“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.
Man, there’s a lot of “Foghorn Leghorn” loudmouths on the radio these days – especially in Sports and Talk formats, but they’re honking away at full blast in other formats, too.
You do know you have a microphone, right? And the mic is the Listener’s EAR, so there’s really no need to shout into it.
Turn on the Game Show Network sometime and watch “The $25,000 Pyramid” and you’ll see the great Dick Clark. Dick was really the first “veejay” doing American Bandstand, became known as “America’s oldest teenager,” did countless other things (his New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcasts were legendary), and was a terrific guest, if you ever had the chance to get him on your show.
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…
In a coaching session this week, it occurred to me that most talents today might not have been as fortunate as I was in terms of who influenced them. The names might not mean much to you, but I started off working for a wonderful P. D. named Larry Ryan in Shreveport, my home town, whose mantra was “Do something! Any idiot can intro songs.” That gave me permission to try – and equally important – permission to fail.
Then I worked for radio pioneer Gordon McLendon (who, with Todd Storz, INVENTED Top 40). Gordon was all about Creativity, too, and P. D. Michael Spears taught me tight, concise formatics to harness that creativity.
“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.