There are two immediate goals in radio:

1. You have a listener.  Keep him (or her) around for a while.

2. Compel that person to come back again tomorrow.

Without meeting these first two goals, NOTHING else can be accomplished.  No matter what your Strategic plans are, no matter what the Board of Directors’ monetary aims are, no matter what your “Imaging” tries to accomplish, unless you learn how to grab a listener and make that person want to listen again, you’re dead in the water.

Some questions for you:

Do you spend more time on these fundamental goals than other things in a given day?

Do you give conscious thought to who that person is that’s listening, and HOW to appeal to them?

If not, why not?  Do you just want to fail?  My brilliant friend and associate John Frost used to have a miniature billboard on his desk that read “It’s the Cume, Stupid.”

Cume builds one person at a time.

In baseball, the pitcher and catcher better know what the other is likely to do.  If you’re a pitcher and throw the wrong pitch, what you don’t want is for the catcher to have to wait for it to stop rolling before he picks it up.

That’s why they use signals.

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Trying too hard – whether it’s to be funny, to really “sell” something, or to ingratiate yourself to the listener – just doesn’t work out well in the long run.

Yes, we all do it when we first start out, but a developed talent realizes sooner or later that “trying” can be FELT on the other end of the radio – and it pushes the Listener away.

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