Glenn Beck is a huge Billy Joel fan. He has all his albums. He’s seen him five times.

Here’s what Glenn had to say about a recent concert experience:

“Left Billy Joel early. Disappointed. Was it the fact that he was 90 minutes in before he played one of his real hits? Maybe but all his music is good. Was it that he meandered and seemed to talk to the band more than the audience? … Was it that with all of those things I wished I were home with my wife and kids instead? Yep. There are too many demands on our time and things are way too expensive to stay for someone who, as good as he is, seems to be phoning it in. … Michael Bublé loves his audience, loves to perform, and once you stop liking the audience you should stop performing,” Glenn said. “I didn’t feel any gratitude, any affinity for me at all.”

Sure, it’s easy to look down our noses at the Piano Man and chide him for his uninspired performance, but perhaps we should first look at the log in our own eye…

…to see if we’re no better when one of our talent does a break that is rambling and ill-prepared? (Many stations have more people listening at that very moment than are at a typical Christian music concert).

…if we’re no better when a listener shows up at our concert tent (if we have one at all) and are treated like a stranger or an inconvenience.

…if we’re no better when a potential donor can’t get their calls answered (This has really happened at a station I worked with!)

…if we’re no better when we question the station’s ratings when we’ve not made it a priority to invite people to tune in.

It’s worth saying again. Once you stop liking the audience you should stop performing.

*Inspired by my talented friend Brian Yeager.

Glenn Beck’s post on glennbeck.com

It’s not common sense to warn someone about using common sense.

But that’s the point.

Successful principles of business, leadership, or programming aren’t common. They are the exception. Otherwise, all stations would have high ratings, there would be no leadership challenges, and we’d all have dated the prettiest girl in town.

There are 11,000 business books printed each year. I looked it up. If these principles were merely common sense there would be no demand for these publications.

Recently I had the privilege of sitting with leadership guru John Maxwell when Bill Hybels interviewed former GE CEO Jack Welch for the Willow Creek leadership summit. Nothing he said was common sense. Every morsel of wisdom was counterintuitive and eye opening. He used himself as an example:

“I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that’s a big deal. And if you’re going to be a leader – if you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.” Jack Welch

Successful principles can seem out of whack or counter-intuitive. Leading is about serving. Programming to reach a wider audience is about focusing narrowly.

I’m told there are stations where cranky e-mail writing listeners, board members or family relatives that influence programming decisions without ever having programmed a radio station. After all, it’s just common sense.

Today you will likely face a decision about your radio station where it would make sense to use common sense. Before you react, I suggest you look for a similar situation and try to learn from that success story. Develop a culture that values, not resists, expertise and experience that may not be common.

After all, who would want a surgeon who simply strived for consensus from those who had never performed a surgery?

“While other car companies are showing you what matters to them, we want to know who matters most to you.”

“The Greatest Interception Ever”, Volvo’s advertising campaign during, but not in, the Super Bowl sheds light on a powerful marketing concept for your station.

“Tweet the name of someone who matters to you with #VolvoContest when you see any car commercial during the game. Tell us why they matter and you could win them a brand new Volvo XC60.”

Their viral marketing taps into beliefs and values that just so happens to be at the heart of your radio station: celebrating family and friends, and reaching out to help others.

Beliefs and Values is not about sounding religious, it’s about connecting.

Your station doesn’t need to buy a Super Bowl commercial either. Just tap into the hearts of the compassionate, caring people that listen to Christian music radio, and then provide them a way to make their actions public.

While other radio stations are talking about what matters to them, maybe we should be talking about what matters to our listeners.

*Inspired by yet another stimulating conversation with Mike Moran, Mike Blakemore, and Chad Davis.

They call it “the leaky bucket.”

When PPM metered measurement was birthed, many analytical programmers embraced this philosophy by scampering to remove everything between the songs that might cause tune out. The result was song-to-song segues and little human connection. While no one could argue against eliminating tune outs, this “spotlight effect” * on TUNE OUTS left many stations void of any station branding to convey its unique benefits, and no human connection.

Stations became more like Pandora but without their customized music mix. Stations were left with little of what radio does best (a listening experience based on shared values and experiences) but without the capability of offering what only Pandora can.

In other words, radio listening became the worst of both worlds.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Super Bowl. USA Today’s Ad Meter website allows us to see the Super Bowl commercials (even in advance of the game) and vote on our favorites. Just for the heck of it I Googled “vote for best Super Bowl commercials” and got 50,900,000 results.

I reckon some folks must actually like commercials, to the cost of 4.5 million dollars for 30 seconds.

Now listen, I realize there’s a difference in a commercial from Honest Fred’s Used Cars in Mule Shoe to ones like you see during Sunday’s game, but…

…the Super Bowl is proof that people don’t dislike all commercials, they dislike bad or irrelevant commercials.

Listeners don’t dislike all talk, they dislike boring and irrelevant talk.

When we shift the spotlight from side to side we are able to illumine the appropriate programming response to talk that may cause tune out is not to eliminate talk, but rather to create talk that is relevant, compelling and enhances the radio station’s value.

The response to imaging that may cause tune out is not to eliminate imaging, but rather to create compelling imaging that tells the radio station’s story and connects it to the listener’s life. (Better yet, to tell the listener’s story and connect it to why the station exists).

Like the Super Bowl commercials do.

But that takes work. And I’m told that having a great radio station is a hard work.

* “We are quick to jump to conclusions because we give too much weight to the information that is right in front of us, while failing to consider the information that’s just offstage. It’s called “the spotlight effect.” The spotlight only lights one spot. Everything outside it is obscured. When we begin to shift the spotlight from side to side the situation starts to look very different. And that, in essence, is the core difficulty in decision making. What’s in the spotlight will rarely be everything we need to make a good decision, but we won’t always remember to shift the light. Sometimes, in fact, we’ll forget there’s a spotlight at all, dwelling so long in the tiny circle of light that we forget there’s a broader landscape beyond it.” Chip and Dan Heath, “Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work”

**Obviously dosage and precision are critical. “Abusus non tollit usum” – the abuse of a thing does not invalidate the proper use of a thing.

Your radio station is comprised of only two things, in its most basic structure. The music, and everything-else.

Strategically, the music serves one purpose and the everything-else serves another. Successful radio stations understand this (and program for it). The others have no idea what I’m talking about.

This Frost Advisory is about the everything-else, which I’ll define as a continuum that stretches from the purpose of the radio station to what is relevant to the listener’s life. The everything-else has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Guess which is most important. Guess which we pay the least attention.

When our girls were little we loved to tell each other riddles and jokes. If fact, one of their favorite books at bedtime was one that carried over from my childhood, “1001 Riddles for Children.”

My younger daughter Carly declared one day that she had discovered six little words that could make any joke funny. No matter how the joke started, no matter if anyone laughed, no matter how badly the joke bombed all you had to do, she said, was to end with these SIX LITTLE WORDS and everyone would howl.

The end of the joke, the end of the movie, the end of the book, and yes, the end of a content break on your radio station determines whether listeners are delighted, dismayed, or disappointed.

Donald Miller puts it this way,

“So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.”

I was planning to dig a little deeper this week at the CMB regional summit in Houston….

….and then I found five dollars!