A legendary broadcaster recently asked me, “If you claim that your format can be so transformational, why are the stations so ordinary?”

Gulp.

Ken and Barbie in the morning, who replaced Ken and Barbie before them and few even noticed.* Nice Christian people talking about nice Christian things to nice Christian people.

Nice, indeed. But clearly not transformational to a listener’s life.

They say opinions are like noses; everyone has one.

The boss, the Facebook posts from listeners, the sales manager, or the weekend disc jockey, everyone has an opinion on what your station should be doing to be better. At least for them.

On this Mother’s Day I wonder what Mom would say!

House Democrats wave Ukrainian flags on the floor of the House chamber while approving the bill for aid.

Anti-Israel protesters on college campuses wave the Palestinian flag.

Frat boys at UNC raise the American flag to counter the actions of the pro-Palestinian protestors, while raising $500,000 in support on GoFundMe.

Reckon’ there must be something deep and meaningful to this flag thing to cause this kind of stir.

Biff picked me up at the airport and drove me to the station forty minutes away. Not once did he turn on his radio station or engage in a conversation about programming. And he was the music director.

Coaching sessions with the talent were different at this station. That’s because the program director didn’t show up. If you were the PD, wouldn’t you be curious about how the consultant was guiding your air staff? That you might be missing an opportunity to learn something new and grow your programming skills?

Every format seems to have a default setting – what it reverts to without proper care and feeding. Some can sound cluttered, others can be inconsistent.

I’ve found that the CCM format has the tendency to default to sameness. Songs can sound alike. Air talent can sound instructive rather than inspirational. Sometimes it can sound like nothing more than…

…nice Christian people talking to nice Christian people about nice Christian things.

I’ve never met Isaac but I did get to witness what is likely one of the highlights of his life.

A few months ago Isaac was able to meet Matthew West prior to a concert and shared his dream of singing on stage with Matthew. While some might have viewed that as small talk with an artist, Matthew saw it as another opportunity to share a fan’s story. A few hours later Isaac was on stage singing “Truth Be Told” with Matthew West.

In his showcasing a fan Matthew demonstrated a technique that I’ve referred to as making big things little and little things big.

A sea of red, it has been described. For the past 25 years in my other life I’ve served as the public address announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals’ spring training. That means for the month of March I’m surrounded by visitors from the Midwest and beyond that embrace the identify of Cardinal Nation. I know many of their names. And yes, they wear red.

A brand is much more than just a combination of attributes.

Attributes are the elements that any station can do. Songs, deejays, contests, information elements like traffic and weather. A brand is bigger than that.

I was driving along minding my own business when the announcement came on the radio for “The National Bereavement Conference 2024.”

“Egad!” I thought. Were they talking about an amazing get together of caring people that come alongside those whose lives are forever changed due to the loss of a loving spouse? You’d never know it by what sounded like the label to a file folder.

There is no promotion so brilliant that it can’t be made utterly ineffective through the presentation of data, such as a list of dates and times.

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 with 27 different versions of “Mary, Did You Know?” that we can play.

But the principle is the same.

A brown-eyed five-year-old looked in my eyes and said, “I don’t want to be alone.”

This wasn’t in response to being left in aisle 7 at Costco for less than ten seconds. This wasn’t a response to some other recent event in his life. This was a reaction to the human condition: we don’t want to be alone.

The people in the white coats have a name for it. It’s called “monophobia.”