Go ahead.  Ask them.

Everyone, of course, will say that ‘yes’ their radio station is interesting.

“Where men are strong, women are good looking, and all children are above average.”
~Garrison Keiller

Then why is it that your own staff, the folks that are supposed to care the most, don’t listen at their desks.  Why is it that you don’t hear the station playing in the hallways?  Why are we “the team” not rooting for our own cause?

The program director of one of the best-known Christian radio stations in America looked out his office window at the parking lot and said to me, “I don’t see one bumper sticker for our station.”

(Go look out at yours. I’ll wait).

If your station is SO interesting why is it that your fanniest of fans listens fewer than 3 days per week?  That’s half as many times as you go to your mailbox.

Your station really isn’t all that interesting, you know.  But maybe it can be.

How?

We have to bridge the gap.  We have to risk taking all that radio stuff we do and connecting it to the listener’s life in ways that are meaningful and relevant.

We have to do stuff and say stuff and be stuff that matters.

It’s really the only choice we have.  Our future success will not come from our mattering less.

Have you seen that Facebook thing?  That thing where they take a year’s worth of your posts and create a montage of what you’ve posted the most.

Well now…

From what I’ve seen that would be mainly pictures of food, Chewbacca Mom, and anti-Hillary anti-Trump rants.  (At least the ridiculing of Mariah Carey’s lip syncing will have to wait until the 2017 montage).

Seems to me that if there is ANY format that ought to do something that matters it is the CCM format.

“So much more important than being heard is having something worth saying.”
~Erwin McManus

Now, don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that stations should have less playtime and laughter.  They can be key ways that friendships are formed, don’tcha know.

But if that’s all you do then that’s all you are.  And you’re no different than the stations up and down the dial.

Successful stations understand and embrace what makes them meaningful and preferable.  They then demonstrate those values in ways that resonate emotionally with their listeners.

Researcher Jon Coleman observes, “I think that PPM may have caused radio programmers to become slaves to the ‘in the moment’ and lose track of what really builds ratings… (It’s) is not (about) eliminating every possible tune out, but rather offering emotion-evoking reasons people can love the station.  When people like or love a station they tune into it every day or even several times a day… People don’t come back to a station tomorrow because of a reduced tune out today.”

To paraphrase Francis Chan, this New Year our greatest fear should not be just of failure in the ratings but of succeeding at having a radio station that doesn’t really matter.

Thanks to my talented friend Carol Ellingson at Z88.3 in Orlando who created the mosaic using the Instagram website https://2016bestnine.com/.  Carol is a “wow”maker.

The start of a new year is a great time to prioritize the things that make the biggest impact on your station’s growth and success.  Major in the majors, as they say.  The more advanced your station the more you can go beyond the basics to the more complicated concepts such a developing a meaningful brand and connecting emotionally.

But at its core programming is a relatively simple process.  Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi put such emphasis on the basics that he is famous for starting every training camp with these five words,

In my other life I do some baseball announcing for spring training in Florida.  It is there that I see practice drills that resemble more little league than big league.  Many times during the regular season a critical moment in a game will come down to “something they practice every day in spring training.”

Someone said “Spring training is like the movie Groundhog Day … you keep doing it until you get it right … then you do it again.”

Just as with sports, radio programming has its basics.   They are:

1. Play the music your listeners love.
2. Talk about things they are interested in.
3. Don’t waste their time.

I can tune to an under-performing radio station and within thirty minutes I’ll hear at least one of these basics executed poorly or not at all.

But that’s the past.  Now it’s a new year and we have a clean slate.  What’s say we start the year by getting these three things right, then we can go to work on the more complicated stuff!

You probably work with them every day. People who live in the past. Fearful of change.

Their fossilized mantra is, “We’ve never done it that way.”  Their reaction to innovative programming ideas is, “That doesn’t sound like us.”

That’s driving while looking in the rear view mirror stuff, don’tcha know.

That observation probably doesn’t surprise you.  But this one may.

It’s the cry of the pessimist.

In essence they are saying what has happened in the past is better than what could happen in the future.

“Optimism is the ability to focus on where we are going, not where we are coming from.  Leaders own the optimism. Leaders inspire us ahead.”
~Simon Sinek

A decade ago our home sustained some minor hurricane damage that prompted some remodeling.  Despite the sawdust and scaffolding, despite the inconvenience of not being able to access the kitchen and a bathroom for a time, the architect kept reminding us to how beautiful things would look when the construction was done.

“There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and it’s appetite for improvement.”
~Andy Stanley

To find the real leaders in your organization, regardless of titles, look for the optimists.  They are the ones who believe in the future.

In case you’re not sure what kind of year you’ve had, the mad scientists at Facebook are stepping up to help with an unsolicited montage of photos from one’s own Facebook posts.  My Year in Review highlights include a photo of me with a tree, me with a dog, and me with a 25-foot-tall Texas flag.

After peaking at a few others I’m glad they’ve left out political rants, photos of food, and close-ups of injured body parts (i.e., mostly what’s really on Facebook posts).

The most frequent comments to Year in Review tend to be, or “We had fun doing that!”, or “Where is the photo of me?”  In other words, people reacted based upon their own connection to the post (or lack of).

ATTENTION is driven by RELEVANCE.  And RELEVANCE is the basis for connection.

“People will be more interested in your home movies if they are in them.”
~Roy Williams

What photos would be on your station’s Year in Review?  And would your listeners care?

All ideas start in the left brain.  That’s where reading and writing, calculation, and logical thinking hang out.

In our radio stations many ideas and conversations stop there, never crossing over to the right brain, where dimensions, creativity, and emotion are interpreted.  We talk about the music as though we’re doing inventory.  (“We have 12 of the red ones and 40 of the blue ones”), we talk about “shifts” instead of “shows”, and discuss promotions like we’re using the Associated Press style book of Who, What, When, and Where.

Staying in the left brain is how we end up with dry-as-sandpaper promotions like Clergy Appreciation Month, Local Music Project, and my all-time “favorite” the Bereavement Conference 2016.

If you’ve ever talked on the air about a Family 4-Pack of tickets, a gift card, or told listeners to “enroll/register/download”, you’ve stopped short of taking the idea over to the emotional right side of the brain.

You may have the ‘what’ but you don’t have the ‘why’.

The goal is to make people care.

“Feelings inspire people to act.  For people to take action, they have to care.”
~Chip and Dan Heath “Made to Stick“

There is no idea so brilliant that it can’t be made utterly ineffective through the presentation of left-brained information.

Yes, all ideas start in the left brain, but that doesn’t mean they have to stop there.

As we turn the page on another Thanksgiving holiday in America, the front page tells us that Fidel Castro has died.  That’s reason for partying in the streets in the Cuban-American communities.  One news account referred to it as “Christmas coming early.”

I wonder if Fidel Castro was a grateful man.  Curious idea, don’tcha think?

We don’t usually associate dictators with gratitude.  No, they are the quintessential takers.  The news stories used words like oppression, control, and force.  And yet we associate being grateful with giving.

The same is true for our radio stations.

Is your station a giver or a taker?

I know radio stations where the only time one hears certain voices is when they are asking for money.  Their airwaves are filled with commands “do this” and “do that”, treating listeners like the proverbial dog on a leash.

But I know stations that are “givers”.  I know of a station that has a strategic initiative to connect listeners to local charities.  I know of a station that was on the ground offering bottled water and other help during a local disaster.  I know of a station that gives the opportunity to pray with listeners in need at each station event.

“The human spirit senses and feeds on a giving spirit… Think about what Jesus taught – half the time people didn’t know what he was talking about, but they listened attentively.  Jesus was giving – feeding them.  Not taking.  It is at a spirit (heart) level – he wasn’t just giving information.”
~John Maxwell

One of my heroes is a fellow by the name of Billy Howell, who runs an automobile dealership in the Atlanta area.  Although we’ve never met Billy is one of my heroes because he is a giver.  He partners each year with my friends at The Fish Atlanta to bless those who are struggling.  Just last week Billy and his company granted a Christmas Wish to fly a soldier and his family home to Atlanta prior to his deployment to Afghanistan.

“The best ministry we can offer on God’s behalf isn’t to explain our theology.  It’s to extend our generosity.  Because that’s what our heavenly Father did for us.  And that’s what he’s asked us to do as well.”
~Andy Stanley

Oh, and by the way, the stories of giving you share make wonderful gifts for your listeners

That’s the announcement that came over the airport PA.  But the announcement seems self-evident, doesn’t it?

Atlanta is in the eastern time zone.

Unless…

…you’re not from Atlanta.

And most of the 250,000 travelers per day through the world’s busiest airport are NOT from Atlanta.

Almost everyone has to catch another flight.  So time matters.

The seemingly self-evident becomes vital with a simple change of perspective.

Your listener has a perspective. Great stations learn it.

“Did you call out my daughter’s name?  A friend told me to call.  I’ve never listened to your station before.”

I’m told there is a newspaper with a remarkable circulation rate – 100%.  Yep!  Everyone in town reads it.  The country wisdom of the publisher describes it in three words:

Names, Names, Names

He says that every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and every Donald and Hillary read his newspaper because they want to see if their name was in it. (“Made to Stick”, by Chip and Dean Heath)

What if your station was littered with the names and voices of your listeners?  A community of sounds, maybe introducing traffic, weather, birthdays, anniversaries, or lost dogs, and ultimately creating word-of-mouth.

What if the very design of your station revealed your listeners?

The power of a name was evident in social media when Starbucks recently offered a $5 eGift card to those who would “@tweetacoffee to” the Twitter handle of a friend.  “This can be between the closest of friends, the most distant of colleagues, or even between people who have not even had the chance to meet yet in person, but have connected in some way on Twitter.  We love the possibilities that the Twitter community can unlock to share acts of kindness with one another.”

What if…

…in a world of cookie cutter formats programmed remotely by people who couldn’t even locate your city on a map, the most effective viral marketing tool was simply the power of a name.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Five million fans lined the streets of Chicago to celebrate the Cubs’ World Series championship!  That’s almost double the number that actually attended a Cubs’ game at Wrigley Field this season.  What’s that about?

It seems that the idea of being a Cubs’ fan actually transcends being a Cubs’ fan.

“When you have a story that’s larger and more interesting than your product or service – or you – other people and companies will want to incorporate your story into theirs to share the halo effect.  Supporters beat customers every time.  But gaining supporters starts with having a story worth supporting.”
~Blake Mycoskie, “Start Something that Matters”

Too often, however, our radio stations are more like versions of the game day accounts that dissect OPS (on base plus slugging percentage), WAR (wins above replacement), and BAFM (batting average during a full moon).

But that is not what motivated 5 million to line the streets of Chicago to honor their Cubbies!

On the brick wall at Wrigley Field fans wrote tributes to family members that didn’t live to see the Cubs win the World Series.

“My grandpa was a Cubs’ fan, my dad was too, and me and my brother…”

Last I checked no one wrote anything on that wall about Dexter Fowler’s stolen base percentage, Jon Lester’s strikeout to walk ratio, or Aroldis Chapman’s velocity.

Why then do we insist on diminishing our stations to nothing more than a Christian music version of Spotify, stripping our stations of the very values worthy of creating five millions fans willing to line the streets of Chicago?  My friend Mike looks out his office window to bemoan a parking lot void of any car with a station bumper sticker.  I regularly walk through stations where I hear no employee, supposedly the most passionate of fans, actually listening to the station.

Here’s my challenge to you…

Listen to your station for the next thirty minutes.

What do you hear that transcends batting average and on base percentage?

What do you hear that is a mirror reflecting back the very identity of your listener?

What do you hear that could motivate millions to line the streets and write tributes in chalk to the ones they love?