Despite being a radio talent himself, you may think Charlie Kirk’s death doesn’t have anything in common with your own local on-air personalities, but I encourage you to significantly reevaluate this more closely now. 

Our local radio personalities work in the public influence space. Unlike the past, that space now has an outbound and an inbound lane. Feedback can now be more unexpected than ever. For that reason, we are less alone than we have ever been. 

I am confident that Charlie Kirk and his entire organization felt safe with his security at these campus events. If you’ve seen the event footage, you likely saw that his security was in close proximity. He wasn’t expecting the unexpected, but the unexpected happened.

In radio today, we don’t live and work in the same kind of place we lived and worked in two weeks ago. Maybe we haven’t for a longer time than we might want to admit. However, now is the time to look at the work that goes into your personality appearance policy for their safety.

As we have surely seen, people are emotional and emotions can get away from people faster than you anticipate. We’ve seen this in everything from road rage to politics in modern American society.

Local radio stations need to have policies in place to consider the safety and welfare of our on-air talent in potentially vulnerable situations.

Please consider your existing policies. If you don’t have a policy around public safety in situations as diverse as public appearances, coming in and out of your physical broadcast plant, you might consider:

Safety Policy for Local Radio Talent

General Principles

• Professional Accessibility, Not Personal Vulnerability: Talent should be approachable at events, but must never compromise their personal safety for access.
• Always Assume Visibility: Anything said or done in public or on-site may be recorded or shared. This content can also be misunderstood, so consistent standards can be put in place to avoid this as much as possible.
• Public Access to Performance Should Be Limited: Gone are the days when personalities should be alone or unaware of the potential dangers in our open society today. If possible, it should be considered that personalities should not be alone in public settings anymore. 

Building & Studio Access

• Secure Entrances: All studio entrances should remain locked. Staff access only via coded entry cards, fobs, or keypads.
• Escort Policy: If a guest or contest winner comes into the studio, they should be signed in, badged (temporary visitor ID), and escorted at all times.
• Arrival/Departure Awareness: Talent should avoid entering/exiting alone late at night. If working unusual hours, request a security escort or buddy system.
• Parking Safety: Provide well-lit, secure parking close to building entrances. Encourage staff to check their surroundings before exiting vehicles.

Public Appearances & Events

• Pre-Event Briefing: Station staff should know the event layout, exits, and where security or police are stationed.
• Security Presence: At larger or high-traffic events, at least one security guard (or trusted staffer assigned to shadow talent) should be present.
• Boundaries: Talent should avoid sharing personal contact information, personal social accounts, or discussing where they live.
• Meet & Greet Controls: Organize orderly lines, barriers, or staff supervision so fans approach one at a time. No unsupervised meet-ups.
• Alcohol & Substances: Talent should avoid being placed in situations where they are pressured to drink excessively or lose control in public. Our talent are in public settings enough where these things are present. In no way should talent be engaged in behavior-adjusting substances.

Online & Caller Interactions

• Privacy: Talent should never share personal phone numbers, emails, or addresses. Use station channels for communication.
• Harassment Protocol: Any threatening messages (email, social, call, or in person) must be reported immediately to management and, if necessary, law enforcement.
• Documentation: Keep records/screenshots of concerning behavior for future reference and report them. This should be a well-known policy.

Crisis Protocol

• Immediate Threat: If someone confronts talent aggressively in public, talent should disengage, move to safety, and alert security and law enforcement.
• In-Studio Disturbances: Staff should not attempt to personally eject hostile visitors. It should be a well-known policy to call security or law enforcement rapidly in these situations.
• Emergency Contacts: Maintain an internal emergency contact list with management, security, and local law enforcement liaison info.

Training & Awareness

• Annual Safety Briefing: All talent and promotions staff should go through yearly safety training.
• Roleplay Scenarios: Practice handling aggressive fans, stalkers, or unexpected public encounters.
• Mental Wellness: Encourage talent to talk to management abooncerning interactions rather than ignoring them.

You might think some of this prep is over the top, but today’s world has changed. There’s always room for the unexpected. Harm coming to your air talent or staff is not worth the time saved by not putting simple measures in place to help keep people on your team safe. 

The best safety policy balances visibility and connection with the audience (which is vital for local radio talent) while ensuring boundaries, structure, and professional protection.

Link to Original Source

The post Keeping Local Radio Personalities Safe Now first appeared on CMB.

The post Keeping Local Radio Personalities Safe Now appeared first on CMB.

I know, you can say, “Well, I’m not,” but the truth is that it is in our human nature to do so.

Face it. We live in a busy society. Worse, technology has made everything harder and easier. Guess which one we pay attention to today?

That’s right. The easy path.

But ignore that hard realities of the 21st Century and you could end up in trouble.

There’s a reason we tell clients and others to be encouraging. Be kinder than you have to be. There is no return on investment in any negative thinking, spreading negative rumors and focusing much of your attention on complaining.

But that stuff is easier.

Here is the truth about consistently focusing your efforts at work on solving other people’s problems, helping your boss promote a positive vision for where he or she is going and being the encourager of good culture where you work. When you commit to being this person, you will have more impact on your bosses and your co-workers. More than this, you will be representing something larger than only yourself and this will help you stand out.

Think about this. As we lean further and further into technology and artificial intelligence, there is a natural reduction in intimacy, personal touch and even hearing consumers. This represents maybe the largest opportunity for radio at all levels in our history.

No one needs this more than your average person today.

Don’t underestimate how our society has more connectivity than ever and more isolation than in at least multiple generations.

Radio is in the relationship business. Our job is to be relatable. But let me ask an important question. 

What separates Christian radio stations from all other radio stations? It’s not likely to be only encouragement. All radio stations can do encouragement.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

en·cour·age·ment

[inˈkərijm(ə)nt, enˈkərijm(ə)nt]

noun

the action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope:

“thank you for all your support and encouragement”

Encouragement is like an invitation for all kinds of radio, but Christians can and should do more.

What sets your Christian station apart isn’t only encouragement. It’s affirmation.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary again:

affirmation

ˌa-fər-ˈmā-shən

NOUN

• the act of affirming

something affirmed : a positive assertion

Christian stations are not doing enough to be positive or encouraging. That doesn’t get our job done. Christian affirmation is our great opportunity. Doing so sets us apart. 

People want to be seen. 

They want to be heard.

No one likes to experience rejection.

We must be able to demonstrate the Christian difference and doing so involves behavior that isn’t nature to our human nature.

Affirmation is the action of grace. It is accepting a person independent of the outcomes of what they do.

We want to connect in a meaningful way that accepts and draws people to us and then affirms grace. Doing this involves a different experience than the world’s standard “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” 

The world is a dark place. People are imperfect. 

Know this: We are all connected on this planet. We are working with purpose. To do that well, we must do the extra work (prep) so that we don’t end up on Shortcut Ridge and leave listeners stranded in a failing world.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post Shortcut Ridge first appeared on CMB.

The post Shortcut Ridge appeared first on CMB.

I get itchy on this subject because it reminds me of a time when a senior VP at a major corporate broadcaster called me and said, “Loyd, we’re going to put on a Christian station in XYZ major market and it’s going to be BIG!”

He was so excited about this project.

I asked, “Do you have someone on the staff that lives the lifestyle?”

He quickly said, “Lifestyle? This station will be a box. You know the deal.” Then he added, “We’ve got the music. It will be great.”

Then I said the unpopular. “You shouldn’t do this.”

He said, “What? What do you MEAN we shouldn’t do this??? We ARE doing it and it will be HUGE. It will be number one.”

“It might be,” I said sheepishly but clearly unconvincingly.

“We are the best radio company with the best resources. We know how to do this.”

“But if you don’t have someone living the lifestyle, listeners can tell,” I finally said.

They did it anyway, of course.

To me, I just described a lot to you.

Let’s clarify.

Christian station with no Christians = 0.

Community language on-air with no real involvement = 0.

I can go further.

Country station with no one living the lifestyle = 0.

The truth is there are a lot of things that are done by-the-numbers but end up a zero.

The senior VP with that big broadcast company, all those Christian songs and no one living the lifestyle on the Christian station in that major market? You guessed it. Six months later they flipped to another format.

Gone.

The new station was probably a box, too.

There’s another kind of zero that everyone in the radio business should be concerned about today.

Invisibility.

in·vis·i·bil·i·ty

inability to be seen.

“I feel like I’m wearing a cloak of invisibility.”

The state of being ignored or not taken into consideration.

In an era where disruption and consumer attention span is similar to a goldfish, local radio should be more concerned about becoming more visible. Yet you see it over and over. Entire markets where radio is invisible.

Invisible is maybe the worst kind of ZERO.

You wonder why there is a lot of evidence about the power of radio today but we hear, “No one listens to radio anymore, do they?”

It’s one of the key consequences of invisibility.

Maybe we should be fixing that.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post Consumers Can See You first appeared on CMB.

The post Consumers Can See You appeared first on CMB.

When I programmed radio stations, I would bring staff together for team-building, training, encouragement and sometimes education. I would share, “Most people who have been influenced by you won’t tell you.” I didn’t do that to be negative with them. I was pointing out the nature of the wide variety of personalities we serve in the radio business. It’s the people that won’t tell you that often are positively impacted the most. This means what you are doing is more important than you think. 

We are influencers with a powerful platform. We are blessed to work in an industry where we can really make an emotional difference in the lives of many. But I know that this encouragement isn’t just for radio listeners. We can be better than that.

I’ve kind of always felt that we have individual responsibility to do more. This idea of encouragement is powerful. I can prove it. When is the last time you received too much encouragement? 

During the pandemic we started doing something purposeful focused on the people in our industry. We started having live sessions focused on individual radio pros across the country. We did it originally on an app called Clubhouse. There was so much disruption going on we thought that it would be nice to have a way to “encourage radio pros at all levels.” Talking with a different radio pro in a different part of North America once a week puts a spotlight on the great people in our business. It’s fun to hear someone’s story about this business. But it’s more than that. Our conversations often share powerful lessons in career-building, the value of self-education, mentoring and the opportunities we all receive regularly to make a difference because of radio.

And it’s encouraging.

Today our visit with radio is no longer a live event. We have moved to make The Encouragers The Radio Rally podcast (Apple, Audible, Spotify) an on-demand podcast.

Think about this. No matter where you are, today you can generate something that creates a positive impact on your co-workers, listeners or other areas of influence in your life. Isn’t that worth doing? 

When you do it, it will cause you to stand out. It will make you a more valuable employee and may lead you to higher things.

We’re here to make a difference, to be a positive influence.  Look around and ask yourself: What can you do?

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post What Can You Do To Create A More Positive Impact? first appeared on CMB.

The post What Can You Do To Create A More Positive Impact? appeared first on CMB.

It was my great fortune to work for highly creative broadcasters who focused on the consumer and consumer passion long before learning at the feet of a legendary radio consultant who taught me the science of applying strategy and process to local radio. Having those “creative years” in front of learning the science of radio placed a strong imprint on me about the power of what is possible. I never think of problems as making things “impossible.” I encourage you to think of impossible as something we apply to things that may be more difficult. Impossible lives in the brain.

Please consider these five (5) observations about the reality of local radio.

1. So many people think the secret to local radio is “live and local,” but the real secret is being relatable to a specific mainstream audience in your market. Local radio gets its power from our ability to connect with and relate to a highly mobile consumer. Our powerful value is that we are a tribe with highly desirable consumers. Our strong brands build trust with those consumers (radio listeners) by establishing real relationships with them. That’s powerful influence.
2. While every business seems to be under more pressure and potential disruption here in the 21st Century, local radio is the most connected media with consumers. That trust is our super-power. That means investment in coaching for our talent is important because those individuals are the entry attractants to our brands.
3. I encourage you to think deeply about all that artificial intelligence means. Beyond the technology. What is the first word in the name? What one thing isn’t artificial intelligence? Authentic. The one thing it isn’t is real.
4. Man makes no progress. Think about it: Almost everyone is talking around with a computer in their pockets that has essentially replaced all kinds of devices we used to use separately. But the way human behavior essentially hasn’t changed. That’s important because it means human to human communication is still powerful, important and real. We shouldn’t forget this.
5. The underestimated value in humans is our vulnerability. We all spend so much time trying to be perfect. No human is perfect. Please allow me to encourage you to lean into and become more of an expert in vulnerability on radio, in person and in any way that we reach our consumers.

The whole business world wants to figure out how to do things with less people (or no people). Technology is a cold promise of easier, faster, less expense. Take it from me. The future of successful local radio depends on effective use of strategy, process, creativity and relationships. That’s your people. They’re worthwhile investments.

My favorite investments are what I call “The Twins.”  Encouragement and accountability. That’s the future.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post 5 Ways To Embrace The Reality Of Our Future At Radio first appeared on CMB.

The post 5 Ways To Embrace The Reality Of Our Future At Radio appeared first on CMB.

What makes that even more difficult for a person on radio today? We live in a culture that often expresses itself through impression management. If you simply pull up Facebook you can see endless examples of the ‘cleaning up of a million lives’ so that everything looks only like the ‘influencer’ wants you to believe. In our society in the United States, that often means selling our lives or marketing our lives. That’s not necessarily real. Even worse, it paints a kind of two deminsional picture that is a controlled snapshot of what we want other people to think about our lives.

In radio, we often impact people from a distance. We use words, imagination and heart to connect often with individuals and the best among us sharpen their abilities to communicate rapidly warmth, encouragement, joy and vulnerability. The truth is that we are all vulnerable. If you work on-air today, you may be even more vulnerable than you think because the pressure is to not stand out. Be like the others.

By the way, when your world is focused on being like the others, you will end up only in the middle.

Even more challenging, most people don’t feel comfortable with risk. This is especially true for younger people in our business who lack confidence of pros that have been doing this work for decades. So, how do you ‘stack the deck’ so you stand out, show your vulnerablity and create more consistent opportunity to really connect with more listeners?

1. Develop mentors – We are stronger together. No one really accomplishes anything of value alone. Developing mentors to help you create balance makes you stronger. Mentors can help you make better decisions at work. They can help you become someone who shares…better. That can impact your success in a positive way.
2. Seek coaching from your company and others – The best on-air talent seeks coaching. In today’s media landscape, on-air talent needs every advantage they can get to build relationships with listeners. The best talent understands the need for continuous improvement. You see us recommend this a lot. Great coaching will bring out more of your personality and what makes what you do exclusive. If people love what you do and can’t get it anywhere else, your value rises.
3. Seek opportunities to reveal your real self to listeners – Human nature may be to hide or at least use impression management to encourage people to see your story as you would like, but the best on-air talent seek honest communication that opens them up in revealing ways to listeners that often shows vulnerability (not perfection). That can have a powerful impact on growing a passionate fan base.
4. Show what you care about to listeners – This goes a step further than simply being vulnerable. It shows your heart in a different way that can establish you as a leader within a large tribe of people who care about your cause.
5. Consistently self-educate – The smartest people know that they can never know too much. Reading, seeking wisdom gives you more opportunity to do your job better, help others and grow your audience. This happens with a focus on continuous improvement.

Think about your process. Your process for getting better at what you do. Your process for being helpful to co-workers. Your process for prep before you are on-air. Your process for creating vulnerability that connects you to listeners emotionally. We consistently recommend significant prep for on-air talent, but your life is lived in your process.  There arepeople that say the future doesn’t exist because it hasn’t happened yet and your past is occupied with something that is no longer real. What does that leave? The present. Be in it and find ways to make more impact this year using the five items above in this article.  Doing so will elevate your value and cause growth.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post 5 Ways Talent Can Increase Their Impact This Year first appeared on CMB.

The post 5 Ways Talent Can Increase Their Impact This Year appeared first on CMB.

It’s nearly impossible if the chemistry is not right, but once you have players with the right chemistry, you must work to fully develop your show.

Here’s a hint. It isn’t about being better than another competitor. It’s about being unique, compelling and developing fame and what I call “Familiar Surprise.”

If you make your living from creating a morning show, your number one goal should be to create a morning show that can be recognized by others as really great (and especially listeners).

But how to do you create a truly great morning show. Let’s look at important building blocks:

1. Know who you are. Morning show talents who don’t know who they are get lost. It’s easier than you think. If you get lost, you won’t be winning anything and it will be challenging to grow a real tribe around your show. Listeners most identify with people who know themselves. Make certain you know who you are and portray that on the air daily.
2. Provide lift. When you pull apart the DNA of any great morning show, you will find that these shows provide lift, bounce, joy, fun. You can create this in your planning regularly and you should.
3. Make your show consistently interesting and fun. Making something interesting requires variety and the unexpected. This element of your show should center on consistently generating interesting variety that can surprise without making listeners uncomfortable. This is based in staying within the expectation of what listeners expect from your show. (See “Know who you are” above).
4. Understand how important ‘fame development’ is for your show to thrive. There is only so much room at the top of any market. Shows that don’t develop fame don’t stick around. This is the single largest task for a new morning show. To get where you really wan to go, you will have to penetrate fame in your local market. Don’t take this for granted. Ask yourself, “What will this show be famous for?” You should have a way to generate fame opportunities from the content you are airing regularly and that requires a roadmap and process for seeing what content gets traction with your audience.
5. Develop new content opportunities regularly and have a way to evaluate them weekly. You certainly don’t want your show to be stale. Everyone gets that, but most shows don’t have a system of development so they can consistently work on fame development (see number four above). In today’s world you have to stand out. Part of standing out is consistently developing new content for your audience and clearly evaluating the value of each piece of content regularly.
6. Recognize that you are giving a performance. So many shows are really just “on the air.” That’s not enough today. While I am a big believer in being yourself, you must understand that you are giving a performance. So, you have to plan opportunities on your show and consistently hit your marks. You are not just “on the air.” You must give your audience interesting, uplifting performances that are meaningful in their lives. That means putting in the work in your prep and show development before you get to performance.
7. Keep an eye on your sound hour. Just like the music on any great music station, your sound hour (represented by each individual quarter-hour) has to be balanced so you are communicating a well-balanced variety of content for new listeners all the time. Listeners come into your show at a wide variety of different times in the morning. Be ready by offering consistent quality.
8. Have strategy for performing a show that is balanced. What kind of roadmap does your show have? How planned out is your morning show? The best shows have a strong roadmap and know what they are going to be doing on any given morning and have a plan for each quarter-hour.
9. Know how to define and communicate roles within the show. Each player on your show should have a unique role. It should be something that can be communicated quickly and each player should have opportunity to develop that character for the audience, the emotion of that character and to allow the audience to get to know them during the show.
10. Connect with your audience. This goes back to not just being “on the air.” Connection with audience is one of the most important concepts for a morning show. Radio is about companionship and being relatable. You must develop this in every part of your morning show. That starts with connection, vulnerability and how you regularly choose to connect. Study people who are great connectors and make sure that every player in your morning show has opportunity to connect with audience and show their uniqueness.
11. Be authentic. (Perhaps I should have made this number 1). Being someone else is the kiss of death on a morning show. Be yourself. Listeners can smell when you are faking it. Being authentic, vulnerable and then being able to communicate these important qualities is powerful.
12. Engage audience beyond the signal. If you haven’t learned how to use video, take amazing photos, develop memes, take some time and go learn it from someone who does it well. You are not an on-air talent in the 21st Century. Today you must be a multi-media talent. The better you are at this, the better armed you will be to grow your show (see “fame” above). Get with an improv group, become the sharpest social media person in your market. 
13. Surround yourself with people who are passionate about the show, the consistent prep, the daily performance, the nuts and bolts of putting together a great show and being a good partner. Work with any resources your company gives you to develop your show and seek outside advice, development help, mentors and education on how to build stronger communication and stronger connections.

Bonus: Please don’t show up in social media only with impression management. Again being vulnerable and imperfect will score more points for allowing listeners to get to know the real you.

Building a great morning show isn’t always easy and it doesn’t happen instantly. It takes being the most prepared morning show in your market, doing work when others are “coasting” and a willingness to care about your audience and share your care daily. However, if you work hard, have an open mind and focus on developing compelling content, creating balance so that listeners get a sample of what makes you great in each quarter-hour, work hard to bring fresh great performances and always communicate your authenticity, you can absolutely build something big in your market.

Loyd Ford consults radio stations, coaches personalities and helps clients develop strategic programming and sales leverage to expose their brand or brands to higher ratings and revenue success with RPC. Listen to his podcast The Encouragers The Radio Rally podcast (Apple, Audible, Spotify). Reach him anytime. 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post Creating A Great Morning Show Now first appeared on CMB.

The post Creating A Great Morning Show Now appeared first on CMB.

You may not think you don’t have time for strategic planning, but making this a part of your local business can have a huge impact on your success. Today I thought I would take a moment and lay out what can go into a strategic planning session where you work. Going through this process can bring teams together, focus vision and purpose and give your team a secret weapon for progress that can electrify your results over the next 12 months. This starts at the top. So, if you are the market manager, this is for you. People will focus on what the leadership wants and you get what you reward.

Before you begin this process, you must commit to having an open mind and communicating to your team that you are inviting them to a top level strategic meeting where the goal is to work together to find weaknesses, identify opportunities and pull together to strengthen the core of your business. It is essential that your individual team members feel it is safe to share and that their opinions. Inviting everyone together also says something else. “You are important.” This empowers your team and they feel they are part of something bigger than themselves.  Keep this in mind: Without creating the proper open, respectful and safe environment, you will not get the desired result.

Start With Your Goals For The Next 12 Months

What do you want the next 12 months to look like for your brand or brands?

What do you want your on-air, listener facing, client facing and internal culture to be and what goals would you like to reach in the next 12 months?

Where do you want your business to be at the end of the 12 months?

Then ask yourself what your vision is for your business in the next 3 to 5 years and ask your team to participate in the creation of that vision.

You should have a clear vision for the future and what you want before you begin your strategic planning session, but you should be open to team contributions.

Draw Your Leadership Team Together For Prep

An invitation to this event means that you are a valued leader in this organization and you should make that clear up-front. Time to get your essential leadership team together and ask them to do some foot work to bring with them to the actual session. After all, you want everyone participating in your strategic planning event prepared to participate and contribute.

Ask them individually – without communicating with each other on their own answers – to write out:

• What went well for their department over the past 12 months?
• What went wrong in their department over the past 12 months?
• What did you learn from what has happened over the past 12 months?
• What are our greatest opportunities for your department in next year?
• What are the biggest challenges we will face this year?
• What challenge do you see coming around the corner that we should prepare for?
• Which competitors should we keep an eye on?
• Rate your direct reports on a scale of 1-10. Who can improve? Whom should be replaced? This might seem uncomfortable, but it is essential for making sure you have the right people on the bus.
• If we could only reach one goal next year in your department, what should it be?

Ask your team (for their individual departments) to do the following exercise about the current state of their departments as they see it:

Individual Department SWOT analysis

Ask each team member to do a SWOT analysis of their department.

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique used to help a person or organization identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to your competition.

SWOT assumes that strengths and weaknesses are frequently internal, while opportunities and threats are more commonly external. The name is an acronym for the four parameters the technique examines:

Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others.

Weaknesses: characteristics that place the business or project at a disadvantage

Opportunities: elements in the environment that the business or project could exploit to its advantage.

Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project.

As you can tell, some of the things you will ask people in leadership roles to do are tough because people are involved and so is accountability. Make sure you make it clear you are not looking to fire people or uncover wrongdoing. This is an exercise in strength and weakness and knowing where you are today.

Meet With Team Members Individually Before The Session

Meet with your individual team members to discuss their SWOT and their views on their individual department. If they present too rosy a picture, send them back to the drawing board and make it clear that your yearly strategic planning session is meant to give an unvarnished look at what has taken place and a fruitful look into the future and you need their full and honest participation. This meeting is your opportunity to discuss with the critical individual leaders important issues from the past year and their hopes for the future of their department. The end result should provide a strong understanding between leadership players of individual departments going into the planning session.

The Strategic Planning Session

At the beginning of the actual meeting, celebrate the high points that have taken place in the last year.

Express confidence in your team and make it personal. You want your team members to know they are individually valuable to the process.

Consider Hiring A Guide

Conducting a strategic planning event is absolutely hard work. However, it’s more than that. If you or someone inside the radio business or cluster is leading the meeting, the entire meeting can seem less objective. If the market manager guides the meeting, you could end up with a super group of boss pleasers. This will certainly limit a feeling ‘we are all in this together’ and will encourage a more shallow result.

Take Minutes Of The Planning Session

Have someone there to take minutes so you have a record of everything that is not memory-based.

Time For That SWOT For Your Overall Business

Everyone has done this for their department. Now it is time for the overall view. Encourage participation from all members of your team. Doing this exercise is critical and taking a serious wide-eyed look at the business and then charting your path for the coming year. This isn’t personal. So, you won’t participate in judging weakness in people. Your focus will be on the business in this open setting.

Begin identifying the important accomplishments your team will want to achieve over the next 12 months and lay them out as a team. Encourage discussion. Encourage different points of view but be careful to identify a point in time where a direction will be selected and vision created for the future.

Develop An Action Plan With Details

In the end, the essential elements of any strategic plan include:

Clear mission and vision statements to frame the context of the plan

Clear timelines for strategy implementation and progress monitoring

Quarterly benchmarks or objectives that will inform progress towards annual goals

Identification of the data sources used to track progress

Indication of the individuals and/or offices responsible for each strategy

Get Buy In From Your Team

One of the great things about doing this with your leadership team and creating a plan together is that it is much easier to get the ‘buy in,’ which is essential for having an effective planning session.

Celebrate The Plan

Have a celebration (this can be a dinner or some other event with your leadership team). As a part of this celebration, have a printed version of the full plan for each individual to sign. This is ownership.

Once you have a strong strategic plan that your team has developed and signed off on, you have a roadmap for the year to come and this can be priceless in jump-starting your year and keeping you on track to reach even higher goals than your team thought possible.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post Those That Fail To Plan Have A Hard Time Winning first appeared on CMB.

The post Those That Fail To Plan Have A Hard Time Winning appeared first on CMB.

But we are not in the music business.

The Music Business vs. The Radio Business.

The music business is very difficult. Music labels often invest millions of dollars before finding out they don’t really have anything. Literally. By the way, this is why they say that the music business “isn’t for the faint of heart.”

The music business is about art, commercial music and high risk. They try to find unique and compelling artists, songwriters and producers that create artistic (or at least commercial) magic.  Once they feel they have done that, it is about the songs. The pressure is on them to chase down the most compelling songs for their artists and deliver recordings that move a mass audience.

Their promotion teams get paid to lure radio to play ALL OF THEIR SONGS to see which ones are hits. You know this if you’ve been in our business for a long time. Music labels rarely know if they have a hit. Their business is finding and leveraging those assets. Tempting radio to play all of their songs has long been a substantial path to figuring out which songs and artists resonate and can build a meaningful following.

Music also flows.

There are also good years and bad years in music and even the big experts don’t know how to predict when a valley is coming.  Music directors and program directors must be careful as gatekeepers to avoid losing the audience by making strong choices, especially when we enter a valley.

So that brings us directly to the radio business. And to the program director and music director and his or her job and philosophy. 

The temptation is what most of us fall for, especially early on. “I can pick the hits.”

May I suggest the reverse of this philosophy? Be humble. Don’t be the program director or music director seeking to pick the hits.  If you truly believe you can pick the hit songs, you should consider trying to convince a music publisher that you would be the ideal candidate for their next CEO opening.

Instead, reverse it. Seek to eliminate the songs that you can prove are not hits early and often. Think of songs that hit your inbox as “suspects” instead of songs. That’s really what they are.

If you have callout music research, this is the strongest opportunity you have for understanding what your audience wants (and this is really your weekly goal when it comes to music selection). There are a variety of other tools, including streaming, MediaBase and data from your own website that can be used to understand better what your audience wants. Use the tools you have available and do everything you can to make your decisions about what your audience wants instead of what you think. 

If you do this, you will be left with stone cold hits that people have high passion for and love. This will allow your radio station to set the stage for your personalities to do the real work of creating relationships with the audience your company most wants to attract and retain. That’s what music does: It sets the stage for the real work of relating to the audience.

What about the Radio Business?

A lot of people in our business think we are in the radio business.

We are not. We are in the influence business. If you work in the radio business, you are paid by your ability to influence outcomes.

You’ve heard it before: There is an art and a science to radio.

The Truth Everyone Needs To Know

The art is spoken content from personalities, promotions, events, image liners, positioning and the overall creative branding of the stations.

The science is the selection of music, rotations, song elimination and other architectural elements surrounding how we use the music business to produce a place where listeners will think of as “home.”

The music sets the stage for your personalities and everything comes together to create a trustful place where listeners can be entertained by what they seek. That’s brand. We shouldn’t mix these two things up.  Music people are in one business; radio people are in another.

If you are the program director or music director, you don’t get paid to play all the songs the record companies want you to play so they can see which ones are hits. You’ve heard this before: It’s not what you play; it’s what you don’t play that makes you successful.

You Can Be Passionate & Still Do Your Job

To be a truly amazing program director or music director today, you must separate your emotion from music selection and have a consistent set of standards to help you eliminate challenges to familiarity and the consequences of playing songs that don’t drive passion in your target listeners. This doesn’t mean you have to eliminate passion; it means you have to understand your responsibility as a gatekeeper of quality, standards and knowing your audience.

You must be able to distance yourself from the early adopters and focus on the mainstream.

It’s the mainstream and not the fringes that create large success in our business. Fringes (early adopters in this case) are often the loudest, but they are not always important.

The main center is where the opportunity to grow audience exists in the largest way.

But How Do We Focus On Everybody?

Every time someone in your target audience flips on your station, we want the biggest and most familiar songs playing for them. You want them to experience “the good stuff.”

Creating that environment consistently makes you a winner.

That’s winning music philosophy.

Don’t get caught up in picking the hits. That appeals to our ego. Be smart and look to eliminate underperforming songs continuously. Do that and the hits will rise and so will you.

In developing your true music philosophy, try to see yourself as a music detective focused on finding the truth. The truth may not set you free, but when you focus on the truth to play only the hits, it’s very likely to lead to higher ratings. All. The. Time.

Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.

The post The True Job Of Music Selection Today first appeared on CMB.

The post The True Job Of Music Selection Today appeared first on CMB.

Nothing good. Over the last thirty years, major broadcast companies have purposefully cut corners and reduced workforce to reach magic ‘economies of scale.’ They’ve done so largely making radio sound like radio in every market, but then across time many of their brands have “declined by 1,000 cuts.”

This is often thought about outside the line of fire as an acceptable loss of quality.

The next opportunity is artificial intelligence. The question is: What will you do?

Don’t get me wrong. We know that tech advances are not the issue here. Decisions radio companies make are the issues. How we use technology and the quality behind how our product is produced, our advertising and our sellers’ performance with clients and potential clients are all critical.

The Auto-Pilot Expressway

Voice tracking has done nothing to destroy radio. Voice Tracking made it possible to use your creativity and make radio…..more. The decisions made about how voice tracking has been executed have made radio more inconsistent and less focused on details in the product. This lowered expectations of audience (and that is never good).

Still, it became popular for people to use the label “Live & Local,” but even that was misunderstood to be the singular ingredient that made radio great. It isn’t. Being highly relational to important local tribes is a critical part of any successful “Live & Local” philosophy.

Artificial intelligence won’t be to blame if it all goes south again either. 

Why do I say this?

Radio companies lowered the bar by falling in love with bigger and more greedy deals and creating cost savings to try to rebalance their books to “afford the business.” This resulted in lower expectations with the way they executed the use of voice tracking.  The lack of proper oversight and the reduction of quality control in programming departments resulted in a poor outcome for listeners, advertisers and community. Less time, fewer employees and voice trackers spread over too many stations resulted in rushed “phoned in” on-air work. 

Some of the major broadcast companies eliminated all external advice voices and became hostage to a small group of bean counters who focused on efficiency over core product values, including brand. Just as “Live & Local” isn’t the only ingredient in successful radio, being efficient doesn’t help you achieve if what you are actually doing is wrong. It only speeds up disaster.

Expectations significantly lowered.

Brands became more like commodities. If you’re honest, some of the best brands in radio became commodities.

The lowering of listener expectation is always a product value killer.

Eventually, many just abandoned having even voice trackers on shifts outside of 6 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Expectations lowered significantly again.

Like the answer to the question about radio possibly dying that seemed to start with that song “Video Killed The Radio Star,” radio still didn’t die, but let’s say every time you lower listener and community expectations, it’s not good.

It results in little deaths that add up across time.

Will We Lower The Bar Yet Again?

Consider that we sit on the edge of these new fast-moving technologies that will impact jobs in all sectors; of course, it will impact radio. Don’t be silly. The question isn’t about jobs or A.I. The question real question you should be asking yourself is about quality, attention to product and focus on brand-building.

I want you to hear me please: It isn’t “Live & Local” that will save radio by itself. It never has been. We must connect, reflect and relate to important local audience to keep our brands humming. Brand value doesn’t come only from being present; it comes from growing value and influence for your audience and advertisers.

And scale and efficiency won’t save big radio companies if they are efficient doing the wrong things that listeners don’t care about today.

Wrong is then just wrong faster.

You won’t be able to continue to force listeners to put up with you.

Radio does get power from being local, but we must be highly relational to make that impactful.

Relationships between consumers (listeners) and brands are actually TRUST.

Trust is worth a PREMIUM. Trust is brand.

Commodities are a dime a dozen.

They are throw away and WILL pass away. Mark my words.

Consequences Of 21st Century Time Begins Impacting Local Radio; Time To Act

1. Redefine voice tracking to focus on quality of content.
2. Eliminate radio stations in a box with no personalities outside of 6 a.m. – 7 p.m.
3. Return to strategic planning so that individual radio brands can once again have real purpose.
4. Reverse course to create more attention-getting promotions and “opportunities” that go way beyond “treading water” and begin to invest in external attention again before it is too late. Local radio should be excellent relational experiences. Not lowering expectations and powering down. In your heart, you know this is true.
5. Self-educate on the proper uses of artificial intelligence, including voice, so that local radio brands receive the correct quality oversight and the product improves. A.I. is just a tool. It’s how you use it that will make the difference for good or for bad.

If something kills radio, it is most likely to be radio. If you own or manage a local radio station, you can do something to make sure that doesn’t happen and it WILL positively impact your revenue.

If you haven’t heard radio consultants Mike McVay, Loyd Ford and Fred Jacobs in a round table about “Chat GPT & The A.I. Century” on our podcast, check it out here.

Please consider the real value of your local radio brand or brands as directly being the quality of your:

— Strategy

— Process

— Relational personalities and content

— The attention-generating quality of your promotions and external marketing

— How you value your customers (advertisers) and community

This isn’t a time to blow it, skip some steps or huddle-up alone with your problems. If you need help, reach out.  You can get affordable help and focus your business toward growth. If you don’t know where, start with us. Growth is what we do at RPC.

What You Expect Vs. What You Get

Welcome to our website for RPC. We offer you a wide variety of free content on our site because we want you to get to know how we think and how much we believe in local radio in the 21st Century. The more you learn about us, the more we know you’ll want to learn what we give our clients access to (and we can give you a hint: “Ideas are the new technology“).

We literally believe that “once you have a radio station, you can get anything else you want.”

The post The Real Truth About A.I., Expectations & Local Radio Now first appeared on CMB.

The post The Real Truth About A.I., Expectations & Local Radio Now appeared first on CMB.