Before We Move On

"I'm a big believer of stations sounding real....no, best, most, baddest w/ blips, bips, zips, growls, and zaps.....that is soooo over......just communicate the core values (listener benefits) in as real and as brief a fashion as humanly possible....people are so burned on hype.....if at all possible let others speak about you, instead of speaking about yourself...attached is an example from actor Shia LeBouf.....all we do is identify him at the beginning, and that's it.....the rest of the "co-signing" is all on him....if we added anything else here it would have been piling on and way too much.....make your station sound real, listener focused, and genuinely fun, not goofy, not dated with lasers, and no chest thumping copy......is it any wonder we are a TSL challenged medium, a majority of stations continue to insult the intelligence of their listeners by still insisting they sound like 1986.....younger demos coming up today, just don't give a shit.....so please don't drive them away from our medium.....you are are free to disagree here....I will just close with this.... I travel a lot, and hear a lot of stations driving listeners away...if you are in a PPM market you know how important brevity, sincerity, and creativity are.....yup even more important than they were in the diary system.... " -- Jimmy Steal, VP/Emmis/Los Angeles

Do It Right "Orr" Else

Paul Orr: be certain what goes between your songs stands out ... in only the "best" ways:

• Use local lifestyle for imaging content
• When imaging flows into the music, you have extra momentum
• Listen to your competitors for claims that you might turn 180 degrees and use against them
• Use hooks as themes for imaging
• Hot new thing: produce jingles for song stamps so the integrate with your music and don't sound like "old" jingles
• For random audio: clips from remotes where the talent is very excited, after Listener Advisory Board panels
• Listeners doing imaging adds to ‘personal’ feel of station.
• Set up listener comment line to collect comments
• Sound real; communicate the core values and listener benefits in as real and brief a fashion as possible.
• Listeners are burned on hype; let listeners talk about you instead of us talking about us. No chest thumping.
• Think: brevity, creativity and sincerity.
• Use artists (or listeners) to explain a contest
• Add random but related copy to attract listener attention.
• Archive artist audio for music and contest promos.

Nick Michaels' Philosophy

If you've heard or seen Nick anywhere, at a seminar or even on his own website, you've no doubt been exposed to at least a part of his approach to imaging anything today:

"The secret of all great radio is great story telling. Great radio is made when intimacy and emotion are used to connect the audience to what is coming out of the speakers."

Understanding radio and what makes it different.

1: Emotion

Radio is an emotional medium. More than television, more than print, it is best at conveying emotion.

Radio messages work best when they are driven by an emotion. Take full advantage of radio's emotional nature by writing for it. The power of emotion over facts is evident on radio.

Save the facts for print. Print is where facts can be enjoyed, perused at leisure, re-read and referred to.

2: Give it a face and a name

When writing an image ad for radio, always try to personalize it by giving it a face and a name.

Instead of "When the weather gets bad , turn to News-Radio 1100, First with weather facts and school closings."

Try to build the message around a person not a concept.

" This is Marie Jenkins, her twelve year old son Ronnie has kidney disease. He needs dialysis or he could die. When Marie needs to know about weather, she turns to News-Radio 1100, Because to her, the weather, can be a matter of life and death."

This stresses the user benefit of the station and the personal nature of the message does not cause listener tune out.

3: In an over communicated world a whisper becomes a scream.

The environment into which your message is sent is hostile. Your message must factor this in from the very beginning or it is doomed to fail. Too many messages means only a few get through. Is yours one of them?

4: Don't burden the listener.

Never forget that the listener can only take home one thought. Trying to make the message carry more weight than it can causes the listener to be burdened.

5: Words are the enemy in a message.

Too many words. Wherever possible establish mood with sound not words.

6: Write powerfully, read humbly.

If the words are powerful, you do not need to add any power to them with your voice. Lose all the additional vocal power and let the word power shine through. If the words are not powerfully written, get better writers.

7: Creativity is perspective

Deliver your message from a different perspective. Be different.

Tomorrow: Journal Knoxville PD Paul Orr takes this all one step further for stations in competitive situations.

Stationality: Who Is Your Listener? What's YOUR "Word?"

Yesterday's post included a slide from Daniel Anstandig's 2007 presentation at Dan O'Day's PD Grad School, because Dan made some evergreen points so perfectly.

#1: choose YOUR ''word."

"Comfort," the one that resides in the center of his example bullseye works perfectly for a Christian AC or other soft format.

What one word gives expression to everything you want to stand for in the mind of your audience? Choose thoughtfully.

It is imperative to understand the target listener’s world of experience.


Successful stations give listeners a sense of belonging by validating their values and lifestyle.

It is impossible for us to “out-technology” new technology.

Creative distribution can’t hurt us, but the bottom-line for continual growth is cultivating relationships through your programming.

How can you make a one-on-one connection with your listener in a way that they believe you’re talking to them on a personal level every time they listen?

It’s not only about what your radio station does. It’s about what your radio station means.

Tomorrow, another audio communication expert, Nick Michaels, on how to make sure that this happens on your radio station.

Elements Of Stationality

What parts of your radio station do you employ to develop "stationality" listeners can consistently experience?


.... Everything!

.. with thanks to McVay New Media's Daniel Anstandig.

Burger-ality

Pulling It All Together This Week (...like last week, one day at a time)

Last week's four-part series of ideas to max your engagement in listeners' celebrations and holidays during February got some nice feedback on why it's so important to do that.

For example, this treatise on stationality from an old colleague, who's looking for his next job right now:

· Local, local, local. Engage the community and get involved and talk about local events and happenings. Radiate civic pride!

· Review, develop and maintain station benchmarks.

· Terms of endearment: Tie into local charities and events that evoke emotion and tug on the heart strings. Find a charity that you can hang your stations hat on and make it a mission.

· Have fun! Develop listener talk and curiosity through little or no cost signature station promotions that are ongoing, fun and not just seasonal.

· Theme It Up. Review and develop station(s) “Theme Weekend” arsenal to make sure it’s fun, always fresh and give some relief to the library.

"Radio Is Life! It’s a culmination of the things going on around us, how we feel and are reflected in the things we do, what we say and the songs we play. Let’s make sure your station and branding is on track. Then we can get those creative juices flowing and build some fun promotions to make people talk about your station and don’t forget to have some fun!"

PS: If you'd like to know in confidence who this savvy/"available" programmer is, just drop me an email and I'll send you the entire package of philosophies this came from.

Loose Ends

Mental folders I opened recently, which deserve at least a mini-post to tie them up:

1. The 2009 Radio Mercury Award winners are indeed very impressive uses of the creative potential of the audio medium, worth listening to and learning from. Let's bury them in great radio entries next year.

2. Watch and listen to Taylor Swift to understand how Gen Y is changing country music and radio. What kid doesn't want to date her?

3. Krash Bassett's clever blog on an iPhone app for country imaging poses an only slightly terrifying question: why do we all use the same voices and stationality techniques? Resolve to challenge yourself to be different. I'd love to come into a market, scan across the dial, recognize all the usual suspects .. until I get to your station. Can we please stop leaning on "professional voices" so much and put the job of branding our stations into the hands of real people, our listeners?

What's Your Audio Signature?

(click to hear 'em) Astral Radio isn't out to brainwash all of Canada, just make sure that no matter which of their stations you listen to, there's a consistent image. Pretty smart, eh?

(More) Ingredients Of A Great Country Radio Station (II)

Now that you have my first recipe items in your mixing bowl and have stirred well, add some others you'll hear on country's perennial award-winners:

* They use several funny, informative, entertaining prep services, but LOCALIZE everything. The very best stations, out-of-towners don't immediately 'get' everything, but local people do, immediately.

* Name the morning show something out of the ordinary, reflecting its character. Benchmark all service elements too: Timesaver, Highway Patrol Traffic, Doppler Radar weather, etc, etc, etc.

* Production. Morning show jingles in addition to 24/7 cinematic/brief stationality positioners. Lots of music hooks, listener voices, artists, jingle elements and sound effects, to keep momentum moving. They don't artificially limit length of anything, but keep it high energy and self-edit to one fully developed punch line per set/element. Produced intros (short and a BIG variety of them) on everything. Production inside news: intro, punctuators before spot, weather and traffic sounders.

* Involvement. Many listeners on the phone. At least one such phone bit per quarter hour, tightly edited to conveying a feeling about an artist, a song, using the station.

What's in your programming wallet? What else needs to be in the formula?

Dave Foxx, Z100, New York's Brandmeister

Dave did this presentation on how he imprints Z-100's key images as integral to the brand at the European NAB a year ago. Am I the last person in the world to have found out about this terrific training video for production people?

Z-100, of course, no longer does those Power intros, they no longer call themselves #1 in their position and NAB Europe is meeting again for another year in Barcelona right now, but if you haven't seen it either, I promise you it's still worth the ten minutes' time and a trip to YouTube to watch and listen to! Foxx's advice and the way he communicates it is still state of the art.