“How many different items are on the menu?”  It’s a question no one at a restaurant has ever asked.

And yet… “how many songs are on your playlist?” is routinely asked as though the answer might actually be significant.

The familiar and the unfamiliar; the all-time-favorites and the never-heard-of; each viewed simply as a quota, no one more important than another.  But, alas…

Everyone’s favorite music station is the one that plays their favorite music.

And that, my friends, is the fundamental challenge in growing Christian music stations to be market leaders.

A well-known researcher recently told me that he had never seen a format where so much of the music was unfamiliar – even to its fans.

So, what’s the better idea?

In a world of unfamiliar, successful program directors design familiarity into the brand.

That’s how six unknowns can get the loudest ovation of the night at the ballpark – the common ground of love of country connects six thousand fans in the stands to the six returning airmen on the field.  It’s how strangers become friends because they are both parents of kids on the same team.  It’s how neighbor meets neighbor as everyone pulls together to clean up after a storm.

“To move an audience, especially a diverse audience, from where they are to where you want them to be requires common ground…  Where you consistently begin and what you consistently assume determine who consistently shows up.  Why?  Because your assumptions create the common ground for the journey.”
~Andy Stanley, “Deep and Wide”

Familiarity is the fruit of common ground.  Common ground is the fruit of knowing your listener.

Knowing your listener is the fruit of putting your listeners’ perspective ahead of your own agenda.

The question isn’t “How many different items are on the menu?”

…the question is, “What do people love here?”

They say there are more “religious” radio stations than any other format category.   They also say those religious stations have fewer listeners than any other.   The reason for that is quite simple.

A radio station cannot grow unless it is designed to grow.  And that requires a different kind of thinking.  Strategic thinking.

A growth strategy is one that incorporates big picture concepts such as…

Why does the radio station exist?
Who are our listeners?
What do they desire and expect from our station?
Who and where are other people like them?

It’s ironic to me that most Christian radio stations aren’t strategic.   Ironic because our Christian faith may be the most strategic thing there is.

Our faith flows from the ultimate big picture.  There is a God.  He made everything.  He created us for a purpose.  He desires a relationship with us.   Jesus Christ is the focal point of that God-man relationship.

Most Christian radio stations ignore strategy and focus only on the day to day tactics – the songs, the contests, the liners, the deejays.   Oh, and reacting to complaints.

Your radio station can be transformed if you’ll answer two simple questions:

What do people want and expect from your station?

How consistently to do you that?

Congratulations!  In answering those two questions you’ve begun the journey of thinking strategically.

It’s the shortest title of any of the 304 Frost Advisories.

If only.

If only we didn’t have those limitations.  The budget.  The staffing.  The signal.

Limitations!  There are just 12 notes on a musical scale, only 100 yards on the field, just 90 feet between bases, and barely 24 seconds on a shot clock.

All art has boundaries.

“Embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity.”
~Phil Hansen

Embracing it can result in a mural made from nothing but postage stamps, 60 foot sculptures of four presidents chiseled into granite at Mt. Rushmore, or a TV sitcom with no music other than a bass guitar.

In the world of radio, the limitation is… time.

We sell time, we schedule time, and we even measure time spent listening.

But often the creative aren’t disciplined, and the disciplined aren’t creative.  The result is either three minutes of babbling… or nice, concise dullness.

What if we embraced creativity and discipline as two sides of the same coin?  “Necessity is the mother of invention”, Plato said.  Or was it Frank Zappa?

All musicians want to jam.  All hits are three minutes.

So, what is more important?

Trying to keep listeners from tuning away… or attracting people to tune in?

Many would say the former.  Almost all discussions inside the radio station – where to place the spot sets, traffic reports, and contests – focus on this.  And for good reason.  After all, listeners are already listening.  It’s easier to get blood out of a turnip then to have to plant another crop.

But what does the data say?

“A major new study… reveals that nearly two-thirds of radio station listening occasions consist of listeners ‘turning on’ a station and end with them ‘turning off’ a station, as opposed to ‘switching in’ from and ‘switching out’ to other stations. “*

“Coleman Insights and Media Monitors… found that 62.7% of all occasions are Turn On-Turn Offs.”  (It’s even higher – 77.9% – in the Christian format.)

“These findings are about the strongest reinforcement of the value of brand-building for radio stations that I can imagine,” commented Coleman Insights president/chief operating officer Warren Kurtzman, who co-authored the study.  “The ability of a radio station to generate listening occasions through Turning On is dependent on having a strong brand, which is based on having high awareness, a clearly-defined position, association with multiple product attributes and eliciting passion from the audience.“

I wonder what would happen if you spent 62.7% of your time creating a radio station that is relevant, meaningful, and entertaining enough to have raving fans, and the rest of your time eliminating obstacles for longer listening.

“In the share of every station there are two numbers, the number to the left of the decimal point and the number to the right (e.g. 6.0, 6.3, etc.).  The number to the left is affected by the big things that a station does, like what it is known for and the big benefits the listener gets from the station.  The number to the right is based on the tweaks and minor modifications that the station does to the music, the commercial sequencing, etc.

You can make a mediocre station only slightly better by working on the number to the right all the time.  You can make a mediocre station great by working on the number to the left of the decimal.”
~Michael O’Shea

*“The Components of Tuning Occasions – Switching vs. Turning” study… an analysis of nearly 37 million listening occasions by Coleman Insights and Media Monitors.