Just this week I found out a friend’s middle name is the same as my first name. But wait… wait… there’s more!

We also discovered that my middle name is the same as his first name. We’ve known and worked together for most of ten years and we never knew.

How do your listeners get a sense that your station has lots of listeners? Because they hear lots of listeners. It’s like an audio version of a crowd shot.

Trust me. I’m going somewhere with this.

In their book “Made to Stick,” Chip and Dan Heath share the story of a newspaper with a remarkable 100% circulation rate: everyone in his small town reads it. The publisher’s country wisdom was simple: “Names, Names, Names,” reasoning that people read his newspaper because they wanted to see their own names (or someone else’s).

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that the church is known more for what it is against than what it is for.

“A business is no longer what it tells customers it is. A business is what customers tell other customers it is.”

In his book “Know What You’re For,” Jeff Henderson recommends that you consider the gap between these two questions:

1. What do you want to be known for?
2. What are you known for?

The gap between the two answers will illuminate how your station moves from a transactional relationship with your listeners to one that is more relational.

They say there are more “religious” radio stations than any other format category. They also say those religious stations have fewer listeners than any other. Having worked in the format for more than twenty years now I’ve believe the reason is fairly obvious.

A radio station cannot grow unless it is designed to grow. And that requires a different kind of thinking. Strategic thinking.

A growth strategy is one that incorporates big picture concepts such as:

• Why does the radio station exist?
• Who are our listeners?
• What do they desire and expect from our station?
• Who and where are other people like them?

We radio folk tend to think of tune out as a benign little concept akin to teenagers button pushing looking for the latest Taylor Swift song. While that does happen and we should do our darnedest to minimize programming that results in tune out, there is a far more ominous idea lurking in the bushes.

Some people leave a brand and never come back.

A friend of a friend told me that when people leave a car brand they seldom come back. Eek! Specifically, when folks have an accident they are far less likely to purchase that brand of car again. Maybe it’s partly psychological (“It’s the car’s fault”), or maybe it’s the potential embarrassment of the folks at your dealership pegging you as the one that side-swiped the delivery truck of kumquats headed toward the orphanage. (There’s a sentence you don’t see real often!)

What if we radio folk considered the seriousness of “tune out” as if the listeners were NEVER going to tune back in? That is, they were likely to leave the brand once and for all.

You’ve probably seen them. The clever little social media posts that say something like “Tell me you’re from Texas without mentioning Texas.”

There’s also…

“Tell me you love pizza without saying pizza.”

“Tell me you love baseball without mentioning baseball.”

You get the idea.

In our case, tell me that you reflect my values without saying you reflect my values.

It was an hour that never existed.

We changed our clocks from 2 AM to 3 AM. Rod Serling might say, “Imagine if you will that one hour never existed. No babies were born. No one died. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

That hour doesn’t matter.

Waiting through the first part of a boring movie. You hope it will get better.

Sitting down at a restaurant. The waiter is slow to come over. Minutes tick by without giving your drink order. You hope it will get better.

What’s the best time to buy Christmas decorations?

Yep! AFTER Christmas!

Ever wonder why Valentine Day’s cards are half price AFTER Valentine’s Day, appliances at cheapest after the big Labor Day sale, and car dealers are eager to sell to you at $100 over invoice?

It’s because they don’t just make money off of selling stuff, they make money off of MOVING stuff.

They make no money when stuff sits on the shelf. And it takes up the space that could be used for something that MOVES.

When I checked out of my hotel I told the desk clerk, “You may want to have someone check the thermostat in my room. I never could get the room to warm up on the chilly night.”

I shared that the thermostat had numerous functions that made the simple process of making the room warmer almost impossible to figure out.

The desk clerk replied, “Yeah, that remote is pretty complicated.”

I don’t like to brag but I was third chair Sousaphone player in high school band. I could puff out my cheeks right along with the best in a three county radius. My West Texas public school education learned me a lot about good music.

But enough about me. I wonder what we could learn by comparing the design of a radio station to that of a great song.

Let’s start at the beginning. Perhaps you’d like to take notes.

Programming consists of two distinct elements – music, and the stuff that isn’t music. (Well, now! THAT’S some fancy talk!)

For almost a year now life has been very different for most of us. Many aren’t commuting to work resulting in morning and afternoon drive radio listening being very different. Some are homeschooling their kids through no choice of their own. Many have experienced restaurants at minimal capacity, social connections significantly limited, and churches closed. (I’m a part of a new church launch that was shut down longer than we were open.)

Are we grateful for our listeners? Are we grateful they still make us a part of their daily lives?

“Gratitude unexpressed is perceived as ingratitude.”

Andy Stanley

For the last twenty years I’ve spent enough time on airplanes and in rental cars that they’ve awarded me me special status. I get to board before the family of 17 heading off to Walt Disney World, a can of Fresca delivered with my licorice chewies, and I get assigned cars with fancy GPS systems that tell me, “You’re going the wrong way!”

So, what do those companies think of me when I’m hardly traveling at all?