When You Choose Stories Over Sleigh Bells
Every year, radio stations across the dial flip the switch to Christmas. And with that switch usually comes the familiar toolkit of seasonal production…bright jingles, festive zips and zaps, the audible equivalent of untangling a box of lights and tossing them on the tree.
The JOY FM has used those tools too, heck, we used a lot of them this year…but also, over the years, The JOY FM has learned that imaging can be something more than a seasonal signal. It can be a mirror, of sorts … Reflecting the listeners back to themselves in ways that help them feel recognized, even in the small moments between songs.
That has always been the intention…to tell honest stories that sound like real life.
The imaging process has become a proverbial well-oiled machine with Dave Cruse and Kris Byerly each taking on their pieces of the work, with a rhythm that’s been shaped more by habit and relationship than any grand strategy. And with the voice talents of Dan Brodie as the station imaging voice, they’ve been able to vibrantly paint a series of seasonal pictures using a variety of brushes.
This year, though, something shifted. And that shift started with Dave.
Dave lost his wife Emilie earlier in the year. Anyone who’s experienced real loss knows that the holidays don’t simply show up…they look at you in your grief. And when Dave began writing for the season, he didn’t lean away from that reality. He wrote from it. He didn’t write pieces about grief, he wrote honestly, and vulnerably which gave the production team permission to widen the lens. That telling only the feel-good Hallmark style Christmas stories felt incomplete. Christmas is complex. It’s joy, but it also aches. It’s uncertain, but it can also be a reunion. It’s a sense of longing with the kind of celebration that CCM Radio is uniquely positioned for.
Once the door was open, Dave & Kris walked through it and found more stories of JOY amidst uncertainty, fear, wonder and new beginnings.
A newlywed couple attempting the delicate balancing act of their first family-splitting holiday, while also mindfully creating their own memories. A mother trying to stay present with the rest of her family while a piece of her heart was deployed overseas culminating in a hush and an unexpected, “hi mom.”
The response that came in was genuinely humbling.
Texts, emails, and the occasional, “thanks for ruining my makeup,” let them know something was connecting. It wasn’t because the pieces were dramatic or theatrical, although they were, but because they were honest. Listeners weren’t giving out thank yous for the production (although, in my admittedly biased opinion, I feel it was fantastic). They were giving their thanks for naming the things they were already carrying.
More than anything, it’s another reminder that when storytelling is vulnerable and intentional, and the production simply serves the story, something deeper can take place.
It’s not hype …
It’s not zips and zaps and jingles and jangles.
It’s connection.
It’s truth touching truth.
The kind of real-life ministry that CCM radio is uniquely positioned for, often in the spaces no other medium can reach.
At the end of the day, production and imaging aren’t about impressing someone with the station’s cleverness and awareness, or about showing off our technical skills with parametric EQ’s and compression ratios. I mean sure, part of it is telling people what we want them to think about us and making an impression that keeps us top of mind in those diary markets. But while we do that, we can also create little pockets of humanity in between the songs. Moments in listeners’ lives where they might take a deep breath, nod, or whisper to themselves, “Yeah… me too.”
If that happens even once, then the stories have done their job.
