This Mother’s Day, perhaps we can apply some lessons we’ve learned from Mom to how we program our radio stations.

Maybe Mom would have us…

Just play the music your listeners love.  Don’t play music they don’t love.

Talk to your listeners like a friend, not like a stranger.

Act like you enjoy being with your listeners.  Maybe then they’ll enjoy being with you.

Give your listeners presents and throw a party for them and have them invite all their friends.  They’ll feel special.

If you have to tell you listeners bad news, hold their hand, and tell them how sorry you are.

If you should take your listeners somewhere they’ve never been, surround them with familiar things to make them feel safe.  And don’t leave them alone.

Don’t waste your listeners’ time with things they don’t enjoy.  Get to the point, make the interruptions brief, and quickly return to the main reason they listen.

Flush.  Be vigilant about getting the bad stuff off your radio station and replacing it with good stuff.

I can’t think of anyone who loved my mother that I don’t also love.  Love what is important to your listeners.

Twitter.com/Marlins

(Inspired by the poem “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum)

It’s a curious thing.

We work in a format that is inherently significant.  And yet we seem to strive to make it superficial.

Instead of being about the most important things in one’s life, we make it about songs I don’t know by artists I’ve never heard of.  We seem to brush by what our listeners already care about to focus on something they don’t care about.

Perhaps we can learn something from the richest company in the world.

Apple’s brilliant new campaign “Focus on what you love” uses Beliefs and Values to communicate a simple feature of the iPhone 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waTteMeg4Ag

Apple gets it.

Start here.  Focus on what your listeners love.

They’ve been called the Seven Words of Death for any organization.

The first cousin to “We’ve never done it that way before” is “that doesn’t sound like us.”

I heard one general manager actually admit that he didn’t want to do a certain programming initiative because it would sound better than anything on his station.  Needless to say he got his wish; his station didn’t get better.

John Maxwell identified several reasons people use to resist change.  These three are the ones I encounter most at radio stations:

• Routine makes people comfortable.  Since many people are habit prone anything that threatens their habits, they resist.
• People are simply satisfied with the old ways and don’t want to change.
• People resist change when they are threatened with the loss of something that is valuable to them.

It’s one thing when you see fear of change from disc jockey who is lazy and simply wants to repeat the schtick from his previous gig (and format), it’s another thing altogether when you see fear of change from the leader.

We all know of radio stations that sound basically the same as they did ten years ago, seeing their success through the rear view mirror.  They believe they are successful because of the list of things they have done..  They forget that once those things were innovative and distinctive.  They are the sitting ducks when new competition arrives.

“If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post.  If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution.  Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.”
~G. K. Chesterton

Leaders, what is something your station has never done that is distinctive and would help build a bond between you and your listeners?

Go do that.

You know the story.

108 years without a World Series championship.  The lovable losers.  The “Friendly Confines” of a ballpark named after a chewing gum magnate. “Let’s Play Two” and “Holy Cow!”

When the Chicago Cubs recently received their World Series rings they did something remarkable.  Instead of inviting the typical three piece suit sponsors and local aldermen, the Cubs invited just regular ole fans to award their rings.

There was “the father whose kids all have Cub-themed names.  A cancer survivor.  A season ticket holder who saved the paper after Ernie Banks’ debut and later got him to sign it.

Calling it ‘the memory of a lifetime,’ president of baseball operations Crane Kenney said involving the fans in the ceremony was the team’s way of saying thank you for never giving up, despite the Cubs giving them ample opportunity to do so.”
~USA Today Sports

The winners were selected from more than 1,500 video nominations on Twitter using the #CubsRingBearer hashtag, which was shared more than 10,000 times overall.

How does your station make your fans feel like stars?  How do you give them an experience they’ll share with their friends?

All those times you’ve had an artist in the studio have you ever considered inviting your station’s biggest fans to sit right there next to you?  #onceinalifetime

Of those dozens of concerts your station sponsors every year, have you ever considered choosing one of your biggest fans to introduce the band?  Or to sit on stage?  Or on the front row?  Or the video board?  Or be on the post-concert show?

Have you considered inviting your most viral social media fans to join you in a pre-concert all-you-can-tweet seats so they can share about their special experience with thousands of their friends?

I reckon that 108 years of not winning gives you plenty of time to think about how to really appreciate your fans.