“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.)

So, what did you do with your extra hour?

Although most of us were in beddie-bye, we all experienced the 2 AM hour on Sunday TWICE as we rolled back our clocks an hour from Daylight Saving Time.

Was the second 2 AM hour just like the first?

Was Tuesday’s show just like Monday’s show?

Was today’s show just like last year’s show?

It was one of those neighborhood association things and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to debate the great pothole scandal of 2019 (and get some chocolate chip cookies).

I looked around the room and didn’t recognize one person. No one introduced themselves. After an awkward few minutes it dawned on me that I was in the wrong place. And worse, they had no cookies.

How do you make someone feel welcome?

That’s easy if you’re inviting new neighbors. You prepare low risk munchies, (the anchovy and liver dip will have to wait till you know them better), you get name tags for the guests, and you make sure to introduce everyone as they arrive. (“These are the Joneses. They live in the house on the corner with the overgrown shrubs.”)

In other words…

You want to make them feel welcome as quickly as possible.

WYSIATI

Our minds crave simplicity.

What are THOSE stations doing? Let’s do that!

We only know what we know. Nothing beyond that.

“WYSIATI… What you see is all there is.

“The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little…

You will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit what you know into a coherent pattern.”

Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow”