What do you passionately care about?

I’ve never heard anyone say that they loved a generic music channel like you can find on XM/Sirius, unless it was something offbeat that appealed to only three people such as the Jamaican Bongo Channel or the Left-handed Texas Fiddler channel.

Things that are generic don’t generate passion and loyalty. If a customer can take it or leave it… chances are they’ll leave it.

No one ever says, “Oh!, I just love the generic brand!” Even if you buy generic at your local grocery store, you do so because it’s cheap. Since listeners don’t pay for radio, “cheap” still isn’t better than free.

Is your radio station generic? From my perspective, most Christian radio stations are just that.

Is your station just another station that plays Christian music? Is your primary value that which every other station in the format also has?

How is your radio station distinctive? Don’’’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about just any kind of different. You could put a duck quacking at the top of the hour and be different. I’m talking about a different in a way that is meaningful to your listeners. Distinctive WITH an advantage.

We’ve unwrapped just such a difference at one radio station I work with. We’ll begin now to build that difference into everything we do. A station that was once fairly generic will now become distinctive. And one that people can care about.

It makes all the difference.