Archive for category: Planet Reynolds

Coming this Monday, the all-new Molly and Steve Show (laser effects).  They lit up Binghamton, and now they’re bringing their number one morning show (extended echo to accentuate “number one”) to the ATL.  Molly and Steve – they’re real with more fun (canned laughter), more prizes (cash register sfx), and War of the Roses.  The all-new Molly and Steve Show – you won’t wanna miss it – starting Monday right here on Q100 (jingle, up tempo song).

Human beings gravitate to routine and structure.  The Bert Show on Q100 in Atlanta has been a part of that for decades.  And poof, one day soon, it will go away.  What will happen to his massive, loyal following in Atlanta and across his network of stations?  However the station handles this moment could determine its success for many years.

Maybe you’re going through this, too.  I’d like to help.  But first, can I take you out for bite to eat?  My treat.

I have a friend who owns a bunch of restaurants where I live in Raleigh.  Almost all of them are successful.  I asked her how that happened.  While location and the food experience are important, she shared a template for launch which both fascinated me and is one I’ve adopted when introducing a new show to any audience.

It’s the soft launch.  Low profile, zero hyperbole, none of the hype.  All of that chest-pounding about how great things will be is for all of us, insiders who want to communicate that a show is so damn good, they’ll be damn good for listeners, too.  You must earn your stripes, and she reminded me that the higher the expectations, the greater the chance of failure.  Promotion heightens expectations.  Listeners hate hype and hyperbole and eventually reject it because it’s never that good upon a first listen.

Her soft launches are very quiet.  They open and whoever finds them gets the experience as the host team, kitchen crew, and wait staffs find their chemistry.  Figuring all that out quietly and with little attention and no klieg lights shows her where the speed bumps are.  Once that’s all smoothed out after a few months, and word-of-mouth starts, is when they consider promoting a more mature product.

I’ve launched tons of shows over the years.  My most paramount rule and the companion to every decision we make, is to do no harm to the existing cume.  They’re there for many reasons:  loyalty to the old show, habit, they like the music, there were features they enjoyed.  When people wake in the morning, they like routines.  And they hate when those routines are disrupted.  So, acknowledge this and go slow lest that cume scatter.  If we lose them, it costs money to get them back.  Protect it.

Goal #1 is to endear the new show to the exiting audience.  Here are the general rules I ask shows to follow when they’re new to the station or market:

1. Topics should be familiar because you aren’t.  Familiarity is so important when people wake up.  Play the hits when it comes to topics.  Nothing unfamiliar.  Topics:  what’s going on locally, what’s up in pop (popular) culture, stories of your life that show you’re just like them, and music/artist-based content (so the show weaves itself into the larger station brand).
2. Affirm and earn images that you’re fun, genuine, friendly, and authentic in every break.
3. Character development is very important. Introduce yourself by being honest and sharing your life.  Letting them get to know you helps form that connection which leads to being familiar and loyalty.  A goal should be the audience saying, “they’re just like me and I feel like I know them.”  You don’t get that done in one break.
4. Be interested in them so they’re interested in you. Lots of phones, lots of storytelling.  Put the focus on the audience.  Nothing is more powerful than you getting them to talk about their favorite subject – themselves.
5. Avoid the point-of-fatigue that happens in breaks by under-staying the welcome. Short breaks lead them to wanting more.
6. Music is your friend right now. Lots of music holds their hand through the transition.
7. Be careful of the treatments to your strategic content so listeners don’t think, “They’re trying too hard to impress me.” In three words:  don’t be wacky.
8. Benchmarks, especially now, help provide that structure I noted above. They give you the best chance to define the show and get into the listener’s morning routine.
9. Respect the past. What fits the brand and what expectations do longtime listeners have?  Meet those in every break.
10. No promotion of the show just yet because promoting something heightens expectations by users. This is a soft, quiet launch.

My restaurant friend said that, while food and location are important to each of her places, it’s the dozens of people she employs who make that experience come to life.  She’s worried about them and the other group of people – those who float in to eat who have no formed opinions of her restaurant (aka listeners).  Managing all of that takes precedence.

That conversation re-wired how I think about debuting shows.  The talent you’ve hired might get frustrated at the slower pace, but it sets up the existing cume (who hate change) to have a better chance to react positively to what you’re doing.  Whoever follows Bert is in a unique spot to save that audience.   But only if they’re strategic will they have their best chance to protect what’s there.

It should be the Molly and Steve show because they’d kill.

Want a one-sheet of the above rules?  Grab that here.

I’m told the story of the market manager who went to find the morning show at 10am to congratulate them on their great ratings the day prior and they’d already left.

Seriously, that still happens in radio?  Yup.

We’re not so much in the radio business as we are in the business of radio.  A mentor taught me years ago there are two seasons in that business world.  The season of “I need you” and the season of “you need me”.  He said we should always be in the season of “you need me”.

Given that, let’s talk about how you shift the seasons to protect yourself.

This blog’s for my on-air folks.  Which season are you in?  In an industry that’s contracting, having any advantage is smart.  There was a time when great ratings insulated anyone from a RIF.  Today, more is expected from each of us to create value for those we serve.

I got let go from an on-air job years ago.  Several weeks later, the manager wanted to re-hire me, but in sales.  I said no because that was real work.  I used to think that just having great ratings was enough to keep my job.  No longer.  Radio companies are “for profit” and we creatives must help.

Let’s help you move from the former season to the latter.  Let’s talk about two areas that help you get there:  the money and the culture in your building (how you’re perceived).  I’m not suggesting you’re not doing any of this or haven’t tried, but take these as reminders of ways you can become even more valuable in the building.

My friend Jim Ryan wrote a great blog on these pages a few weeks ago about how Taylor Swift took control of her career.  This expands that conversation.

First, let’s talk about the money.  If you’re close to it, you’re much more valuable to your cluster and company and insulated from a RIF:

• What kind of relationship do you have with the AEs? This isn’t “I know them, and they like me.”  This is do you take them for lunch.  Do you actively engage them regularly to make their job easier?  Do you go on sales calls to close deals?  Do you know lots about their lives, so they know you care about them and their work?  You’re the star of the station to clients and can close a deal with your presence in a meeting.  But you must first have a relationship with the AEs to impact that.
• Do you know and pay attention to the top local accounts on the station?  I’m aware of a talent who knows these clients and regularly finds himself on their side of town.  He shows up on occasion unannounced to say hello and thank them for believing in the station/his show with their marketing money.  What kind of impact does that have both financially to the station and to their image with station management when they find out?  This talent gives clients his cell and tells them if they ever need anything to call.  It always gets back to the AE and manager that the talent did this.  He’s respecting those clients and protecting them, too.
• Do you have endorsements? They’re great, huh?  For the decision-makers on that side, do you know their birthdays and other important dates in their personal life and acknowledge them?  Do you regularly take them for lunch (on you!) to see how they are?  If you snag extra tickets to a local concert or sporting event, do you offer it to them as a gift for their belief in you?
• Do what others won’t. Grab some personalized thank you cards online and every week, write a handwritten note to these folks to thank them (clients and co-workers) for what they do for you and the station.  I cannot express enough the power of doing this.  No one does this, which fuels why you should.
• Do you frequent an establishment regularly? Why not extol the value of marketing to them and work with an AE to turn them into a client?
• Could your content get better if you involve a client in an appropriate break? Building any value-added, with the AE and station knowing, helps you shift seasons.
• Say yes, even if there’s no win for you. Showing up when you’re not expected is a positive.  Building that equity is long-term smart.  There are still talent whose first question when asked to do something is, “What’s the talent fee?”  In this environment, that’s a no-no.

Now let’s tackle being seen and being additive to your building’s culture:

• When I was a baby DJ starting on a morning show, I lived close to the station. Many days, when out running afternoon errands, I’d show up at the station for a few minutes to say hello to everyone.  If you do a morning show, when was the last time you saw the afternoon folks?  It’ll scare the hell out of those there at 4pm, but being seen by everyone is important.
• Work the halls. I know there might be fewer people in the buildings now, but walking around the station checking on everyone, seeing what’s up in their life, are connection points where they know you care for them personally.
• How about that support person, promotions assistant, or engineer who did something to help your show? You know those personalized note cards I mentioned above?  Sending one to their home or leaving it on their desk saying thanks goes a long way to you shifting in the seasons.
• Ditto the above, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. You feel special when someone remembers yours.  Go remember theirs!  That’s low effort, but high impact.
• Internal marketing is important. Putting together a synopsis of your show for everyone, with links to audio, lets them know your pride.  I work with shows that do this.  It’s very powerful.
• Do you regularly develop content that can be better with other personality’s involvement? Prove there are no silos by involving other talent in your content.  You’ll help make them bigger stars and they’ll end up returning the favor by talking about your show on their program.  This also works if any co-worker has a sense of humor or bold take on a topic.  Make them stars, too.

Doing even a fraction of the above moves you through the seasons.  It creates the season of “you need me”.  Then when budget cuts happen, they realize they can’t lose you.

I know there’s a lot here if you are on-the-air and it’s overwhelming to ask you to do more.  But, in the current environment in our industry, this protects you because it shifts you perceptually by the decision-makers from the season of “I need you” to the much more valuable season of “you need me.”  That’s the season you always want to be in.

The million-dollar talent and successful personalities I’ve touched over the years do all of this – it’s part of their ethos and personal business model.  If you do it, double down.  If you don’t, start today.  Then get saved.

I’m turning over the blog this week to one of the smartest people in radio.   Jim Ryan consults, coaches talent, and is one of my closest friends.  After nearly thirty years programming day-to-day in New York City for immensely successful brands like WLTW, CBS-FM, and WNEW-FM, along with growing national formats for Clear Channel, CBS, and Audacy, Jim felt it was time to take control of his future, so he’s stepped out on his own.  Jim not only teaches me in every conversation, he makes me laugh out loud, too.  Reach him at jim@jimryanmedia.com.  Ladies and gents, Jim Ryan…

Stop worrying about your future.  Control it.

For lessons in controlling your future, think Taylor Swift. Like every other artist, she signed a contract when she was fifteen, giving total control of her master recordings to the labels.  When the masters were sold to someone she didn’t like, she didn’t sulk away or raise the white flag of surrender.  She re-recorded the songs and released them (something her contract didn’t prohibit).  It was an insane amount of work.  She took control and planned lots of behind-the-scenes marketing.

When radio played an original version of one of her songs (the ones owned by the guy she didn’t like), the request lines lit up immediately with Swifties telling the talent they needed to play her new versions.  Companies like iHeart and Audacy moved to the new versions, mapping another Taylor win.  The streaming services saw immediate results as well – Taylor’s new versions were crushing the originals in airplay.  It all led this summer to Taylor buying back the original masters at a somewhat reasonable price.

Okay so you’re a radio talent and not Taylor Swift.  How does all this affect you and what’s the lesson here?

How are you controlling your future?  Today the work is different – it’s harder, compelling each of us to work smarter than the competition, just like Taylor.  Ratings are great, but in the world of Nielsen, even the best shows have bad months.   But if you’re where the eyes and ears are when not on the radio, it will enhance your win and increase your value to the station.

Podcasts of your show should be everywhere.  If you have a hobby or outside interest, do a second podcast on that passion.  Steve Kramer from Kramer and Jess, MIX 106.5, Baltimore, does a second podcast with his mother.  How endearing is that?  Being all over social media with great content could net you thousands of likes, comments, and shares.

When Scott Shannon came across the street to CBS-FM, the cash register rang immediately.  It was so good, we even hired the leading seller of WPLJ, his former station!  So, have a positive relationship with the sales folks and meet and know as many clients as you can.  I can’t tell you how many downsizing meetings I’ve been in over my career where the topic of endorsements came up.  Bring in revenue and your value enhances to the station and cluster even more.  When you’re the sales manager’s best friend, it’s not just income for you, it’s job security.

Doing simple things like knowing a client’s birthday or special anniversary and acknowledging it in some fashion works to build a special bond.  The days of talent being in a silo are over.  Having a relationship with listeners, sales, and clients is not just required today, it’s smart business for you.  The deeper those relationships, the more you’re just like Taylor Swift.  In control of your future.

From Swift to shift, own your career.  It’s exactly where you should be.

Stephen Colbert, in a 2018 interview with Howard Stern said, “My show is about whatever the conversation is today.  We’re about what the audience is talking about right now.”

The big story last week was the couple that got caught cheating at the Coldplay concert.  I need to tell you no more because it was everywhere and you know it.  Your audience does, too.  We are in the engagement business, and we win when we own the moment.  So, I wondered what radio shows did with that topic as it lived at the center of the pop culture universe.  How did they seize the moment?

There have been two phases of radio to me.  Pre- and post-deregulation.  I have affectionately referred to the days before big companies could own everything as the wild, wild west.  We’d come up with an idea today based on something in the news and it’d be on-air-tomorrow.  And often, it was loud and outrageous and captured the imagination of the audience, which was very good.  It created talk for us as FOMO set in which gave us an extra measure of listenership.

Much of today’s radio is filled with fear because every idea must be vetted thought multiple layers and, as I break out in a cold sweat…the lawyers (whose reflexive move is to tell us why we can’t do it).  We need to get back to what we were.  Not reckless, but imaginative.

Because the central theme to the Coldplay couple story is so universal (it was about relationships and cheating) and the topic was so pervasive, I asked my radio Facebook friends what they did to tie themselves into the story, so the audience stopped on them.  Here’s a sampling (with tons of kudos to each for compelling into their show Stephen Colbert’s vision for his – being about the moment):

• Mojo in the Morning at Channel 95.5 Detroit did Cheat Away at Coldplay where they asked listeners to confess their affair on-air to win tickets to the group’s concert in Miami.
• Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston did a custom song in Kennedy’s weekly feature The Impossible Parody heard here and seen here. Because this happened in Boston, they also gave away tickets to the concert with Karson’s Cold Plunge for Coldplay where the first listener to get him into the dunk tank won (a great video for social media).
• Dave Wheeler at Townsquare’s Big Frog 104 in central New York got the station’s mascot in on the action with a social media image.
• The great Paige Neinaber had some of his shows do pictures of talent hugging their HR directors in the same pose.
• Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah at WRAL-FM, Raleigh are seemingly in a thruple in their social media post.
• Christine and Salt, WTIC-FM, Hartford had an appearance planned with a local baseball team. They wanted to record a video for the jumbotron warning cheaters at the game what could happen.  The team nixed it, but I absolutely love that they came up with the idea.
• At KLOS, Los Angeles Nik Carter gave the 95^th caller dinner for them and their sidepiece when he played a Coldplay song. Likewise, Otis at The O Show suggested giving away three-packs to something.  For you, your wife, and your mistress.
• Heather Froglear at K-FROG, Riverside and Moug and Karla, B96 Chicago did social media images to go along with on-air content (here and here).
• Producer Melissa Bunting from AMP Mornings with Katie and Ed in Calgary shared this break about the story. Great use of audio.
• In a brainstorm with a show, we considered hiring divorce lawyers for the spouses of both people involved.
• Everyone got in on this, including the Philadelphia Phillies, who did the Coldplay Kiss Cam.  This isn’t radio, but watch to the end because it’s hysterical.  We need to do this, too.

All great stuff that put each show in the story and in a way that made the audience stop to take notice.  Sample the above to get inspired.  Bravo to everyone noted here (and you if you did something, too) for changing their show the next day when this story took over the national conversation.  Note that not everything above required a prize – it just needed some innovation.

To continue to thrive, we need more mischief in radio.  We must seize moments when the big stories appear.  If we’re about right now in inventive ways that fit the show’s brand image, listeners will want to be around us.  Let’s create more FOMO like we used to.

Radio doesn’t have a listening problem.  We have a top-of-mind awareness problem.  And that’s on us to fix, just like the shows above did with the Coldplay couple story.  Radio wins when it’s about right now in clever, unique ways.

When you listen to 7-8 hours of radio each day like I do (each hour a different show), you’re bound to hear things that bug you.

Most days, shows are hitting it out the park.  They’re on the right topics cut from that day’s pop culture, things going on locally, and stories about their lives that position them as just like the listener.  Add to that some treatments of those topics which make the breaks sparkle.

Other times, I might get something small that makes me scratch my head wondering why they did that.

Here for you, another installment of Steve’s Pet Peeve’s Volume 3.  It bugs me when I hear shows that…

1. Use words like: up chuck, throwing up, eating poop, projectile vomiting.  Using what I call “stop listening” words.  Instead of saying “I was up all night barfing,” why can’t you say, “I was sick to my stomach”?  The audience knows what you’re saying, and you aren’t using cringe words that make a portion of your audience turn away because they’re too graphic.
2. Breaks that start with unexplained laughter. Listeners feel left out when they aren’t in on the fun you’re having in the studio.
3. When something suggestive is said like, “It’s 69 degrees right now,” and the show devolves into a bad version of Beavis and Butthead.
4. Shows that try to gratuitously manipulate listeners to stay. Like doing a half a break and then teasing the payoff, making them wait any amount of time for resolution.  Just give them the bowl of ice cream in one break and you’ll accrue positive images.
5. Shows that don’t keep their promises in an effort to manipulate a few more minutes of listening. If you promise the content at 7:30, do it at 7:30, not 7:36 in an effort to get more minutes of listening.  You get two minutes either side of a promise to make good on it.  Don’t do that to them.
6. Features that are time-stamped need to be at (or very close to) when you promise to do it.
7. Explaining games in more than two sentences before playing the game. Listeners don’t have that mental bandwidth at any time of the day for an explanation of anything.  More than two sentences might mean it’s too complicated to play.  As I always say “when you’re explainin’, you ain’t entertainin’.”  You can use that.
8. Shows that play a trivia game and get irked when the caller doesn’t know the answer to a question they think is easy. Not a great look.  Be empathetic in those moments – these are your fans contributing content to your show.
9. Playing the Mission Impossible, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or the Price Is Right music when playing a game. They’re all dated and predictable.  Let’s challenge ourselves to update that stuff.
10. Talent who forget that every day you have new listeners who don’t know who you are. I’m a new listener tuning in and have no idea who’s who.  I recently checked out a show I don’t work with.  Both co-hosts were male.  I left after 90 minutes not knowing who was who.  Help me.

Deep breaths, Steve, deep breaths.  In with the good air, out with the bad!

Have a pet peeve for Volume 4 (oh yes, there will be a volume 4!)?  Email me here.