My dear friend and associate John Frost and I talk to stations all the time about what their Strategy is. (Hint: “What you want to happen” is not a Strategy.)
I talk to air talent all the time about what their specific strategy is each day. And I push them to think about these questions… Continue reading
It’s easy.
It’s easy to let grass grow and have weeds in your yard. It’s easy to go to the driving range and be a bad golfer. It’s easy to not exercise and get flabby.
It’s easy to have a bad radio station.
Continue readingRadio is not about what you say you do, or what you say you are. It’s about how you show it, and how you live up to it.
Your “Mission Statement” should really be a simple one:
Welcome in the person who’s never heard you before, and then either inform or entertain them (or both) every day.
We would all be flying Wells Fargo Airlines if they had thought they were in transportation instead of the stage coach business. The same could be said of many once great companies like Polaroid and Blockbuster. Netflix started by mailing DVDs.
Continue reading“What product category are you in? It’s bigger than you think.”
Seth Godin
One thing stands out immediately when I listen to someone – that person’s timing. (And the station’s timing, too.) Waiting for that ‘last logical moment’ to start talking, or to hit the next element when a song ends, for example.
Yes, we’ve all grown used to cue tones – but who’s creating them? Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever hear the ending of a song again without some Imaging piece crashing in or the air talent talking over it.
Say it isn’t so!
My cousin, the brilliant surgeon, told me of the time that a hospital board member barged into the operating room during a gall bladder surgery and told him they should remove the patient’s kidney. After all he had done the Google search, you see.
It’s a joke, of course, but…
Continue readingIn the last tip, I mentioned Bob Dylan. To cut to the chase, think about his song “Like a Rolling Stone.” Even if you take away the imagery and the storyline, one lyric rises to the surface over and over as Dylan starts each chorus asking, “How does it feel?”
And THAT is what you should be thinking of as you shape your Content each day. How did this thing that happened FEEL?
Without a discernible feeling, an identifiable emotion, it’s just a bunch of factoids. Incidents, maybe opinions. But what did it FEEL like?
If you can’t answer that, the idea is an incomplete thought.
When I was a kid I can remember staring at the bulletin board in the hallway eager to see what the next few months would be like. Each teacher posted a list of the kids that would be in her class the upcoming year. Frankly, I wasn’t that concerned about which teacher I was assigned. No, I was more concerned with whether I’d be with my friends; Rodney, David, Buddy, and Julian. And maybe even that I’d have a chance to be around that pretty girl Marlene.
Continue readingThere was a time when it was in vogue to be overly audacious, tricking people with prank phone calls, embarrassing people, making fun of them, etc.
I thought it really sucked, because to me, it seemed kind of cruel. I didn’t – and still don’t – get why it would be okay to demean the listener, or use that person as a “prop” for something that you wouldn’t do to a friend or coworker. Continue reading
As I write this 850 people have been rescued in the Central Texas floods. This isn’t just a random news story to me. It’s personal.
My sister and cousins went to summer camp there, and I have been there numerous times as the little brother. We have home movies from there. It’s a real place with real people with real lives.
We forget, don’t we?
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