Knock knock!

Who’s there?

New listeners!

What do you want?

Well now, that IS the question.

It only takes one person to inspire a world of kindness.

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” was birthed in the movie theaters Thanksgiving weekend juxtaposed to a world of impeachment hearings and social media blame-gaming. This simple idea of being kind to others triggers an innate emotional truth that reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from C. S. Lewis.

“That we can even ponder the meaning of life means there is a meaning of life.”

A recent blog from Mark Ramsey urged Christian radio stations to consider Mr. Rogers’ desire to have his show be “inclusive and welcoming to all, including those who might be turned off by abject religious references. ‘You don’t need to speak overtly about religion in order to get a message across,’ he [Fred Rogers] said.”

Dwell on that for a moment: “You don’t need to speak overtly about religion in order to get a message across.”

Mark summarizes, “Inclusivity is what magnifies your reach, your cume, and your impact.”

I’d like to drill down into three ways your station can make this happen:

I couldn’t believe what I heard. It was a spot for a Christmas concert and they listed the songs they would be play.

Data. Data. Data.

No other format can touch such a deep place in the heart as ours, and yet we often sound like an IRS tax form as we convey data, data, data about this and that.

There is no promotion so brilliant that it can’t be made utterly ineffective by a laundry list of features.

Our goal shouldn’t be to inform listeners of all the facts; our goal should be to help our listeners care.

“Christmas isn’t going away, and we’re going to have this discussion every year.”

Two decades ago I remember saying those words to my talented friends Jim Hoge and Dean O’Neal at Z88.3 in Orlando. I remember saying them because we DO have that discussion every year. With every station.

Their situation was unique in that the Z was on a fast growth curve, and it was rare for a Christian station to abandon its regular format and play nothing but Christmas tunes. Besides, there was already a mainstream AC doing all Christmas and they were #1 in the market. (That AC program director was also a tall, skinny kid from west Texas with an ever so manly radio voice).

Within a few years not only had the Z more than tripled its weekly 6+ cume, but had tied the Mainstream AC station in Women 25-54 shares.

Obviously Christmas music wasn’t the only reason for the Z’s remarkable growth, but clearly Jim and Dean seized an opportunity to transform the format’s biggest competitive disadvantage (playing generally unfamiliar music) into a competitive ADvantage.

“You’re off the air,” the caller alerted me. We had no air monitor at my first radio station so we depended on listeners to let us know. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP, as Dave Barry would say. It happened so regularly that anytime I heard the phone ring in the outer office my Pavlovian response was to immediately peek to see if the carrier was on. Our little 500-watt radio station probably had more watts than listeners but fortunately a few of them cared enough to call.

Does anyone care? Are we doing enough? Is it making a difference?

It’s tempting to think that our tools define who we are. The carpenter is defined by his hammer; the accountant by his spread sheets, the radio station by its wacky deejays and 40-minute music sweeps. (BTW, almost all programming discussions default to how we use our tools.)