Remember when we were kids and we’d walk past the teacher lounge at school? I always wondered what when on in there! If you can pull off a back-to-school promotion with some clients, find a teacher lounge at a local school and make it over. Clean it up, get new furniture, and stock it with refreshments for the teachers for a few months. Could be a fun idea that gets you chatter in area schools as everyone heads back this fall.
Your first job when doing and interview, especially with an A-lister, is to connect with them. That opens the portal to talk with them about near anything because they know you did your homework and trust builds. Enter John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego with an interview they did with country music star Eric Church. This happened while college basketball season was upon them. Eric came on because he had a new album to promote. There’s no “where did you get your inspiration for this album” questions. These guys know better. John poking at Eric about his alma mater (UNC) and how a local San Diego team was doing softened Eric to talk with him about drinking and what he was going to do for his wife for the upcoming Valentine’s Day. It’s a good game plan because it’s what makes listeners interested.
Valentine, Nebraska is a town of just 2,640 people. It’s surrounded by bison in Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, home to Nebraska’s highest waterfall, receives 38-inches of snow a year, has a median home value around $149,000, and is just 2.6 square miles.
Mike and Kim Burge own KVSH 940AM in Valentine. I met them while in Lincoln, presenting to the Nebraska Broadcaster’s annual convention last week. They were absolute delights and radiated pride for the radio station they own, manage, and are on.
Spend five minutes on industry websites and you’ll find news about layoffs, consolidation, endless debates about our industry’s “monetization challenges” (thank you Bob Pittman for the re-frame) and radio’s future. Spend five minutes with Mike and Kim Burge and you’ll remember why radio still has a future.
Mike McVay and I were asked by Jim Timm and Jenna McKain, both with the Nebraska Broadcasters Association (NBA for short – go have fun with that!), to do the programming sessions this year. We both marveled at the energy we found.
We sat next to each other at their Hall of Fame banquet. Mike knew one of the four honorees. I knew none of them. But at the end of every speech, I fought back tears at the pride in the room as each celebrant thanked their families and those they met along the way in broadcasting that helped them be immortalized.
When I was young, I wanted nothing more than to get to the Big City. As my coaching career matures, I’m increasingly amazed by how radio is done in markets few of us know and by people whose names we’ll never hear. Mike and Kim (and the many like them) will never be mentioned in RAMP or Inside Radio nor profiled on Barrett Media (hey Jason – profile these people!). But they still have inside of them the thing we all felt when we got in the business.
I’m lucky to coach shows in smaller markets. They have a commitment to growth and their talent in ways you’d never know.
Mike and Kim Burge aren’t outliers. Across the country, I see and work with broadcasters in smaller markets making the same commitment:
KVSH 940AM, Valentine, Nebraska makes me long for those glory days of radio when we all did it for the right reasons – in every market size. It’s still being done like that in many places we don’t pay attention to. Visit KVSH’s website and you’ll see they have everything from obituaries to agricultural news to a trading post, where someone needs to get rid of a piano in very good condition (yours if you haul it away – call Cody) and someone is selling a galvanized chicken feeder for $25. Quaint, cute, and very about the community.
Meeting Mike and Kim, going to the NBA’s Hall of Fame dinner, and doing the work with the companies I noted above is emotional hygiene for me. It reminds me that, while corporate-owned radio stations can sometimes serve up bad news and taint our perception of our own industry, there are so many people in markets we know nothing about who are truly committed to their communities.
Sometimes the future of radio isn’t found in a conference keynote, a consultant’s deck, or a corporate strategy session. Sometimes it’s found in a town of 2,640 people, on an AM station, where two owners still believe their job is to serve a community. That’s where radio’s soul resides.
Spend time with people like Mike and Kim Burge. You’ll remember why you started. And you might just remember where radio’s future really lives.
Let me in. When you dig deep and let lsiteners into every part of your life, they feel cvlsoer to you. Here’s some retro audio from Hawekeye in the Morning, KSCS, Dallas. His ten-=parnter Katelyn, was about to get married. She was due to have her bahcleortte party that weekend. But her fiance, Matt, had his bachelor party the revious week. So that we feel like we were there, Hawkeye had Matt keep an audio journal of his shenanigans and surprused Katelyn with that audio on the show so she could feel like she was there, too.
The audience wants to get to know you. Your fans will care about the show when they care about you. Think of any TV show that mattered to you. When it went off-the-air, you were sad because the characters meant something to you. That’s part of connection. So, share those parts of your life that have drama and humanize you. Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston are masters at this. Karson’s son got a PS5. The show made a bet on how long it’d be before Barrett did something where the punishment was them taking his PS5 away. The brilliance of this is hearing Barrett’s voice, as well as his parents, for not brushing his teeth. Human, real, drama-filled, along with the perspective of the cast. Here, I’m learning about everyone (character development), see myself in this story (especially if I have a kid), and care about them through relatability and laughter.
What would it be like if you made a commitment to elevate and celebrate people in your community who make a difference? Volunteers, excellent teachers, emergency workers who always show up, those who run charities. Profile them on your show to counter all the negativity in the world. Then get a picture of them. Clear off a wall in the studio and put the picture on the wall, adding to it as you profile these folks. Call it the Morning Show Honor Wall. That visual can be updated on social media as you add to it and you’ll garner an image of supporting your community.
Interviews are often not prepped – even with the A-listers. When offered an interview, there are always two agendas: the person being interviewed wants to sell something (tickets, web hits, downloads, etc.). Our agenda is to always entertain and engage the audience. Which is why, when given the interview, that you not just work based on the press release. True, you must satisfy the interviewee’s goals. But that comes after you engage your audience with insights and storytelling from your curiosity based on what you learned about them in prep. Enter Logan and Sadie, WINK-FM, Ft. Myers, FL with their Barry Manilow interview. No one would turn down talking to Barry, right? But, he’s coming on sell concert tickets. Here are two segments they recently aired. Note how they bring Barry into a community service project they were doing about pets (knowing he’s a big dog guy) and the other, very mainstream things they did to make Barry even more interesting. Also note the production value they brought to the conversation to. All of this broadened the conversation’s appeal, as they helped Barry get his concert sold out.
Remember when we were kids and went back to school and the teacher made us write an essay called How I Spent My Summer Vacation? Well, let’s do that as content with schools going back in session in the next month, Get your most entertaining co-workers to write and record that essay for your show. Then, once kids go back to school, spend a week airing them!