It seems like sometimes the message is, “We’re not reinventing the wheel here.”

I always thought, “Why not?”

You could argue that the wheel is the perfect example of something that’s only stayed around as long as it has BECAUSE it’s been continually reinvented.  (Nobody’s having to stop and put a patch on an inner tube on their Mustang Mach-E these days.)

How this applies to music radio:

In the early 1950s, Todd Storz in Kansas City and Gordon McLendon in Dallas got away from what was, up until then, “block programming” or “middle of the road” music to try a new idea:  Top 40.  Wheel, meet new wheel.

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Sometimes, in an effort to seem “bigger,” we lose focus.

Here’s a question for you: If I hear your station for the first time, does it sound and feel local, or not?  (And I’m not talking about street names.  I mean things that we share with the listener, things that the listener can picture himself or herself going through, too.)

If you don’t feel local – personal – then you’re generic.  (Think generic food, as opposed to “brand name” food.  “Corn chips” don’t translate the same as “Fritos.”)

Local = emotional engagement.

Generic = who cares?

(This is a companion piece to Tip #24, “The 5 Subjects.”)

With any piece of Content, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Why is this on? “Because it’ll be funny” shouldn’t be the primary reason.  Lots of shows are fairly funny at times, but aren’t really connective or transformative.
2. Where am I going with it?  Think of an Ending FIRST, then figure out how to start it, and then how to shape it.  This doesn’t kill spontaneity; it clarifies it and cleans it up.  When you know where you’re going, you go in more of a straight line.
3. What does this mean to the listener – TODAY?  If something you say actually resonates with me, I’m more likely to come back and listen to you again.  But if it’s just generic “any day” Content, or flimsy jokes based on “click bait” postings, you’re probably not going to have much of an audience.

You earn the listener’s attention one connection at a time.

Since there are so many places to get the music now, you have to be more than just a playlist.

COMPANIONSHIP (especially in the car) is still really important.

PERSONALITY should be mandatory in EVERY daypart.

There should be “something going on” ALL the time, in every hour of the show – both “station things” and your own Content.

What you have in common with the Listener is what binds you together.  If you’re generic, you’re invisible.

The more words are used, the less the Personality stands out.  The more complicated a Promotion or Contest is, the less effective it is.

Keeping things simple from a formatic perspective should be married to keeping things as simple as possible in coaching talent, so they can perform in a way that truly resonates with the listener.

My methods, and the formatics I recommend are all about keeping it simple so there’s more “meat” in the Content – and even in the STYLE of the Content.  Our job in the coaching arena is to make it EASY to sound consistently top-notch every day.

Poisonous things can slip in – too many words in a forecast, the name of the station redundantly said again by rote at the end of a break (taking away any possibility of the First Exit that surprises the listener), goofy names for promotions that don’t tell us what the Promotion or Contest IS, reading crappy liners (that the station Imaging voice should read, if you simply must do them), etc. Guard against these.

It’s not just “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”  It’s “Keep it simple or I listen to something else.”

One of the offshoots of trying to read something on the air is that since ‘print words’ are not the way we actually talk, it erodes your authenticity.

Where I live, Louisiana, there are tons of local commercials on radio and TV, and way too many of them have the owner of the business – usually a balding guy with a golf shirt on, wearing a 32-inch belt over which hangs his 40-inch waist – telling you that he’ll give you the best deal on “America’s most popular midsize SUV luxury brand” and that his dealership is “Rated number one in customer service in a survey of repeat customers.”

Blah, blah, blah.  Words that he would never say – maybe no human would ever say – in a real conversation.  And we’re then obliged to see his wife, small children, and their dog SHOUT his name.  (Except the dog.  He barks.  He’s the best part of the spot.)

…or we hear some radio station disc jockey try to read something, and treat it like he (or she) just thought it up.

Listen:  Authenticity is self-revealing.  So is the lack of it.  If you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t fake it.

The last two tips have questioned why music stations choose to do formal newscasts or formal weather forecasts (ski resorts and cities near volcanoes exempted). Now let’s deal with doing Traffic updates on the air…

Start by remembering that we’re living in the twenty-FIRST century.  “Here’s how we’ve always done it…” is a waste of time to even discuss.  Here’s why you don’t need to do what now passes for traffic updates:

1. You can’t compete with the Navigation System in my car (or in my phone, for that matter).
2. 99% of the time, Traffic reports are about traffic that I’m not in, and you can’t cover everyplace because the Update takes too long.

Here’s a different thought: Have a traffic update on the air be one listener reporting on one specific problem.  (“I’m Greg Blunderbuss, and here at the Fairfield ramp to I-20, there must be 30 cars backed up.”)  Maybe two people per update, different areas each time.  Whatever.  Just not a droning sea of information about someplace else.

And yes, these can still be sponsored. $

So let’s talk about the weather…

The typical scenario nowadays is to have some local TV weather person come on to “play” with the morning show and do the weather, or – even worse – to have someone from a weather service read the forecast in a boring monotone, with way too much information.  “Clear to partly cloudy today with a thirty percent chance of showers or thundershowers, and a high in the mid-fifties.  Southerly winds 8-10 miles per hour.  Then it’ll become mostly cloudy and windy overnight with a sixty percent chance of more precipitation, and a low around 32,” etc.  Ugh.

We should do the weather, but ultra-short-form.  “Some clouds today with a chance of rain.  High of 54.  Tonight, no rain, low near 32.” Continue reading →

We can probably all agree that ideally, everything you do on the air should play to a strength.  If not, it’s probably best to eliminate it.

I feel sorry for air talent with no training in News writing or delivery being forced to do headlines.

Really, except for All-News or NewsTalk stations, News – I’m talking about actually doing a newscast – seems kind of outdated, to me.  Not that many people come to a music station for News these days, because there are so many other sources to get it from.

Please understand that this shouldn’t mean that you ignore the News.  But what I’m recommending is that if there’s a significant story, you just do a break about it when you stop down, without the formality of a News structure.  It’s my opinion that we turn what’s likely to be a liability into a true strength this way.

Obviously, this is something that Programming has to okay.

We’ll address another so-called ‘service element’ – the Weather – in the next tip.

One of the benefits of doing this talent coaching thing for a long time is that you learn how to appraise talent quickly.  After just a couple of coaching sessions, one thing always stands out: the person with the learner’s heart is going to get better.  The person whose ego gets in the way of learning isn’t going to progress much unless that changes.

So which one are you?  Are you open to suggestion, to change, to experimenting?  You can still have your opinions, of course, but to have that be a closed circuit just means standing still.  If nothing else, getting thoughts from a different perspective from someone you trust will make your decision-making quicker and more certain.

Lebron James has a coach.  So does Tom Brady.  So has every Olympic champion.