The ratings arrive. Our emotions react. There is running up and down the hallways and gnashing of teeth! DO SOMETHING!

I’ve heard some pretty wacky ways that people have reacted to ratings. Moving the deejays’ shifts around, playing music from a completely different format, and implementing formatics that make the station sound more generic and less distinctive. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP, as Dave Barry would say.

Making programming decisions based solely upon ratings is like driving with a GPS that shows only where you’ve been.

On last week’s show I shared how important it is to fall in love with the format. This week I’m sharing a bit of a different perspective.

I’ve worked with many amazingly talented people over my five decades in the biz. Regardless of the format, regardless the size of the market, regardless of job title, and even regardless of the level of experience talent shines through.

(Make a list of the ten most talented people you’ve worked with. The names will pop into your head with little effort).

We programmers tend to be pretty nifty at analysis. It’s too long. It’s too short. There’s too much of “A” and not enough of “B.”

Successful radio stations are analyzed regularly. But analysis, if it goes no further than analysis, can have blind spots.

You read that right.

In case you’ve missed it, there is quite a controversy over a recent campaign from Bud Light.

It seems that the marketing department at Bud Light decided to make Dylan Mulvaney, a “trans woman,” one of its paid spokespersons. For the purposes of this blog I’ll not focus on the obvious moral and societal aspects of that decision but instead focus on the branding implications. After all, Christian radio stations regularly face scrutiny about who they are FOR or AGAINST.

So, what’s going on here?

There’s a financial talk show on a small AM radio station where I live. Yep, I listen from time to time but please don’t tell anybody. It’s terrible radio, but the guys are really smart, they cough a lot, have lots of room noise and give insightful advice.

Besides, they’ve helped me make a gazillion imaginary dollars in the stock market!

The trouble is they don’t understand radio. Much of the show includes inside references (the office necktie policy), dropped phone calls (“is the caller there? Hello? Please turn down your radio!”), reading articles out loud from the Wall Street Journal (BORING! I can do that myself!), or making references to things they said thirty minutes ago (“Do I have to repeat this again? Weren’t you listening thirty minutes ago?”)

Don’t worry! I’m not going to ask how many times you play “Easter Parade” by Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.

Easter, from a programming perspective, is not like Christmas in that there are 27 different versions of “Mary, did you Know?” that we can play.

But the principle is the same.

Maybe you have one, too.

It’s called a land line, often connected to voicemail. And the voicemail is nothing but spam. So much so that I no longer even pay attention to the voicemail messages I receive.

(Side note: I’m glad we don’t spam our listeners so that they just choose to ignore us. Gulp! We don’t, do we?)

But recently one caught my ear.

It’s good to remind ourselves of the basics.

One of the quickest ways to focus your radio station and give your air talent an objective way of discerning what to talk about is the simple rule of…

RELEVANT then INTERESTING

Choosing only content that is relevant to your listener forces the talent to put the listener ahead of themselves. This profound realignment of priorities changes the paradigm from what is interesting to the talent to what is relevant to the listener.

For a program director, coaching air talent can be one of the most challenging tasks.

First, your talent must understand the vision and purpose of the radio station and for which specific group of people you are designing your radio station. Unless they understand who they are talking to, they won’t be able to prepare content appropriate for the audience and they’ll just as likely end up giving football scores to people who don’t listen to your station for sports.

We’ve chatted a lot over these 655 Frost Advisories about how to grow your station. Growth is the fruit of adopting common ground; of making the unfamiliar familiar.

As we’ve discussed, common ground is the biggest barrier for growth in our format because the music is generally unfamiliar to new listeners. And let’s not forget that everyone’s favorite radio station is the station that plays their favorite music.