Dig Deep, Be Original

If one of radio’s superpowers is connecting with the audience, let’s talk about how that grows over time.

Traditionally, we look at character development in a very linear fashion.  Steve’s married; Steve has dogs; Steve is an NC State fan.  For new shows, this is a safe place to start.  Minus a formed relationship with an audience, this gives you the broadest appeal to form a connection with listeners.  That’s where any of us would be if we met someone at a party.  “Do you think State will win ten football games this year,” is a great way to begin a conversation.

There are wonderful human connections in those stories.  Those give the audience an entry point to getting to know you.  That’s Character Development 101.

But true connection, a requirement as a show matures, requires much deeper levels of vulnerability.  As I talk with talent to nurture their relationships with fans, we focus on the F’s:  fears, failures, and flaws.  Those unpolished parts of your life – the things that did not go according to plan – make you human.  When you dig deep, you become more of an original.

The audience doesn’t want a flawless hero.  They want a real person.

Being vulnerable doesn’t mean turning every break into a therapy session, oversharing private details of your life, or manufacturing false drama.  It means having the courage to acknowledge how messy your life is so listeners can get to know you there, too.  Because that’s all of us.

My friend, Sam Milkman, who works for Coleman Insights, told me once of a talent he worked with who ended every break, “I’m Christian, and I have a lot of personal problems.”  That’s quite disarming and deepened the connection between him and his audience.

Polished can earn admiration.  Social media is an endless parade of perfection.  The perfect meal, the perfect outfit, the perfect social life.  It’s the persona those we follow want us to see.  Perfection creates distance, though.  Unpolished earns trust.

Failures, flaws, and fears (mistakes, embarrassments, regrets) have tension, uncertainty, lessons, humor, and humility.  Some tips as you go there:

  • Share the lesson, not just the wound. A story about a mistake becomes valuable when it gives the audience something to recognize in themselves.
  • Be specific in your storytelling. “I was nervous before that job interview” is fine.  “I sat in the parking lot for ten minutes before going into that meeting because I was convinced I didn’t belong there” is human.
  • Don’t wait for the perfect ending. Life’s not perfect.  But do tell me what you learned about yourself from the experience.
  • Let your flaws co-exist with your strengths. The confident personality can still admit insecurity.  The funny co-host can have a bad day.  The successful person can express doubt.
  • Make room for imperfections in your content. When talent admit a misstep without pretending it didn’t happen, listeners get permission to be imperfect, too.

The goal is to become more recognizable to the audience.  Because the deeper a listener sees themselves in you, the more durable the connection becomes.

Give an F:  show your fears, failings, and flaws to the audience.  Besides the standard attributes, know your weaknesses, too.  Because the things we try the hardest to hide are often the very things that make us worth hearing.

In a world overflowing with image management, digging deep may be the most powerful way to stand out as an original.

Radio’s Culture Wars and the Big Bleed Out

In the 90s when I programmed WRAL-FM, there were some seminal learning moments that have stuck with me for decades.  Things that shaped how I coach talent today.  Let me share one of them.

Raleigh-based Capitol Broadcasting was a progressive media company.  The owner, Jim Goodmon, believed in several core things which is why the broadcast properties always excelled:  hire the best people, treat them well, and invest in growing their leadership skills.  That investment in the people paid dividends.  The company believed if I got better as a manager, my people would be challenged, happy, and in growth mode, too, and help make the company more successful.

I got to choose yearly leadership training.  One year, I went to the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC and took a three-day course on how leaders must adapt in the face of change.  They ran us through several exercises and then put significant change in all of them to see how we’d adapt.  I learned much.

The most thought-provoking included identifying those who reported to me prior to arrival.  The Center surveyed them in two areas:  what leadership attributes are most effective to motivating you as an employee?  And evaluate Steve against those principles.  Kinda like a mini focus group on Steve.  It was all quite fascinating to see me from their perspective and learn from the CCL how to adjust to be a better leader.

The previous Planet Reynolds, I Need This Job:  The Creativity Killer, focused on this.  Radio’s biggest problem is not just its revenue issues.  Bigger than that, it’s the deteriorating culture and fear that permeates everything.  You must fix that to fix the revenue issues.  Because wherever there’s a shitty culture, the best, brightest, and most innovative players (aka the ones who are best equipped to help a manager fix their problems), will leave first.

So, who’s confident enough to do a focus group on their own culture for some honesty to fix what might need to be repaired?  If you’re a curious manager, programmer, or leader of a show, read on because I’ve made this easy.

I’ve put together a short survey you can steal and send your people to assess your culture.  A link is below.  Grab every question and re-create it in Survey Monkey or Google Docs.  This is kinda like your yearly physical.  Your doctor does blood work then shares results that are off so you can adjust what you do to be healthier.

Promise your people and me a few things?  Assure them this is completely anonymous so they can/should be very honest.  There might be a tendency to deny what you see, justify why something is off, or (worse) blame outside forces.  But real leadership is about responsibility and accountability.  Standing up, acknowledging the honest results, then being committed to making any necessary changes to fix what’s off in your culture would be powerful.  It might also help you keep those employees who can help you.

Here are the questions you’ll find in the survey along with why some of them are included.  Completely steal it (link below).  You’ll then get better because you not only listened to your people, you heard them.

  1. How would you rate the overall culture of our station/cluster?
  2. How valued do you feel as an employee?
  3. Do you believe station leadership genuinely cares about employees as people? (This is the most important question because if they don’t feel like the leader cares about them as people, they run.  People will tolerate a lot of challenges when they feel seen, respected, and valued.  When they don’t, they’re scanning the horizon for something else.)
  4. How comfortable are you sharing concerns, ideas, or disagreements with management? (A culture isn’t healthy because people aren’t complaining.  It just may mean key people have given up.  A culture is healthy because people feel safe enough to complain.)
  5. When problems are identified, how confident are you that management will address them?
  6. Do you see a future for yourself at this company (station) over the next two years?
  7. How often do you feel recognized or appreciated for your contributions?
  8. If offered a comparable job elsewhere tomorrow, in or out of radio, how likely would you be to leave? (If more than 25% answer “likely” or “very likely”, your culture will leak talent before you realize it.)
  9. What is the one thing management could do, besides raises, that would improve our culture?
  10. What is the one thing about our culture we should protect and never lose?

This has nothing to do with the company you work for.  It has everything to do with managers and leaders in the building locally.  The most dangerous workplace isn’t the one where people are speaking up.  It’s the one where they’ve stopped.  Let’s be confident enough to ask, and competent enough to act on all of it.  Leaders do that.

The purpose of my doing this for you isn’t to prove you’re doing a good job.  It’s to discover where you can do a better one.  The stations that win the talent war (and by “talent” I don’t mean just the on-air people) won’t necessarily have the biggest budgets.  They’ll be the ones that create a culture where good, smart people want to stay and great people want to come.

Find the full survey to steal/recreate here.  If you want a PDF of the questions and answers to make this on your own, download that here. 

Do this and those you work with will know you care enough to have a great workplace. And know that I’ll be privately cheering you for caring about your culture to ask.

I Need This Job: The Creativity Killer

Tuesday, June 16, 2026, approximately 1:15pm.  I’m in the middle of a creative talent coaching session with a show then a cast member lays this on me:  “I’ll do it because I need this job.”

It was a gut punch to hear.  They weren’t moving forward with an idea because it was sound, strategic, entertaining, or memorable.  But because they needed the job and they didn’t want to rock the boat.

Fear is an absolutely shitty place from which to make creative, artistic decisions.  But that’s where we are.

Much of what I do is remove fear from rooms.  An idea appears that might get us talk or an image that we’re original around relevant content.  But a show doesn’t want to do it.  Why?  Maybe because they don’t know how, maybe because they disagree, and maybe because they’re scared of what could happen.

Then iHeart offs hundreds of people with smaller companies adding to that number and, once again, to our creatives on whose shoulders rest the kind of radio that works best, more fear.

The Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud once said, “Fear is the path to the dark side.  Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  And hate leads to suffering.”  Freud didn’t say that.  Yoda did.

Fear kills creativity and culture.  We must address the fear with a laser focus.

I cannot speak to radio’s financials.  I’m not that smart despite taking accounting in college (I got a D+).  I don’t understand it all.  I do know that fear courses through the veins of our talent and that, dear friends reading this, leads to failure all the time.

Who’ll take that fear away?  Well, good reader, that’s on us all.  Here are things Stevie Wonders®:

  • If you’re in corporate and participate in these conversations, do you owe it to the survivors to have an open forum where they can ask any questions, so they understand this better?  Stepping into the arena means you will take a few punches.  But many are angry from their fear.  Having that open forum could bring short term pain but rebuild trust with those who remain.  If not, we’ll get public corporate statements like this to justify the RIFs (aka terminations):  “We’re always looking for ways to maximize our verticals for efficiency that bring a heightened experience to our audiences.”  Huh?  WTF?  The cynicism deepens as a narrative is affirmed you DO NOT CONTROL, which is NOT GOOD for any of us.  There are companies where this happens when these decisions are made.  How straight can you be with everyone so they can help solve the challenge?  Knowledge and transparency past “we have revenue issues” builds trust.
  • Part of being a leader is being with people. It’s on all of us (not just someone in a managerial position) to listen to those who are scared. You don’t do that by having Panera once a month so everyone can have a free lunch in the conference room.  The very best managers I’ve worked with over the years have EQs off the charts.  Do much more of that.  And if you’re not a “people person manager” learn those skills and/or find those who can.  Our future depends on it.
  • For God’s sake let’s all of us pay attention to those whose passions and livelihoods we’re just taken away from them. They may say on Facebook what a pleasure it was to work there or remind us that you’re bound to be fired in this industry (an awful way to think, but I get it).  Wonder what those people are really thinking in bed at night, fearful about their future in a contracting industry, if they’ll be able to afford their gas or rent, and what happens if they get sick.  We really need to show leadership and be with them.

If there is one skill worth mastering, let it be making people feel heard and valued.  Your words, energy, and presence leave a mark long after the moment is gone.  Most people are fighting this battle and we cannot see it, because they might be too proud to admit it.  Be the person who leads, inspires, listens, and uplifts the survivors and those who lost their jobs and those with fear.  The greatest gift you can give these people is reminding them of their worth.

The “I need this job” people remain and the only way to fix our substantial issues is to not complain about the industry and reference it as though it’s circling the drain, but to do the hardest thing possible and be with people who are impacted – and that is on us all.

Life’s about seizing control.  We can all do that.  A prominent show in a prominent market at a radio station all of us have wanted to work for in our careers just asked for some professional advice.  I told them to find someone who’ll help put together a business plan moving forward where they can create income streams with their talents in other ways than radio only.  Doing that puts you in control of your future.  I say this from personal experience – once you do that, your self-worth is affirmed and you’ll thrive in ways you cannot comprehend today.

The most troubling thing I’ve heard in the last few weeks wasn’t, “Hundreds of people were laid off.”  It was, “I’ll do it because I need this job.”  Fear has never created great radio.  Great radio comes from curiosity, from conviction, and from people willing to raise their hand because they are fearless.  Talent are protecting their jobs – which means the radio they do becomes forgettable.

Each of us have a choice.  Let’s commit to listen more, to explain more, to encourage more, and to lead more by making our people feel safe.  When we do, they create.  And when they create, they connect.  And connection is still the most powerful thing radio has ever done.

Do it for them.  And do it for you.

The Day My City Wept

The Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup and there’s a vibe shift in my hometown of Raleigh, NC we should never lose.  People are smiling at strangers.  Car horns aren’t expressing frustration, they’re celebrating.  Social media isn’t filled with arguments.

People are weeping with happiness, and radio needs to create that local pride every day.

People who have nothing else in common are connected by a shared feeling.  The Carolina Hurricanes were celebrated with a parade 150,000 people attended.  They didn’t just win the Cup.  They reminded an entire community what it feels like to be part of something bigger than themselves.  Everyone has new best friends.

My message in this week’s Planet Reynolds is that radio has the power to do that every day.

Often, we see ourselves in the entertainment business.  And most days we are.  But we’re also in the belief business.  Think of that big service project you did to support a cause important to you.  You had to move fans into the belief business to get that done.

Every day, we decide what matters.  We help listeners choose what to care about.  We help shape how they feel about where they live.  If we spend hours every day talking about what’s broken, we’re teaching the audience what to believe about the community.

But if we spend hours every day celebrating local people, local victories, local traditions, and local pride, we’re teaching them something else.  We’re teaching them that this is a place worth loving.

I live in a market with Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State.  We have seen championships before.  But this one was different.  It bonded the community like nothing I’ve seen in my decades here.

Often these feelings of joy live for a short while.  A team wins, you celebrate, then a few days later it dissipates.  I wonder what it would be like for all of us to make a longer-term commitment to celebrating where we live.

The negativity industry is thriving.  Algorithms reward outrage.  Cable news loves division.  Social media radiates conflict.  Everywhere we go, someone or something is telling us what should make us angry.

Radio has an opportunity to do something different, because you control how listeners feel by what you do.  There might be problems, but there are also victories.  Yes, there’s conflict, but there’s also kindness.  There certainly is division, but there’s also community.

Sometimes the most rebellious thing a personality can do is make people feel hopeful.  It’s like running in the opposite direction from everything else we experience.

No one can tell the story of your town better than you.  Nobody can celebrate local heroes better than you.  Nobody can create pride in your community better than you.  This is not about putting on your show a Thursday feature called Hometown Heroes and ticking that box.  It’s about making a wholesale change in your content to always be the champions of your city.  A vibe that permeates everything.

When the Hurricanes won, the great radio stations of Raleigh didn’t just report it.  They amplified what it meant to be a community experience.  When they won 20 years ago, the celebration was them parading in the parking lot of the arena where they played (true!).  When the Hartford Whalers moved here 30 years ago, they said hockey wouldn’t work in the south.  This time, 150,000 showed up to the streets of downtown Raleigh to express their love for what the team did for us.  And the team responded in kind.

The best personalities become the emotional mayors of their communities.  They celebrate what deserves celebrating.  They shine a bright spotlight on those who make a difference.  They create moments where listeners feel connected to one another.  They don’t tune in just for a laugh, but because they’re desperately in search of something that makes them feel good about where they live.  You can help them see their hometown through a better lens.

Do you need a winning team like we have in Raleigh or in New York when the Knicks won?  Nope, you just need to access the passion you have for your town, then make that content commitment to your fans.

If we committed to making daily moments of civic pride, what might that be like?  One story, one local hero, one example of generosity, one reason to feel grateful.  Imagine the cumulative effect if you did that five days a week, 52 weeks a year.  Not just to build ratings and revenue.  But to build belief. Because when people feel connected to their community, they become happier citizens, better neighbors, and more engaged participants in local life.  And if you did that, how might you be celebrated?

Build that community and radio becomes more than a source for content.  It becomes an epicenter for connection.

The roar coming from Raleigh wasn’t really about hockey.  It was about identity, it was about belonging, and it was about thousands of people sharing the same feeling at the same time.  That’s why we wept.

Radio has always possessed that same superpower.  The question isn’t whether we can create those moments.  The question is whether we’ll become intentional enough to use them.

Because in a world that’s constantly telling people what’s wrong, great talent can still remind them what’s right.   And that might be the most important job we have.

You game?

Donald Trump and the Attention Economy: Steal from Him to Stay Top-of-Mind

Several years ago, I was invited to attend a gathering of Hubbard programmers.  Traditionally when programmers of any company gather, it’s time to learn.  One of the teachers that day, besides me, was Fred Jacobs.

Fred gives a great presentation and something he said that day has stayed with me for years:  Donald Trump would have been an amazingly successful program director because he knows how to command our attention and create talk.

The previous Planet Reynolds (Steve Wants to Sell You a Horse) noted how we are in the Attention Economy now.  Everywhere we turn, something is vying to capture our attention.  I’d mentioned in that piece that often what I hear on radio shows is pleasant people having pleasant conversations about perfectly acceptable topics.  We don’t try hard enough to capture and keep the attention of our listeners.  By not doing that, we create the circumstances where something else will.  That’s one of the reasons TSL is abysmal.

So, Steve got to thinking!  I noodled on this question:  what does Donald Trump do that makes all of us, regardless of whether we love or hate him, stop to pay attention?  And what can we take from that to get better so our fans don’t leave?

Here are the ten items I landed on with applications of how they might work for you.  I’m not advocating you start talking about politics or culture-war issues.  But seizing on some of his techniques noted here up against the topics appropriate for your show might create more energy where listeners will stay longer or come back because you’re electric.  Because tension equals attention.

  1. He frames everything as a fight. Everything is a battle:  winners and losers, there are always stakes.  He knows that friction magnetizes attention.  For you:  think about how you frame things.  For instance, you can say, “Let’s talk about tipping in America.”  Or you can say, “If one more person asks me to tip them, I’m going to drive my car into a building.”   Which is more attention-getting?
  2. He uses memorable labels. He knows how to brand everything with sticky shorthand.  Fake what?  Crooked who?  Sleepy who?  It’s all mental Velcro.  For you:  naming what you do is highly memorable.  Labels are remembered faster.
  3. He talks in simple language. He uses short sentences and everyday words with a punchy rhythm with his barstool voice.  For you:  if the sentence sounds like it belongs in an email from corporate, kick it out.  We’re just in the car chatting.
  4. He repeats the message relentlessly.  He knows that repetition builds memory and memorability builds identity.  Because repetition is branding.  For you:  never fear over-teaching anything by repeating yourself.  A catch phrase or a core belief of the show said over and over helps it cut through.
  5. He creates moments designed for reaction. Reaction fuels attention.  Attention fuels coverage.  Coverage fuels reach.  For you:  engineer a reaction in what you do.  Bold language ignites a conversation in their brain.
  6. He makes everything personal. Stories about people are easier for audiences to emotionally process.  For you:  Who’s human in what you’re doing?  Humans beat abstractions every time.
  7. He performs confidently. He has absolute certainty on everything.  Maybe?  Kinda?  Nope.  Conviction builds trust.  For you:  Not arrogance, but conviction.  We like being around people who know what they want and think.  Because living in the mushy middle is a one-way ticket to Loserville.
  8. He creates ongoing storylines. Ongoing narratives are followed.  It’s Trump vs. the media.  America is winning not losing.  For you:  make people pay attention to see what happens next in the story.  For instance – Steve thinks golf is stupid.  Let’s change his mind with some lessons and beers this weekend.  Tune in Monday to see if he’s a convert.
  9. He understands the camera. He creates mental cinema.  For you:  speak to create a picture.  “I’m standing in the aisle at Walmart, holding a $9 jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, wondering why it’s so expensive.”  You saw me in that Walmart aisle holding the mayo, right?
  10. He is unpredictable. He never lets the conversation become background noise because he knows that predictability comforts and surprise captures attention.  For you:  don’t let your break become background babble.  The unexpected guest, the sudden stunt, the random street audio, a new segment.  It all goes to helping keep their attention.

Attention beats perfection.  A show that occasionally ruffles feathers, but sparks conversation will beat a polite show no one talks about.

The world around us has changed, folks.  It’s louder, edgier, and very, very noisy.  Job #1 is to capture their attention.  Job #2 is to keep it.

Do that and they won’t just hear you, they’ll follow you.

Steve Wants to Sell You a Horse

It was the Monday after the Kentucky Derby many moons ago.  My on-air partner and I decided we needed to use that topic for content on the show.  So, we hatched this brilliant idea to call the McDonalds up the road from the station, claiming we were the owners of the horse that came in last place, to see how much they’d give us for him, saying he’d make for delicious hamburgers.

Genius, huh?  We live in the attention economy and thought those three minutes would certainly keep listeners from going elsewhere.

At 10:00 that morning, we were hauled into the GM’s office and informed we’d lost the McDonalds account.

Fortunately, we had a very good manager who awarded creativity and risk-taking.  He understood, gave us a pass, and replaced them with another client paying a higher rate.

Don’t bank that idea for next year.  The world (and business environment) is different now.

I listen to radio all over the country and, in too many places, hear pleasant people having pleasant conversations around acceptable topics.  In this environment, that won’t cut it.

Where are my renegades?  The mischievous people?  The quirky who can capture the imagination of the audience and cause talk?

I am NOT suggesting you be reckless or inappropriate.  But we do need to foster an environment of silliness again if we’re ever going to stay top-of-mind with our fans, so they develop this fear of missing out.

We ain’t gonna get that through a prep service or being inoffensive and playing it safe with bland conversations and phone calls from listeners chiming it.

Yes, I know the corporate folks look down on this and the lawyers default to “no” a lot.  But how do we work past this to find the sweet spot for people who can do it?  I know we’ve chased many of them away from our industry.  But that doesn’t absolve those of us who remain from thinking that way, too.

Pleasant all the time is our enemy.  It makes radio completely missable. Take a stand, access your sense of humor for silly angles that can be leveraged into talked about breaks.  In one word:  innovate without doing wacky radio bits.  Wait, that was six words.  Sorry.

I had a show once that bought a ton of girl scout cookies.  They invited in two teachers who built a big Jenga tower with the cookie boxes.  The teacher who made the tower collapse lost, and the other got all the cookies for their school.

Or the Boston show that was outraged when Dunkin’ changed the name of the Boston Cream Donut to the Philly Cream Donut.  The Flyers were making their Stanley Cup run (rivals to sports-loving Bostonians).  They had listeners bring their Dunkin’ merch to the station to burn unless they changed the name back.

Or the talent who mused on-air, concerned he left the iron plugged in before leaving for work.  A C-level show would have left it at that.  A B-level show would have opened the phones, asking listeners if they’d ever done that, too (kinda lame, but it’s something).  This show went A-level and sent the co-host home to check.  A narrative with tension!  And while en-route (all of it on-air), they called his insurance agent and found out he hadn’t paid his renters insurance.  Ouch.

Or the show, in new digs, who found a crushed Cheez-It in the carpeting and called every other talent during that program, asking their favorite snack, to figure out who dirtied the studio, pissing off the chief engineer.

We don’t need prizes and contesting isn’t the elixir.  We need imagination.  Doing something imaginative to capture all who are listening will feed the fear of missing out.  An image every show needs to get that extra measure of audience to set you apart.

I’m inspired when I watch old Letterman clips on YouTube.  He was a master at it.  So was Colbert.  I know they had teams of people to suggest this stuff.  But we need to access those odd things more if we’re going to survive and thrive.

So much of what I hear lives in the Sea of Sameness.  Shows that do this kind of stuff will prevent people from leaving.  You’ll capture them for a moment to see what happens next.  If you create attention through imagination, you can then persuade listeners to stay longer, come back, or have a deeper relationship with your show.  If you don’t create imaginative attention, then you can’t.

Let’s go already, radio.

PS:  Because I know you’re wondering, Pavlovian came in dead last in May’s Kentucky Derby.  He had 30-1 odds.  Today, there’s a better than even chance he’d make a delicious quarter-pounder if anyone is willing to make the call.

PPS:  Colbert wrapped up being on CBS on a Thursday night.  The very next night, he’s hosting a cable access show in Monroe, Michigan.  Absolute, total silliness.  I dare you to not laugh at this.  It’s a giggle-fest.  We need more of that.

The Personal is Universal

My girlfriend is out of town on an extended business trip, and I have the place to myself.  She’s expecting me to keep the house clean.  So far, I’d get an F.

My neighbor borrowed my lawnmower two weeks ago and still hasn’t returned it.  I’m scared to ask him for it back.

I’m going on a vacation and on a limited budget.  The cheapest place I can find is a “sex hotel”.  I’m thinking about staying there but won’t do anything and I definitely won’t get naked.

My dog is really sick and so far, my wife and I have racked up $3900 in vet bills.

 

I talk much on these pages that a show’s goal is to Conquer Content and Create Connection.

What is connection, but proving to the audience that you are just like them?  Think of the people you’re close to in your personal life.  It all started by common bonds.  How to do that today?  Well, be honest in whatever you’re talking about.  And tell stories about yourself by being vulnerable and letting them in your world in ways that prove you are just like them!

There are some general guidelines to follow when deciding if a story you experience is worthy of the show.  Ask these questions, because not all experiences qualify:

  1. Is it an experience the average listener could find themselves in? Is there a fair shot they have had or could have a similar experience?  That’s called relatability.
  2. If not #1, is it an experience so extraordinary and intriguing the listener would be interested in hearing it?
  3. In both of the above, is there conflict or tension? We’re all addicted to drama and without it, you don’t have anything.
  4. Is there a powerful emotion associated with the story, so the audience feels it?

Check all the stories at the very top top.  They each satisfy #1 above:  I’m alone in the house and have to keep it clean for when my girlfriend returns from a trip; I am going on vacation without much money and might stay at a “sex hotel” because it’s cheap; my neighbor borrowed something and won’t give it back; my dog is sick and we have massive vet bills.  In each of these, the average listener could relate and you’re bonding with them because of those commonalities.

Where shows get in trouble, you get a disconnect because not every story has the same strategic benefit.  I recently saw a social media post of a talent talking about being on a corporate jet and spilling red wine on a white sofa.  Not very relatable or great use of content time as the audience says, “that’s not me.”

The other problem is when you have stories with no tension.  Because tension is what creates attention.

Follow these general guidelines as you aggregate personal experience content to be sure your strategic goal in creating connection is reached when making your choices on what stories to share with the audience.

Because the personal is universal.

Radio’s Forgotten Superpower (Hey NAB – Read This and Give Me a Call?)

Your fans are driving to work, listening to you, and having fun.  In the quiet, darker moments, what feeling might they be experiencing?  We hear much about a loneliness epidemic in society.  It impacts us all, whether we wish to openly acknowledge it or not.  Loneliness is a public health crisis and no longer a fringe issue.  In the quiet spaces of life – the commute, the cubicle, the kitchen at night, we all have pangs of feeling alone in this hyperconnected world.  These are the exact moments where personality radio excels.

Not to be nostalgic, but when I was a kid and found radio, I would often listen alone in my basement bedroom on Sherman Drive in Newburgh, NY.  As an insecure 15-year-old, I left every listening occasion feeling as though I was hearing my best friend on the radio.

One of my unaided goals for any talent is for the audience to leave saying, “They’re just like me.  I feel like I know them.”

Over the years, we’ve leveraged away advantages.  Some of that we did to ourselves:  we’re less local due to syndication, we’re less unpredictable due to the lawyers and corporate control, and we have ceded music images to music-only services like Spotify and Apple Music.  Some of that was done to us:  the algorithm and passive, endless scrolling.  Personalized feeds feel social but aren’t.  Spotify knows what you like but it really doesn’t know you.  It can’t laugh with you, it can’t root for you, and it can’t comfort you when life gets complicated and punches you in the gut.

One attribute we’ve never lost is our intimacy.  What I learned from my early mentors, that radio is just you and me, still holds.  Every one of us on-the-air has received a call from a listener who had a tragedy in their life, and we were what kept them company through it.

I’ve always wanted the NAB to adopt a new slogan that reinforces to listeners and advertisers this immense strength no other medium has.  I want that positioning statement to be Radio – We Make You Feel Less Lonely.

Not to turn this into a Steve therapy session, but all of us have varying degrees of loneliness in our life.  You or I might not admit that to anyone vocally, but deep down inside we do.  Despite how fast life moves and all these devices we’re addicted to, many of us have pangs of loneliness.  Concurrent, we also feel that, regardless of how hard we try at anything, no one is rooting for us.

I know, this is deeper than you’d expect from me this time.  But here’s where radio shines brightly and we need to lean into this if we’re going to stay relevant.  It’s a lesson on how to deepen the bond with listeners, turning them into fans.

Tackling loneliness as an ongoing community service project is powerful.  Acknowledging this, as I have done here with you, is deeply vulnerable.  I ask shows to talk about this, reinforcing that in a world where people don’t think anyone is there for them, especially during tough times, we are if we do radio right.  So, listeners leave knowing they have a friend, even if they’ve only been there for fifteen minutes.  Radio – We Make Listeners Feel Less Lonely.

Great radio is grounded in Conquering Content and Creating Connection.  There’s nothing more powerful than addressing and solving the loneliness problem each of us experience.  That’s connection.

I was captured by this short video shared by the morning talent I work with at 3FM, part of the National Public Radio System in the Netherlands.  A cast member was about to see a friend she’d not visited with in years.  She mused about how long it might be before they’d see each other again.  So, she wrote her a letter, bared her soul, and offered this private, very intimate moment for all the audience to hear.  As you watch, take note of her cast-mate’s faces.  They sit in awe.  You’ll view this and leave with the same thought I had – I feel like I know her, her values, and how she treats people.  And you’ll want a friend just like her in your life, too.  Radio here made their listeners feel less lonely.

It was neither polished nor “radio perfect”.  It was human.  And in that moment, the studio disappeared, like we were eavesdropping on something sacred.

Somewhere in that audience (somewhere in your audience), there’s a listener all alone, like I was when I found radio.  If we do radio right and dig deeper than trivia games and relationships-features, they won’t feel alone when any segment ends.  Just like I didn’t.

Let listeners know that, and you’ll change their life as they become less lonely.  You’ll change your life, too.  And be reminded why you fell in love with radio as a kid.

If radio is going to matter in the years ahead, it won’t be playing the right songs or having the right benchmarks.  It’ll be because we made someone feel seen, heard, and less alone.

What radio does so brilliantly when done right is make listeners feel less lonely.  Maybe radio isn’t in the music business any longer.  Maybe we’re in the companionship business.  You wanna win?  You want legacy stuff?  Make that job #1 and you will.

Our ability to be intimate with listeners is radio’s superpower.  And could be its next great future.

 

Steve Pet Peeves: Volume 4

Is Steve in an ornery mood today?  Geez, I don’t think so.  I just had coffee with him this morning and he seemed fine.  Let’s ask:  “Hey Steve, anything bugging you today?  And why the hell are you talking in the third person in the blog that you write?”

When you listen to as much personality radio as I do (minimum 6-8 shows a day!), something’s gonna bug you.  That’s why I have the award-winning series Steve Pet Peeves!  It gives me a chance to share some things I hear that create a less than enjoyable listening experience.

Nothing on this list will impact the number before the decimal point.  But do enough of them and it will alter the number after the decimal point.

Here’s Volume 4 (or Volume IV if Roman numerals makes it more official):

  1. Talent who forget that every day you have listeners who don’t know who you are. I’m a new listener tuning in and have no idea who’s who.  Don’t make me work for it.  Help me by telling me.
  2. Any talent posting online a picture of themselves signing a contract extension.  Please stop.  You’re saying to the audience, “I have job security and you don’t,” which is a bad look to connect with the regular people.  I collect these when I see them.  Maybe one day I’ll release them?!
  3. See #2 above – those who put next to the picture, “Well, you’re stuck with me for three more years!” Don’t be passive-aggressive.
  4. Over-explaining how a game works.  Instead of that, just play a short version of it for the audience amongst yourselves.  Doing that shows how it’s played and will grab the audience more.
  5. Spending the first two minutes explaining things to me before the actual content begins. All that process stuff is a tune out.  Because when we’re explainin’ we ain’t entertainin’.  I’m gonna trademark that line.
  6. The dreaded sports bet between shows. Your team is playing their team, so you make a bet with a show in that market.  Decades of doing this work and I have yet to see how any listener finds this entertaining (because it ain’t about them).
  7. When playing a game, asking the caller if they’re ready.  Yes, they’re ready.  They’re already on the phone and you should have prepped them to be ready before you played.
  8. Shows that go on and on about a cast member’s birthday. You know when it’s someone’s birthday in the office and they make you celebrate it?  You know how you feel?  You really don’t care, right?  The listeners feel that way, too, when you go on about yours.  Unless you have a great story with lots of drama.
  9. Talent who put the phrase “it’s your girl” or “it’s your boy” before they say their name. It’s your boy, Steve Reynolds!  Only DJs do that.
  10. Psychics.  Very 1985.  It doesn’t matter that your phones ring off the hook.  Let’s be better than 1985.

I am already working on Volume 5.  Got one?  Email me here.  If you missed previous versions, find Volume 1 here, Volume 2 here, and Volume 3 here.  I’m told once the list is complete, it’ll hang in the Smithsonian.

What Great Talent Want More than Anything Else

We’re at the end of another thrilling March Madness.  The elite survive and move on in the tournament.  I’m captured by something Duke’s iconic Coach K said while on the Pat McAfee Show:

“Greatness wants to be coached.”

He said this when asked what it was like to coach basketball’s elite:  Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James and others on the Olympic basketball team.  Pat wondered if he asked them to check their egos at the door.

Quite the contrary Coach K said.  Elite performers have an ego – it’s part of what motivates them.  He told them to bring their egos into the room as long as they could form one ego together that would drive the team.  We know the results.

Over the many years I’ve coached radio talent, there are many qualities that bind the radio elite I’ve been fortunate to work with.  They have egos, but their greatness wanted to be challenged.  That pushing and pulling and questioning of talented people, open to this feedback, helps get them to heights yet unknown.  Their greatness wanted coaching.

Two stories.

The wonderfully smart Dom Theodore called me on a Monday many years ago.  He was programming then CBS’s new Top 40 AMP in New York City.  He wanted me to come to town that Thursday to interview someone they were considering for mornings.  Someone who was out-of-the-box.  They were wondering if they were crazy considering this person.

I am normally leery working with celebrities outside of radio.  They tend to think their persona alone will drive their radio success.  Two hours after having a one-on-one chat with Nick Cannon, I told Dom they’d be dumb if they didn’t hire him.  I was captured by Nick’s aura and passion for radio and told him I would need direct contact with him if this was gonna work.  He really had no idea how to do radio.  While I respected the room (cohosts and producers), the show would rise and fall with Nick’s decisions.  He gave me his cell.  When I got to Laguardia, I texted him and got a reply in thirty seconds.  A good sign.  That’s how it went with Nick.

Nick made every meeting, even if it meant taking the red eye from Los Angeles.  He called to ask questions and for advice.  He thought about radio all the time and worked to learn how we do this.  Despite the station not succeeding (because of a little thing called Z100), I adored Nick.  His greatness wanted coaching.

Ditto Ebro Darden at HOT 97 in New York.  I was taken by this incredible article done on him in Barrett Media last week.  Ebro’s no longer on terrestrial radio.  But look at how he’s elevated.  Ebro, as you would imagine, is no wallflower.  We’d sit in meetings and challenge each other.  Never raised voices, but convictions on both sides.  All I had to do was access the New Yorker in me.  Maybe he didn’t like it in the moment (maybe he did?), but there was always a mutual respect.  Ebro is where he is now because his greatness wanted coaching (from me in small part and I am sure many others in his career).

If you only want to be coached on your terms, you don’t want greatness.  You want comfort.

Ebro and Nick (and the many other great talent I’ve worked with) have convictions and a vision for their shows.  They also crave the conversation to improve.  They want someone to challenge them and hold them accountable.  None of that scares them.

The core attributes of those who get to greatness (you must have all three):  Aptitude (their talent), Attitude (we embrace growth positively), and Work Ethic (we out-work everyone else).  There’s much in radio we don’t control.  But these items noted here, the through thread of excellence, are choices in our control.

Radio is dying?  Not if we have personalities with greatness who want to be coached.  Those folks thrive regardless of the environment.