for Currents.  Common sense wins out when it comes to music rotations. You CAN play a great song too often. You can give the audience too much of a good thing.