Reckon’ it’s happened to us all.

I have Facebook friends whose political rants make me want to hit them with a baseball bat.  Metaphorically, of course.

My friend Randy’s FB tirades are the most extreme left-wing drivel you can imagine.  My friend Gort, a self-described liberal, has totally blocked his rants and hides under the bed when he calls.  And they are best friends!

My friend Cooper is as right-wing as a one-legged chicken.  He can’t even mention Hillary’s name without the liberal (pardon the expression) use of expletives.  #@#$#@%$@.

Their diametrically opposed views are so categorically biased you’d think that Hillary and Donald were worthy of challenging Mother Theresa on sainthood.

What can we programmers learn from this silly little journey into social media mud rucking?

A better way to spend our time than a Facebook rant, I’d say.

What if it was the other way around?

What if everything we heard was something we knew was true in our hearts?  What if every time they spoke we felt like they had been talking directly to us?  What if we consistently heard things that affirmed our identify, encouraged us in our daily challenges, and gave us a glimpse at the best version of ourselves?

“The people we surround ourselves with either raise or lower our standards.  They either help us become the best-version-of-ourselves or become lesser versions of ourselves.  We all need people in our lives who raise our standards, who remind us of our eternal purpose, and challenge us to become the best version-of-ourselves.”
~John Maxwell

What if those things of value came from our favorite radio station?

My friends at KLTY in Dallas are giving $500 to listeners to help a friend.  Even though the listener also receives $500, that is not the part that is resonating.  They’ve tapped into their listeners’ value system that helping a friend is a meaningful thing to do.

KLTY is helping their listeners become a better version of themselves.

Or, we could just post another rant on Facebook!

It’s an interesting idea.

Andy Andrews says, “Don’t believe everything you think.  What you think is what you know.  And wisdom goes beyond what you know.”

They say that there really are no marital problems, only people problems that two imperfect people bring into a marriage.

After more than 40 years in radio I’ve come to realize that there really are no programming problems; only problems that people bring into programming discussions.

They seem to fall into these key areas:

1. Insecurity.  Often it is the “Peter Principle”, those that are successful at a lower level but then promoted to their own level of incompetency where they remain.  These are those who don’t know, know they don’t know, but work tirelessly to not be found out.  Oh, the stories I could tell.
2. Experience (or lack of).  These people learned programming principles decades ago and are threatened by new concepts.  They tend to divert back to what they did in “the old days” because it is comfortable.  Unfortunately it is also forever their frame of reference.
3. Work ethic.  When someone touts a programming philosophy that ultimately means they don’t have to work as hard, I know it’s not a real philosophy.  The best work we do is always the hardest work we do.

“People are more comfortable with old problems than they are with new solutions.”
~John Maxwell

Does any of this sound like your radio station?  I’d love to hear from you.  Confidential, of course.

Some have called the him a xenophobe. *I had to look it up, too.  Others say he’s the one to make America great again.

One perspective cites her “command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service” (USA Today editorial board),

…while another says, “wherever (she) goes, issues of ethnics and improprieties are not far behind.” Mike Pence

Perspective.

What’s your listeners’ perspective?  Not about politics, per se, but about life?

I once asked a candidate for program director how he knew what his listeners cared about.  I’ll never forget his answer.

“It’s simple.  I just walk in the control room.  Every person on the air lives it.”

In a format where the music is unfamiliar the ability to connect to the listeners’ perspective is a critical step in building a relationship.

“We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are… We’re attracted to reflections of ourselves… Win the heart and the mind will follow.”
~Roy Williams

*A person with an extreme dislike or fear of foreigners, their customs, their religion.

It’s here.  Likely the most eyeballs ever staring at the two presidential candidates, and they with the highest negative ratings ever.

It’s a made for TV reality show for better or for worse.

What can our stations learn from these unusual times?

Basic Trout and Reis positioning suggests attaching your product or service to what is on everyone’s mind.  That common ground thing, don’tchaknow?  Then connect what’s on everyone’s mind to the benefits of your brand.

As the headlines focus more and more on discouragement, there is another choice.

The good thing about being ordinary is that you don’t have to work at it.  Just do the same old thing.  Today’s show is yesterday’s show.  Last year’s promotion is this year’s.

Radio is like a light switch.  Turn it on and something happens.  If that something is what listeners expect, good things can happen.  If it is better than listeners expect then it is no longer ordinary.

I recently walked the halls where no one in the station was listening to the station.  Why should they?  It was ordinary.

Ordinary radio stations are a commodity.  You can take ’em or leave ’em.

“A commodity is a product or a service that no one cared enough about to market.

Marketing creates value, by combining stories, design and care. The product or service is produced in a way that makes engaging with the item better.”
~Seth Godin

If you don’t work hard, if you don’t innovate, if you don’t stretch your own limits the result will be ordinary.   And anyone can do that.

“We (heart) logistics”, sing the actors dressed in the brown of the parcel delivery company, assuming that the internal work flow is meaningful to the customer.

“Bad advertising is like home movies.  In your ads, please, never point the camera at yourself.”
~Roy Williams, “The Wizard of Ads”

“Try church again,” declares one billboard campaign in Orlando, apparently targeting those least interested.   Even worse perhaps is the billboard artwork for hernia surgery.   (I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP, as Dave Barry would say.)

When you communicate the benefits of listening to your station, are you doing it from the perspective of those inside the station or those outside?  Careful.   This is trickier than it seems, because you’re on the inside.

My favorite bad radio campaign is “Not what you think!”, based on the assumptions that you, 1) already think something about that station, and that 2) it’s wrong!

Taylor makes wonderful guitars.  I even have a couple of them.  But their social media campaign isn’t focused on design and distribution, the things meaningful to those inside the factory.  No, they share stories of people enjoying their Taylor guitars.

“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.  It is as if they are showing you the way.”
~Donald Miller, “Blue Like Jazz”

Sometimes we treat it like it’s a nuance.  It’s not.

We don’t have a choice.  Not really.

If we want to be effective communicators we have to speak their language.  See it through their eyes.  Understand their perspective.

I’ll prove it.

This is a really cool map that shows the richest person in every state.

Now tell me, where did your eyes naturally go when you looked at this map?

Likely to where you’re from.

“To move and audience, especially a diverse audience, from where they are to where you want them to be requires common ground.  If you want me to follow you on a journey, you have to come get me.  The journey must begin where I am, not where you are or where you think I should be.

…If the journey begins with the assumption that everybody here know what we are doing, you will eventually have an audience of people who already know what you are doing.  If you journey begins with the assumption that everybody in the audience is a believer, then eventually your audience will be full of believers.  Who shows up for Third Day concerts?  Primarily people who know and are expecting Third Day music.  Where you consistently begin and what you consistently assume determine who consistently shows up.  Why?  Because your assumptions create the common ground for the journey.”
~Andy Stanley, “Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love To Attend“

It was easy for him to see.

“What do you shoot?”, he asked, as I stood in for my first golf lesson.

I hemmed and hawed and said, “Well, I use to break 90 all the time.  But now I have trouble breaking 100 because I don’t play that often.”

That’s all he needed to hear. “People that can’t break 100 don’t hit the ball solidly.  Their fundamentals, like grip and stance, are out of whack.”

His diagnosis: simple and accurate.

What if that simple discernment could be applied to programming your station?

Breaking 100 is about the basics.  The correlation to programming is understanding what songs to play and what to do between songs.

If your talent don’t know what to talk about (or how to talk about it), they don’t understand the purpose of the format.  They don’t understand “why people hire them”, as Mark Ramsey would say.

If we understand that people tune to your station to be encouraged and entertained, to have their values in faith, family and community affirmed, then we have a filter by which they can choose what they talk about;

…whether at five o’clock in the afternoon on the way home from work…

…on Sunday morning on the way to church or…

…waking up and starting my day,

…which is when I actually heard a reference to “partial human remains” while eating my breakfast (I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP, as Dave Barry would say), an obvious sign of not understanding the format.

If you can’t break 100, you don’t understand why people listen.

On the next Frost Advisory; what if you can’t break 90?