There is an election coming up next week. Perhaps you’ve heard something about it. It’s been in all the papers.

Perhaps you’ve heard from a listener wondering why you’re talking about Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Maybe you’ve received a friendly e-mail from someone questioning your personal salvation because your station aired political commercials for You-Know-Who!

Maybe its even more personal that than. Maybe you’ve unfriended “friends” on Facebook for their political rants. (I know I have). Maybe there have even been conversations at your dinner table that have resulted in awkward pauses, or worse, name-calling-finger-pointing-and-gnashing-of-teeth.

What’s going on here?

When I was growing up we actually had a favorite gas station. I can only imagine the reaction from Gen Xers and Millennials.

It was Obie and Doc’s and we had “traded” (as my dad would say) with them for years. Friendly. Full service. Check the oil. Check with wiper fluid. No cash? No problem; put in on my tab. We never considered going to another gas station unless we went out of town.

That sounds so foreign today with gas stations and oil company brands seemingly racing for the generic. What’s the difference between a Shell and a Mobil? Sorry, Exxon/Mobil. The ubiquitous nature of gas stations makes even location (“closest to me”) no longer as significant as is which side of the intersection is it on. (There is a Shell station near me that recently went out of business because its NE corner was not as convenient to traffic flow as the NW corner where the BP now thrives).

While Shell, BP and Exxon/Mobil all arm wrestle for low price and convenience, there is another company that has embraced a different strategy. It is described in “Blue Ocean Shift” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, as “shifting away from the red ocean of competition to a blue ocean of differentiation and low cost.”

When I first heard these words I was stunned.

As an old radio dog who has been a part of launching several new formats I wondered how could this really smart guy say something so implausible?

The speaker elaborated on his point for those of us trying to catch up.

“Successful formats are based upon consensus. Consensus is created through familiarity.

No familiarity? No consensus. No format.”

Several of us began to squirm awkwardly in our chairs. Either our expert is off his rocker, or we’re feeling like freshman students in a graduate class.

“Think of the last new format that has come along,” the group was challenged. After an awkward pause someone guessed, “The Jack format?”

The Frosts were big on hand-me-downs. Sigh!

I was often dressed in my two older brothers’ slacks and shirts. Fortunately, that didn’t happen with my older sister’s clothes, although I do remember the pre-adolescent embarrassment of having to wear my sister’s white sweater in the Christmas parade because I didn’t have a white sweater, and my parents sure weren’t going to buy me a white sweater that I’d never be caught dead in again. (That’s when I learned the coming-of-age reality of girl’s sweaters buttoning on the wrong side.)

On my 16th birthday and the day I received my Texas driver’s license, I received a hand-me-down of my mother’s Oldsmobile Cutless. I was thrilled that I had my own wheels and that it had an awesome Delco radio! (Yep! Radio geek even then). What wasn’t great was that it burned oil like an Arab sheik in a cranky mood. And the wheel alignment consistently pulled right after a few thousand miles.

So I learned.

I had to carry several quarts of oil in the trunk for when the thingamajig ran low. I knew I had to be on alert for when the steering wheel would start pulling after a few thousand miles.

Your station is like that.

“But what do I talk about?” a struggling air talent asks while clutching the front page of the local newspaper or “This Day in History” with the dreaded celebrity birthdays.

“Burl Ives would have been 111 today.” (I really heard this!)

Air talent have to be reminded that their content needs to add value to the station’s music design. Non-music elements will either push listeners away or bring them closer. It’s not filler, it has to add value.

Here are some ideas:

A couple of weeks ago I began a conversation I entitled “It’s Better Than Just Being Good.”

I shared…

Over the years I’ve learned that there are basically three different levels of discussions about programming.

There are conversations about being competent, and conversations about incremental improvements.

But those two topics are not necessarily transformative.

I recently eavesdropped on some focus groups for a radio station that is viewed as elite in our format. You would know of them. The listeners didn’t talk about the station the way we do – the nuts and bolts, the songs and deejays, liners and promotions. No, they talked about how the station fits into their life.

“It’s like being in the same room with my friends.”

“I can talk to my kids about this.”

“I’m in a better mood when I get home.”

In other words, the value of listening to a station is viewed on how it relates and transforms their lives. Better mood. An escape from the negative. How it connects with the conversations I have with those I love.

It’s football season!

With Americans dealing with the pandemic these last six months, the initial lock down and the recent openings, you’d think that the opening of the NFL season would be a time of celebration.

Instead, the talk is about players kneeling (or not), teams refusing to come out of their locker room for the National Anthem, fans booing a players’ gesture of solidarity, and decline in viewership of 13% year to year. Social media posts are just as likely to be about the protests as they are about the game itself.

Let’s be blunt. The NFL has lost control of its brand, either inadvertently, or due to factors outside their control, or lack of leadership.

This Frost Advisory is not about freedom of speech, the merits of the protesters, or taking sides. It is about what our radio stations can learn from the NFL’s loss of its brand values.

“They’re only talking about nuts and bolts,” my friend Shawn (not-his-real-name) said to me. “Don’t they know there is more to programming than clocks and music rotations?”

“Perhaps not,” I reply. I know that all too well because I was once that kind of PD. Clocks. Rotations. Sweepers and liners. Games and gimmicks.

Then I learned a totally new way of thinking.

Over the years I’ve learned that there are basically three different levels of discussions about programming.

Have you ever missed something that was right before you? A changing traffic light? A quickly moving thunderstorm? A Labor Day sale at the 24-hour dental floss store?

“Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn’t have when you’re actually living it. It’s as though the whole thing were designed to be understood in hindsight, as though you’ll never know the meaning of your experiences until you’ve had enough of them to provide reference.”

Donald Miller

524 weeks ago I penned Frost Advisory #1, a fairly presumptuous title considering I had no idea if I could come up with #2, much less 524 of them.

In case you missed it, writing every week for 52 weeks over the span of 10 years is 520. This is Frost Advisory #524.

For years my pal and mentor Alan Mason had insisted that I start writing. I’m not sure whether he thought I had something worth saying or he figured that would keep me quiet for a few hours. Frankly, after reading Alan’s stuff for years I was just flat out intimidated. It felt like Robert Frost telling me, “You should write poetry!,” or Donald Trump saying, “You should tweet!”

The process of writing every week for over ten years has challenged me to think through strategic concepts, consider new ideas, and to look for real life applications. It has forced me to challenge my own biases and experiences, and to attempt to communicate, whether to the novice or the expert, how these ideas can transform a radio station.

In other words, it has forced me to think about what I really think.

“I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.”

William Faulkner, winner of the Nobel Prize

There’s a pandemic going on. Perhaps you’ve heard about it.

It’s affected almost every area of our lives, from what we wear and where we go, to our work, to school, to church, to getting together with Fred and Ethel for a game of Pinocle, to attending sporting events.

While it’s true that the pandemic has forced the major league baseball season to be played in front of NO living, breathing fans that does NOT mean there are no fans.

“Every medium carries within itself inherent limitations, and every artist also comes with limitations. True creativity is not the outflow of a world without boundaries. The creative act is the genius of unleashing untapped potential and unseen beauty with the constraints and boundaries of the medium from which we choose to create. Creativity not only happens within boundaries and limitations, but in fact it is dependent on those limitations.”

Erwin McManus, “The Artisan Soul”

If you watch a major league game, you’ll see the stands littered with cardboard cutouts. There are season ticket holders, there are celebrities, and at Petco Park in San Diego, true to their brand identity, there is a section of cardboard cutouts made up of strictly pets.