On the surface, it may seem that Howard Stern on satellite, great books, popular TV shows, and your favorite local radio personality may have little or nothing in common. But they all share one thing that I believe is the key to great radio: They all are INTENSELY personal, but still universal.

Both of these factors are important.

Many Air Talents are very personal, talking about their lives, experiences, and challenges. But if the subject only means something to them – if it’s not universal enough for Listeners to feel a common bond with, a “Boy, I know what you’re talking about” emotional connection – it doesn’t work.

The flip side of the coin is the Talent who talks about ‘top of mind’ universal subjects, things that everyone goes through, but doesn’t bring a personal element – a story that leads to an opinion – to the table. So there’s no emotional bonding.

I’ve often described great radio as open-heart surgery that you perform on yourself.

Choose the right subject matter, then POUR yourself into it.

Note: I have very specific tips for how to get into sharing things about yourself. Without learning them, it’s easy to just come across as self-absorbed.

Normally, these coaching tips are for air talents, and this one does apply to your air work. But it’s primarily for MusicRadio Program Directors, simply because I don’t want Air Talents to get in trouble with their bosses over something that I said. The old “it’s easier to get forgiveness than it is permission” thing isn’t really true in this day of Corporate Programming templates and marching orders from above. Now, all too often, “This is the way we do it,” good or bad, is the way of the world. So if you’re a PD, please just take a few minutes and read this through, then take a day and let it wash over you.

No matter what you think, to the listener there are only two elements:

1. Music.
2. Things that aren’t music.

“What about our Imaging?”

Well, it’s not music, is it? Your “Imaging,” to the listener, is just a commercial for you. So when you play a song, then a recorded Imaging piece, then another song, you do not necessarily have the image of playing more music, even though the deejay didn’t say anything. In the mind of the listener, it was song, commercial for you, song.

Go retro. Before this modern template of Imaging playing every other song, the jock usually talked over the song intro, or sometimes a jingle played between songs. (People will sometimes sing your jingle. They’ll never sing your voiceover guy’s Imaging liner.) At the end of a music sweep, we stopped down, did some Content – briefly – then went into a stopset. It was perfect, IF the jocks were concise, and had something to say that informed or entertained.

“But we have things we want to promote.”

When you allow the jocks to talk more often, things can be talked about. There are more opportunities for meaningful teases to be given, for the personality of each jock to emerge, and for true forward momentum to be the first impression a person gets of your station.

“We have limited resources. Some of our jocks aren’t all that great.”

Add the word “yet.” With budget restraints, or a young or inexperienced staff, it’s tempting to not let them talk much. But that’s counterproductive, because no one can learn to ride a horse if they never get in the saddle.

There are only two elements. Play great music. And when you talk -which should be fairly often, but not lengthy – say something worth hearing.

One thing radio people are really good at is kidding themselves. I hear these faulty perceptions a lot:

1. The competitor beating you in the ratings isn’t really that good, but just got lucky and was in the right place at the right time. PPM/Arbitron diaries/Nielson placement or selection just fell their way.

or…

2. They’re living off their reputation, and don’t deserve the ratings they have anymore.

or…

3. The only reason the competition is rated higher than you was because they did a lot of marketing and you didn’t. If you had their marketing budget or promotional budget, you’d be beating them.

These excuses are convenient, but the truth is nobody falls UP.

It’s easy to fall down in the ratings. Just stop working hard, take your Listenership for granted, get away from what was working for you, or become a caricature of yourself.

But you have to earn up. Going up takes work. And focus. And being willing to change what doesn’t work anymore.

Hint: Sometimes, that means getting help.

Think about how often you’ve heard someone say that a performer, during a concert, looked RIGHT AT him (or her). This is not an accident. One of the biggest singers of the seventies told me once that he purposely, at some point in his performance, looked at all 9 “zones” of the venue: Left, Center, Right. Upper, middle, and lower seats in each direction.

He didn’t do them in that order; it was random, but this enabled every single person in the audience to think that they made eye contact at some point.

The truth was, because of the lighting, he couldn’t really see anybody very well. But the illusion was powerful.

It’s the same way in radio, except we have to make contact verbally. To accomplish this, you have to say something that is shared – something that your listener can totally identify with.

This means you can’t simply grab something from a prep sheet or Facebook or a website and basically just read it to me. You have to make it personal.

In every city, there’s a small number of jocks – maybe only 2 or 3 – that really make contact on a daily basis. You can always find them at the very top of the ratings.

The benefit of coaching is that there are very specific techniques that can help you get the hang of this in a pretty short amount of time. If you’re not getting that in-house, reach out.

A good portion of today’s radio listeners – and just about all of the next generation of listeners – want their audio media to adopt the style of social media.

Well, that’s not exactly possible. For one thing, radio is still the biggest social media phenomenon in history. Bigger than Facebook, bigger than Twitter, more social than TV or movies.

If you need proof, think about this: there are millions of people who don’t have Facebook or Instagram or Twitter accounts, but there is no one who hasn’t listened to radio. You don’t have to read it, you don’t have to post anything, and there’s just “like” (it’s on) or “unlike” (turn it off). It’s simple and pure, IF you sound like right now instead of like 1994.

So here’s how you still sound valid without coming across like children to your core demo, or like old geezers with bad hairpieces to your younger listeners:

Instead of announcing, just think about sharing.

Instead of presenting, try inviting.

Stop ‘selling’ things on the air. No one is buying.

You can either be my friend, riding in the car with me (or at my desk at work), or you can be the audio equivalent of pop-up ads on a website.

Choose wisely. The clock is ticking.

If you need help, well…I assume that’s why you’re reading this. There are people here that you can call. If you’ve never worked with a great Consultant or a truly focused Talent Coach, you’re just driving a car with no air conditioning and manual windows.

I think you deserve better than that.