Our format is either a bunch of songs that people don’t know by artists they’ve never heard of…

or…

…it is a format of songs and stories about the most important things in our lives.

The former results in a station with a one share.  The latter results in a station that is a market leader.

Seth Godin says…

“One way the tribe identifies is through the observance of a holiday, of a group custom, of the thing we all do together that proves we are in sync.  People thrive on mass celebration, but as our culture has fragmented, these universal observances are harder to find…

Halloween and the Super Bowl are the new secular holidays, the group-mania events that prove we’re able to stay in sync…

(It’s a) chance for all of us to talk about the same thing at the same time.  This is part of what it means to belong.”

This is a part of what it means to belong.

If programmers in our format understood the power of being a part of a group talking about the same thing at the same time, our format would be transformed.

“Your customers and your employees want to feel what it feels to do what other people are doing.  Not everyone, just the people they identify with… because hanging out with people you care about (even if it’s just to eat junk food and talk about how bad the commercials are) is almost always worth doing.”

Recently I was with a well-known leadership guru who shared his organization’s mantra for creating a culture of excellence.  He distilled everything down to what he described as three basic ideas.

1. Make it better
2. Make it better
3. Make it better

He stressed that it is more than just a pithy way of emphasizing his organization’s desire for improvement.  It was their way of empowering every person in the organization to look for tangible ways to make their part of the process, from idea to execution, better today than it was yesterday.

So, what would this look like in the key areas of programming?

Music
Make it better by only playing songs listeners love.  Weed out the so-so and ones without broad consensus.  Unfamiliar new songs must be exposed carefully and enough that listeners can become familiar with them.

Talent
Make it better by delivering what Mark Ramsey describes as “what they hired you for.”  Meet expectations. Be relevant and interesting (in that order).  Program directors can help by assessing a talent’s “batting average,” and helping them increase it over time.

Promotions
Make it better by focusing promotions on the needs and benefits of the listeners.   Ask ‘Why should they care?’  Make it better by designing in your station’s brand values.  (Of course, your station has to actually have brand values.  See Frost Advisory #238—Celebrate What You Value.)

Service Elements (such as news, weather, and traffic)
Make it better by remembering all non-music elements are an interruption and must add value to the listener’s experience.  Information is either relevant or it’s not.  As my friend Dean O’Neal says “there is nothing more irrelevant than a traffic report for traffic you’re not in.”

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. Don’t look for the quick, big improvement.  Seek the small improvement one day at a time.  That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.”
~Legendary coach John Wooden

*Photo from a get-together of Chick-fil-A‘s best customers at The Hatch in Atlanta to talk about how to make it better.

We don’t strive for exceptional.

Our nature is to be ordinary.

Exceptional is “forming an exception or rare instance; unusual; extraordinary”.
~Dictionary.com

The problem with being exceptional is not that we don’t know what it is.  The problem with being exceptional is that it goes against our nature.

Our default is always playing those extra songs that our listeners don’t know and don’t love, not the discipline of just playing the ones they love and tune to us for.

Our default is always talking too much, not the precision of “just the right amount.”

Our default is always “any time, any city,” not “right here, right now.”

Our default is always fluff, not being meaningful.

Our default is always formal, not being natural and conversational.

Our default is always bland, not surprise and delight.

The trouble is…

…great radio is hard work.

The easiest thing is never the best thing.

“You get what you accept.

If we accept a high standard, we will be rewarded with results consistent with that standard.  If we accept that other people can talk over us, and detract from our message, then we will not be heard.  If we only accept a best effort, then we will receive exactly that – no less.”
~Chris Oliver

“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.”
~Donald Miller, “Blue Like Jazz”

Think about the things you love.

I love the guitar because my high school buddies Kenny and Wally loved the guitar.

I love Mexican food because I’m a Texan.  It’s the law.

I first loved baseball because my dad loved baseball.  In fact, when you ask someone how they became a baseball fan they usually respond by talking about someone they love.  There is no better example than following last year’s World Series when Cubs’ fans wrote the names of loved ones on the brick wall at Wrigley Field.  Curious, isn’t it?

Everyone listens to your station because they love something else.  So every effort to make them love our features and sweepers misses the point.  It’s like trying to convince a baseball fan to love a team because the pitcher’s mound is 60 feet 6 inches away from home plate.

“Write because you love the reader.  Never write to prove your point.  Write to remind the reader they have infinite value.”
~Donald Miller

People love your radio station because they love something else.  When you figure that out, just stand back and watch people begin to love your station.

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.