This week I’ve had the unique opportunity to introduce a program director to our format whose background is exclusively in mainstream radio. That was me 23 years ago.
If I only knew then what I know now.
Continue reading“People are really not coming to see us as much as they are coming to see and hear what we represent to the audience.”
Carole King
Best in your class. Best in your school. Best in the city. At every level you attain, you should want to be the best at that level.
And then you want to find another level.
This is how growth happens. The minute you get satisfied and think you have nothing else to learn, you’ll STOP learning. And then you’ll become a dinosaur.
Radio is part science, part Art. Part talent, part planning, part performance. The desire to learn more is what fuels every great career. If you need help, talk with friends, listen to each other’s work, and share thoughts. Get a coach. Study acting, movies, great books.
FEED the part of you that wants to be the best at your level.
Even New Coke had a longer lifespan than CNN+.
Fewer than 10,000 people were watching CNN+ daily. I reckon’ that’s less than your station’s daily cume if you’re in a good sized market.
“What you have to do is offer some original content, unique value or have a significantly important archive of content and CNN+ didn’t offer any of those things. These were total retreads of the same shows you could get for free featuring most of the same people and to the extent that they even had other kinds of documentary content most of those things you could get on other platforms. Just not interesting.”
Michael Moynihan/Matt Welch on The Megan Kelly Show
Okay. Let’s talk about what we can learn from the demise of CNN+.
Continue readingDon’t get so obsessed with what you know you’re going to have to do later. Stay in this moment. Do what you have to do NOW first. Clear your mind to do a good job with it.
More breaks are ruined (or made lackluster) by a lack of clarity than almost anything else.
The folks at Nielsen World Headquarters tell us there are more “religious” radio stations than any other format category. They also say those religious stations have fewer listeners than any other. Gulp!
Having been involved in the CCM format for more than twenty years, I suggest that there is something we can learn from Easter.
A radio station cannot grow unless it is designed to grow. And that requires a different kind of thinking. Strategic thinking.
Continue readingThe execution of something is far more important than the thinking of it. When the time comes (when the mic opens), you have to be able to Stand and Deliver.
All the great ideas you’ll ever have won’t matter if you can’t put ’em across to the listener. Even something as simple as saying the name of the station needs to be sincere, slightly different every time, and polished.
That’s why the biggest gap is between Good and Great.
And that’s why I coach. I love helping people get to Great.
A Samsung Galaxy S21 commercial made me think. Of all messages communicated not one centered on the features of a cell telephone. Wow! A commercial about a cell phone that never mentioned a cell phone.
Made for the epic in everyday.
Continue readingA few weeks ago, I went to Dallas and sat in on guitar at the House of Blues for a couple of songs with my dear friend Kenny Wayne Shepherd.
Kenny is an amazing blues guitarist. I’ve known him since he was five years old, and first started showing him some things about guitar when he was seven.
Kenny talked about that experience as he introduced me, and said “He even showed me the principles, like the real foundation of what’s important about playing.”
Not just “licks” or running scales. Not WHAT to do so much as WHY you do it.
The same as radio. You go from ‘just another voice quacking’ to someone the listener bonds with because of WHY you do what you do. People FEEL more than they hear.
And as Kenny Wayne Shepherd shows his audience every night he plays, expertise is fine (and he’s brilliant), but the emotion behind it is what counts.
Philip Yancey shares in his book “Vanishing Grace”:
Continue reading“Mark Rutland whimsically recalls a survey in which…
Americans were asked what words they would most like to hear.
He predicted the first choice: ‘I love you.‘
Number two was ‘I forgive you.‘
The third choice took him by surprise: ‘Supper’s ready.‘”
It dawned on Rutland that these three statements provide a neat summary of the gospel story.”
“A recent survey says…”
“A new poll shows…”
“According to the latest statistics…”
Those references put us to sleep more times than not. The words themselves are boring. Numbers and percentages even more so.
So here’s what works better (because it’ll will sound more conversational):
