A station I’ve worked with for years now faces a huge challenge.  Their longtime morning man and PD is leaving the station after many years of exemplary service and success.  At the same time, they’re being pressured by a relatively new GM to get ratings and revenue up, and part of that is to reduce expenses by going to fewer air talents being employed (doubling up on a jock by putting him or her on two different stations in the cluster) and going to more voice-tracked shows on the weekends.

So I want to speak into that as a bonus for any PD or GM reading this, while at the same time focusing on what will help any talent under the gun from his boss to do better.

First, if you live by math (ratings statistics and projections) as your starting place to the extent that you think more voice-tracked shifts are an answer, that’s not gonna fly.  In radio today, both in the short and the long run, Talent doesn’t DELIVER the product, talent IS the product.

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On Sunday, December 2^nd, 2018, two fans got into a fight in the stands of a Pittsburgh Steelers game.  One guy said something.  The guy he said it to tellingly removed his cap, then head-butted the first guy.  Guy #1’s girlfriend and several other fans got involved.

Not exactly untypical, but as I read about it (and watched the video), something the writer of the article, Jay Busbee said, really caught my attention:

“This is why nobody brings kids to football games anymore, and why nobody under the age of 40 spends any time on Facebook.  They know enough not to get caught up in whatever messes the ‘olds’ are creating.”

The “olds?”  Wow.

Now whether you agree with the Facebook statement or not, it’s still something to consider.  I’ve been coaching people on how TO use – and now NOT to use – Facebook postings for years.  The gist of it is that if a comment is relevant to something top of mind TODAY, you might want to use it, but random postings are virtually useless, because Relevance is King when it comes to Content.

I’m not saying your listeners don’t still use Facebook, but we should always be looking at the next big thing.  Because habitually when radio does that, they find out that it’s already here.

This is probably the shortest tip I’ve ever written…

I talk a lot about editing, and here’s why:

All the great quotes are short.  No one quotes a paragraph.

Okay, you’ve got a story you want to tell.  Great.  Tell me the story… but leave half of it out.

Yes, I’m serious.  Too much detail, unneeded side roads, too many words to express a thought, too much setup, more than one “punch line,” or “backing and filling” because you’re not very well-organized… those things make even the best story incredibly tedious, and not worth the Listener’s time.

To be a great talent, you have to develop discipline and get concise.  Great storytellers hold people every step of the way, from beginning to end.  And remember, you’re not paid by the word; you’re paid by the Connection.

(Yes, I’m sure there’s an exception you can think of, some show in your city that gets away with doling out overly long drivel and has high ratings in spite of it.  But that’s not the norm, and their time is coming to an end.  The world is getting used to 140 characters being all they have time to read.  Listening habits will eventually reflect that, too.)

Let’s make this one really simple:

With your Content, you can engage the brain, or you can engage the heart… or you can engage both.  What you SHOULDN’T do is only engage the brain.  That’s boring.

If you need help with this, get some coaching, do an aircheck session with your PD, or maybe swap ideas with some of the other people on the station.  Because if you don’t understand how to do it… and do it well… you’re going to save a lot of time by NOT thinking that it’ll somehow just magically “come to you.”

It’s like that scene in “The Odd Couple” when the slob, Oscar Madison, tells his finicky roommate Felix Unger that he thought gravy just “came with the meat.”  As Felix said, “No, it doesn’t.  You have to MAKE it.”  Sometimes we need help to make it.