My brilliant friend and associate John Frost recently heard a station that used the slogan “We Actually Care.”

These people are obviously… well, stupid.  As a coach, this concerns me because the air talent that has to live UP to what the station says about itself is virtually crippled by it.

First of all, the only possible inference of that phrase is that they’re better than the stations that DON’T “actually” care.  (But I’m not familiar with any station that has “We Actually Don’t Care” as their slogan.) Continue reading →

If you listen to the air staff, way too many stations nowadays have what I call “a boulder in the lobby.”

“The PD has no power, so we can’t do things we want to do.”
“The wrong people DO have power, so the best ideas can’t even get heard.”
“The GM is just a Sales Guy, and doesn’t understand Programming.”
“The new owner is just a financial guy, and doesn’t know anything about radio.”

In one station I worked at, a person they hired to fill a key position lived on a houseboat, and bathed in a lake.  He always smelled like catfish dung.  It got so bad that several coworkers left various deodorants on his DESK, and many complained to the boss – who did nothing about it.  Slowly but surely, people left the station.  I know that sounds kind of gross, but it happened.

So here’s the deal: as a Talent, when you come into the station every day, you have a decision to make.  You can walk around whatever the “boulder” is and give it your best effort to do radio that’s worth listening to.  Or you can go work somewhere else.

What you should NOT do is stick around, but have a grousing or negative attitude.

New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio, in his last season, once ran hard on painful bone spurs to make a difficult catch.  Mickey Mantle (who was in right field as a rookie) told Joe that he needn’t have done it because Mickey had it in his sights.  But DiMaggio answered, “There’s always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time; I owe him my best.”

So do you.

In the movie world, a lot rests on the Film Editor’s “eye.”

“Errors of continuity” – like a shirt tucked in one moment, then untucked in the next shot, then a moment later it’s tucked in again – can ruin the film.  The Editor is always on the lookout for things that, somewhere in the brain, just don’t “add up.”  Those little things destroy credibility.

I hear the same type of things all the time in radio, but of course, they’re spoken rather than pictured.  For example:

An air talent refers to something that I wouldn’t have a clue about unless I was listening 15 minutes ago.

Or a jock goes to a contestant or a caller and says “Hi, Marsha…”  How did you already know her name?  Not logical.

The jock says “Jennifer tripped over it…”  Who’s Jennifer?  Your wife?  Your daughter?  Your dog?

Keep in mind that my timeline (as a listener) isn’t the same as yours.  Don’t assume that I know what you’re referencing.

What really works in any field isn’t much about finding something completely new as it is about finding a way to build on something old, but making it better.  We’ve had phones forever, for instance.  But the Blackberry, then the iPhone, changed what we can do with them – and what we now EXPECT from them.

The point is, there’s a tendency to categorically reject “old” ideas, and that’s often the biggest mistake.  Radio is making one now.  With all the technology we have available, and all the “sabermetric” data we now use, we’ve largely lost one thing that used to be the core of every great station – the connection to the music we play.  Simply put, I rarely hear a station anymore that respects the music at ALL. Continue reading →

“Chopped” – the TV show on The Food Network – wasn’t in my sphere of awareness until just a couple of years ago.  My wife is addicted to watching people compete in this cooking competition where contestants are asked to take “basket ingredients” like yak thighs, pine cones, elderberry stems, and the bumper from a 1964 Buick, and make a meal out of them.

It’s fun, and the competition is serious, presented in a “steel cage gladiator death match” format.  But since I’m always looking for ways to help people sound better, what resonates with me is the “Chopped” criteria: Presentation, Taste, and Creativity.

In radio terms, you can always work on Presentation – even when the goal is to avoid sounding “presentational.”

Taste is any easy one.  It’s mirroring the taste of your listener.  You’re “cooking” for her or him.

And Creativity is simply the biggest dividing line in radio.  If you haven’t found your creative “muscle” yet, listen to great stations, read great books, watch great movies.  Soak it up.  Just like you would that redeye gravy that girl from Louisiana just made on Chopped.  Yum.

The other day, I heard a morning team launch into a subject that should have taken about ten seconds to set up, but they took 4 times that.  The classic “dog chasing its own tail” scenario.  Lots of activity; no real progress.

Without quoting them, let’s compare it to a movie.  Where the scene description would be “Doorbell rings.  Then cut to the door being opened,” we instead got the meaningless (and uninteresting) details.  The wife heard the doorbell ring, then told her husband, who was chilling out on the couch, to answer it, and even though he didn’t want to, he made himself get up and do it anyway… blah, blah, blah.

Cut to the chase, for crying out loud.  Remember this:

Too many words “getting started” always leads to a letdown at the end – if the listener even makes it TO the end.  The impact will always be reduced, no matter what.

Doorbell rings.  You answer it.  WHAT HAPPENED? THAT’S the important part.

We all want to be entertaining on the air.  But “funny” isn’t the only thing that entertains.  And for that matter, “punch line” humor is dead, anyway.
It’s the UNEXPECTED remark that cracks people up.  But great vocabulary, the ability to paint a picture, and vulnerability are all ingredients of “entertaining,” too.  Think “A Christmas Story” about the kid and the B.B. gun.  (God bless you, Jean Shepherd, for writing that.)

In coaching hundreds of Personality morning shows, I think these may be two of the main things I’ve learned:

1. Step One is never just to try and be funny.  Step One is to be Relevant.  THAT’S ALWAYS THE GOAL.  Then – and only then – should you turn your sense of humor and your personality traits into something to do on the air.  But if the listener can’t see himself/herself in it, then it’s just another deejay telling a joke.  Ho hum.  (You know, I can just click Amazon Prime on my phone or iPad and see Jim Gaffigan.  He’s funnier than you.)
2. You can’t MAKE someone funny.  (Partner, caller, etc.)  But that can actually work, and become humorous if you put it in the right context.  Use your imagination.  Instead of going for a joke, go for a funny REACTION.

Whenever you’ve got something working, and the phones are active, it’s important to not have responses just blend into only one ‘camera angle.’  Varying emotions being expressed and BREVITY are mandatory.

Just like a great movie.  Whenever the plot starts to get too familiar, or a scene lasts too long, it doesn’t work.

So… you want a different thought in each call, not just the same premise with different names or details.  And all you want to use is a little one-thought “bullet” from the call.  Remember that each call you air is a sound bite, and the SUM of the sound bites is the complete conversation.

If you’ve had success, it’s easy to think that the learning process is pretty much over.  But there’s always another level.

Legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix thought Eric Clapton was stunning, but Clapton thought Hendrix was miles above him.  Steven Spielberg thought John Ford was the world’s best movie Director, but Spielberg’s movies will be benchmarks for generations to come.

Great ideas and new approaches are everywhere.  The late night talent on a tiny station you pick up driving somewhere may do something so original that it bowls you over.

No matter how good you are, you can get better.  And more importantly, you should WANT to get to yet another level.  Keep trying to learn more, or you risk becoming a dinosaur.

(From my perspective, this is the essence of coaching.  Helping YOU get to the next level.)

There’s what you want it to sound like; then there’s what it actually is.

“We just have a conversation with the listener.”  Well… not exactly.

It’s NOT really a Conversation.  Music radio is at its best is when it’s concise and at least momentarily memorable – or at the VERY least, when it doesn’t waste our time.

This thought helps; it’s NOT a conversation.  It’s just an Observation with an Emotion tucked in.

Thinking this way won’t leave you frustrated if you don’t get phone or social media response.  Your job is to offer things up that are incisive or entertaining.  Getting a reply isn’t the real goal.