(In case you missed them, here are Part 1 and Part 2.)

Remember when you first began to get curious about what was coming out of the radio?

He was a freshman in high school when he realized that he listened to the radio differently than most people.  While his friends turned up the volume for the music he turned it UP when the disc jockey talked.  He began to notice there were different kinds of personalities (“he’s the funny one”) and even talent levels (“he can talk really fast right up till they start singing,” long before he knew what hitting a post meant.)  Even in his pre-pubescence he sensed that the voices booming in from Chicago were better than the ones from Buffalo Gap.

That 14-year-old John Frost didn’t know what he didn’t know.  Then he began to realize that he didn’t know.  Noel Burch described this process as “The Hierarchy of Competence.”

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On last week’s show I shared how my cousin the surgeon has a coffee mug that reads, “Please do not confuse your Google search with my medical degree.”

He tells me more and more patients find a bit of information on the internet and think they know something.  This, combined with our desire for simple answers often results in a “Can’t I just take a pill?” mindset.

Perhaps you’ve seen this at your radio station.

“Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.  To know is not to be wise.  Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it.  There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool.  But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

I once worked for a company where the big boss, a brilliant thinker and dealmaker, would occasionally get in the weeds, presumably out of boredom.  Idle hands, don’tcha know.

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Say it isn’t so!

My cousin, the brilliant surgeon, told me of the time that a hospital board member barged into the operating room during a gall bladder surgery and told him they should remove the patient’s kidney.  He had done the Google search, you see.

It’s a joke, of course, but…

“We would never consent to surgery from a surgeon who hadn’t been to medical school, and perhaps even more important, from one who who hadn’t kept up on the latest medical journals and training.  And yet there are people who take pride in doing their profession from a place of naïveté, unaware of or unfamiliar with the most important voices in their field.”

Radio stations would simply be transformed if only those most qualified to make a decision in a certain area were the ones that actually made the decision.   

On next week’s show I’ll tell you the story of ‘666,’ introduce you to a man named Noel Burch, and invite you to play along.  That’s a tease, don’tcha know?

If I were to eavesdrop on a programming conversation around the coffee machine at your station what would I likely hear?  Would it be about the music and deejays, the promotions and contests, and that complaint from that listener.  In other words, the things closest to you.  Like coffee.

While these elements are important to the station’s design and must be done well, they are not transformative.  Why?  Because those things are all about us.  And the closer things are to us the more important they seem.  To us.  Like coffee.

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It only takes one minute.  That’s the premise behind the “One Minute Manager” series of books from my friend Ken Blanchard who shares the concepts of one-minute goals, one-minute praisings, and one-minute reprimands.

A few years ago I learned another lesson from Ken that was just as simple and profound.

My friend Joe Battaglia and I had the privilege of spending several days in San Diego to help Ken Blanchard develop the national radio campaign for “Lead Like Jesus.”  As we brainstormed ideas, Ken shared his experience of training the staff of the recently opened Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres baseball club.  They began with the end in mind.

What do we want fans to say when they are leaving the ballpark?

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Hang on, this may hurt.

Your station’s biggest fans spend less than 10% of their waking hours with your station.  How’s that for perspective?  And most of that time is when doing something else; driving to work, listening at work, picking up the kids at school.

When was the last time you had a conversation about your station’s programming that revolved around their lives in the real world

Beyond music rotations,

beyond liners and sweepers,

beyond your next big Christian music concert,

beyond things inside your building.

The great brands (and stations) go beyond the nuts and bolts of design and reach into their listeners’ lives.  Starbucks is now famous for setting out to became “the third place” in people’s lives, after home and work.

“We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office.  You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh, and drink coffee too,” said a Starbucks’ manager.

“Apple, Starbucks, Harley Davidson… all of these have done everything they can to understand the wants and needs of their customer, while delivering them at a human, interactive level.”

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“We need more P1s!,” the voice echoes as if calling for a clean up on Aisle 9.

I get the math.  40% of your weekly cume can contribute over 70% of your average quarter horses.

The problem is – this is just stats and numbers.  P1s, er… fans, are real people with real lives and real options, not statistics that we can manipulate on a spreadsheet.

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On last week’s show I shared five nifty lessons on programming we can learn from staring at The Weather Channel for three straight days.  In my effort to squeeze one more quarter hour of reading from you I reckon’ I better come up with a few more to deliver on last week’s Waffle House tease (that’s Fear of Missing Out, don’tcha know).

We can learn a lot from The Weather Channel…

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“A cable channel with nothing but weather?”

I remember the initial reaction after being accustomed to weather occupying no more than three minutes on the local TV news.  Now we can hardly imagine life without a 24 hour cable channel, particularly when a hurricane is approaching.

We can learn a lot from The Weather Channel.

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So, what did you think?

Key findings included playing songs people know, playing songs people love, and creating an environment that helps listeners feel good (particularly important in appealing to new listeners).

Those of us attending CMB’s Momentum in Orlando last week were enlightened by researcher Alan Burns’ findings on how to make a CCM station more attractive to new listeners.

After donuts and decaf, a discussion of these findings featured really smart folks like SOS’ Scott Herrold, Salem’s Mike Blakemore, and Alan Mason, who swooned the ladies with his manly voice..

“Oh, my,” I overheard from one sitting next to me, “he must have been in radio.”

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