Archive for category: Planet Reynolds

Radio and the Power of Patience: The Karson and Kennedy Story

“And the Marconi for Major Market Personality of the Year goes to Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston.”

I cannot begin to tell you what it felt like to be in the room when that was said this past week in New York.  I launched this show 16 years ago.  I am very fond of these people and so filled with pride and happiness for them winning, I could cry.

Can I bring you behind-the-scenes in the early years and what I learned about coaching high profile talent back then?

Act I:  The Numbers Weren’t Numbering Fast Enough

The launch and first couple of years of the show had us focus on character development, finding a signature feature, and allowing the show to find its voice.  Goal #1 was to define them and the show to the MIX cume.  Our job wasn’t to steal listeners from the icon Matty in the Morning on KISS 108, but to endear Karson and Kennedy to MIX fans.

We added a signature feature to the show.  Can’t Beat Kennedy is a pop culture trivia game many shows now do.  It defined Kennedy as the pop culture expert and infused fun images into the program.  It is appointment listening and remains the most popular feature on the show today.

We wanted to equally define Karson by putting on the show his wife, Lana.  She’s from Alabama and sounds it.   But there’s an interesting story here.  Some questioned if Lana’s southern drawl would play in provincial Boston.  We stood firm that it would be one more unique thing about the sound of the show.  When she’s on, she’s usually telling Karson off, which was human and empowering to our female base.  She remains a highlight of the show because the audience knows when Lana appears, she’s money.

It’s in these early years, though, some managers started to get nervous.  Flat or down trends.  They wanted results immediately and weren’t seeing them.  So, the usual questions appeared if this was the right show for the station.

I believed in the show and the people.   My job was to run interference for them.

We weren’t blind to the ratings.  We didn’t pretend results don’t matter.  We understood that the lack of results didn’t invalidate the people or the plan.

Those of us closest to the show, helping them mature, had a choice.  We could pass that pressure down, making them work in an atmosphere of anxiety and self-doubt.  Or we could absorb that pressure and give them room to grow, so they found their groove.  We chose the latter.

The ratings did matter.  Corporate needed results.  But the show needed to develop.  Our job was to acknowledge both realities and balance them without allowing the tension to destroy the opportunity.  Fortunately, corporate trusted us even more than the show did then.

Act II:  Culture is King

When their Marconi category came up this past week, I recorded every moment.  To see a show that we all believed in during the rocky early years be given the Academy Award for radio was very emotional.  They were in a tough category against four other worthy programs. 

Early on, we had to create the environment in which the coaching would work.  Many shows are not strategic.  Creatives need a clear strategy and culture in which to execute it.  So, in those early years, we focused on building trust, honesty, and caring for one another.  Once those attributes were applied to their talents and work ethic, we knew the show would succeed.

We could not let the lack of short-term results disrupt the long-term vision of what could be.  Building that culture allowed all of us the psychological bandwidth to experiment, make mistakes, learn, and figure out what made Karson and Kennedy special.

Here’s the important lesson I learned back then:  sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is keep the pressure from becoming the problem.

You cannot manufacture culture or demand chemistry.  We can’t order trust to happen or relationships to build.  Karson and Kennedy could not discover their authentic voices as talent while wondering if others believed in them.

There are reasons the team has endured and thrived for sixteen years.  What fueled the culture:

  • The show, and all its castmates past and present, along with anyone who touches the show today, care about one another as people. Caring about each other is critical to having a significant team.  This is also central to the show’s success – the audience knows them so well, they care about the cast.  That’s why they tune in each day.  We show up for people we care about.
  • They invite discomfort. The team is willing to have difficult conversations, hear things that aren’t necessarily flattering, and treat that discomfort as an opportunity to grow rather than a threat to the relationships.
  • They have an extraordinary work ethic. There was never a time we agreed to do something that I left a coaching session questioning if they’d do the work.

Patience doesn’t excuse a work ethic.  It gives sustained effort time to compound.  Talent, chemistry, and a good plan still require people willing to do the work, day after day, long after the novelty wears off.

It was the combination of the above that brought them the Marconi.  For those of us charged with guiding shows, that’s part of leadership.

Act III:  A Lesson for the Rest of Us

After three years of nominations, to watch their faces as their names were announced, is embedded in my head.  Validation from your peers is the ultimate honor.  My affection for this show as a coach and fan is what keeps me connected to them.

This isn’t a story about one radio show in Boston.  And it’s not about what I taught.  It’s about what we all learned:  how we develop people and how leaders respond to imperfect early results.

Ratings arrive on schedule.  Corporate reviews arrive on schedule.  Budgets and performance expectations arrive on schedule.

But often, human development doesn’t want to cooperate.

A personality can be improving before the numbers show it.  A team can be building trust with itself and the audience without the ratings reflecting anything.  A show can have creative confidence before anyone notices.  That doesn’t mean any of us should use patience for hanging on indefinitely.  We believed because we saw evidence, progress, and a willingness to adjust.

Leadership Decisions

Patience has a cost.  It exposes you to criticism and sometimes requires you to live with some uncertainty when others need results immediately.

We could not make any firm promises in those early years of Karson and Kennedy.  Not being number one.  Nor getting a Marconi.  We could only make the judgment that the potential was there with what we saw and heard.

For anyone managing creatives, it sometimes takes courage to push through in the face of uncertainty.  Leadership isn’t saying, “Let’s give this more time,” it’s leaders who say, “Here’s why I believe in this team, here’s what we’re working on, and here’s how I’ll support the work while we improve.”

That’s what I learned back then and have used since.  Patience without accountability is complacency.  Accountability without patience can become panic.

Leaders earn the opportunity to be patient.

The emotional payoff of being in New York to see them win the Marconi wasn’t that I was right back then.  It was the pride I feel having been part of this journey that required more than talent and a plan.  It required building a culture to push through uncertain times from all of us on the team.

Patience isn’t giving people permission to stay where they are.  It’s believing they can get somewhere better, then having the courage to help them get there.

Karson and Kennedy built the show, established the culture, embraced the discomfort, and did the work.  They own the Marconi not because of anything I or anyone who’s worked with them over the years did, but because of their commitment and belief in all of it.

I had a chance to meet Kelli Turner, Audacy’s new CEO at the Marconis.  She was quite curious about this thing called talent coaching and asked if I believed that in today’s Attention Economy you can have an uber successful radio show with outstanding talent.

My answer was yes.  If you have the right people, the right strategy, an unassailable culture, and the courage to have patience.

The Comfort of the Familiar. The Danger of the Routine.

I’m bored with my iPhone.  My Apple Watch is meh.  I could take or leave my iPad.

That behavior concerns Apple.  So, every year, always in September and October, they address that to keep us fans happy.  They don’t want people like me to head to Best Buy, pick up a Samsung device, and make the switch.  Even successful products have to fight familiarity and routine.

Each September, Apple releases new operating systems for all their devices, making them do new and creative things.  Some items I’ve always wanted, many new things that make them cool again.  Apple grabs my attention so I spend more time with their products.

Then in October, the new stuff comes out.  No doubt you’re hearing about it now.  A foldable phone, new, lighter laptops, new smart home gear.  Apple’s goal is to keep me in the family, gushing about what’s next.

How about you?  The fact that your show works today, doesn’t mean listeners will find it interesting and entertaining tomorrow.

New features give customers (listeners) reasons to rediscover products (your show) they already like.

I do some work for companies where they move me around their markets.  When I come back to a show I haven’t spoken with or listened to for a few months, I always ask the same question:  what new stuff have you done for your audience?  What have you done to improve the treatment of content of your show?  What is your show doing today that it wasn’t doing three months ago?  What have you done that would make me so jealous you thought of it and I didn’t that I’d want to steal it from you.

That’s the ultimate compliment in radio, right?

I’ve come back to many shows over the years and asked this question only to get stares and crickets.  If you want to stay vibrant and relevant and keep your fans from straying, in search of other shiny objects for entertainment and connection, you’ll wanna address this.  Consistently successful shows are restless in this area.

Fall is a great time of year to assess everything on your show.  If your benchmarks are working, how might you do them differently to give them a shot of B12?

What new features have you added around the stable benchmarks that keep the audience glued to you?  Everyone is fighting for ears and eyes in the Attention Economy.  How do you address that?

Some shows wonder why you’d change a formula that seems to be working.  Because you don’t entertain in a vacuum – your competitors, if they do this, will easily grab the attention of your fans if you don’t.  That creates a potential deficit for you.

Innovation doesn’t mean blowing up everything that works.  It means finding new ways to present your great content.  Keep the benchmarks your audience loves. But challenge yourself to execute them differently. Find a fresh angle on the biggest story of the day. Give listeners something they haven’t heard from you before. The goal isn’t change for the sake of change. It’s making sure your show continues to give people a reason to choose you.

Your listeners have options. Lots of them. And your competition doesn’t have to be better at everything. They just have to be more interesting at the moment your show becomes predictable. That’s how you lose ground. Not necessarily in one dramatic exodus, but one missed opportunity at a time. Give people a reason to keep choosing you.

Innovation is not about giving yourself something new to do.  It’s about giving the audience something new to experience.

The argument for staying the same is always seductive:  it’s working, so why change it?  But that’s a snapshot of the present, not a strategy for the future. Your audience is changing.  Its expectations are changing. The competition is changing. Why should your show be the only thing that doesn’t?

Ask yourself these three questions:

  1. What do we do today that we weren’t doing three months ago?
  2. Which of our benchmarks has become so predictable that we can execute it on autopilot?
  3. What could we do next week that would make a listener tell someone else about our show?

Boredom creates an opportunity for someone else.  If you’re too scared to do this, let me leave you with this quote from one of the OGs, the great musical icon, Joni Mitchell, who said to Rolling Stone magazine:

“You have two options.  You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success.  They’re going to crucify you for staying the same.  If you change, they’re going to crucify you for changing.  But staying the same is boring.  And change is interesting.  So, of the two options, I’d rather be crucified for changing.  Leaders make art and artists lead.”

I’m not advocating for chaos or non-strategic change to claim you did it.  I’m advocating for evolution.  There ain’t no better time than now to update what you do.  Bring on the new.  Make your fans fall in love with you all over again.

Your show should never be so comfortable with its success that it stops earning it.  Keep evolving.  Keep surprising people.  That will keep giving listeners reasons to choose you.  Because the very best opportunities go to people who are hard to replace.

Make yourself one of them.

A.I.: Artificial Intimacy?

I recently bought a Fit Bit Air.  It’s a gadget that goes around your wrist and monitors your vitals.  In Google’s Health app, which syncs the data, you get three free months of their A.I. which interacts with your numbers to coach you to goals you set.

Over the last few months, Google’s A.I. health coach has become surprisingly attentive.  It notices my bike rides.  It recognizes that Sam, the World’s Neediest Dog®, and I take our morning walks at the same time every day. Before bed, it reviews my progress and encourages me to keep going.

All along the way, it’s constantly reassuring me on the right path, and affirms the work I’ve done.

There was an article in the New York Times recently about how people are uploading their health data to A.I. for analyses.  Set aside the privacy concerns, the piece said those who do this are becoming dependent because of how supportive A.I. is of their health journey.  Encouraging them to better health by talking to them like A.I. is a compassionate human.  Where our actual doctors spend six minutes with us, the A.I. chatbots will spend all day talking with us as though they’re our best friend.

Think about this:  millions of people are developing emotional loyalty to software because it makes them feel seen.

In these instances, A.I. might not mean Artificial Intelligence.  It means Artificial Intimacy.  Something many people feel is missing in their lives.

Listeners trudge through life believing no one is rooting for them.  That’s added to the despair some feel that they are alone in everything they do.  Radio has always filled that void.  It’s a strength no one else has that we can lean into.

So, I wonder, what if…what if…what if…you became that?  The parts of A.I. that are filling the void many listeners feel but never express openly?

The four most powerful words I have ever used with a show that rockets them to success are:  I believe in you.   What if you convey that to your fans?

This is not the hollow motivational language some managers use.  It’s done by leaders who understand how to motivate those who work hard.  That doesn’t mean things must always be positive.  Part of leadership is making high performers uncomfortable so they reach levels they can’t see.  The best leaders don’t just encourage.  They challenge.

Which reminds me of a conversation with my brother’s former mother-in-law.  She’s an actress and won a Tony.  When I asked how she’d top that, she told me she was hiring another acting coach to make her uncomfortable so she won another.  She said the best mentors in her life were those fully committed because they believed in her.

What if your show’s plot were to include a subtext of that overt support?  Expressing to the audience, because of the intimate relationships we have with them, that when they think no one’s there on all things big and small, good and bad in their lives, you’ll be there.

What if you rooted more passionately on the show for the community you live in?

Every day, listeners are carrying burdens they never talk about. They’re worried about a parent, a child, a marriage, a job, a diagnosis, a bill they can’t pay. Most of them aren’t looking for another contest. They’re looking for evidence that somebody notices they exist.  Reflecting back emotionally what people are feeling is quite powerful to them wanting more of it.

What if you celebrated your fan’s wins and let them know you will always root for them when they succeed and encourage them during their struggles?  That you will see them.  Empathy is a powerful way to deepen your relationship.  Not just in real life, but with listeners, too.

Just like the Google Health A.I.’s engine does for me.

Our success is fueled on forming the deepest of relationships with the audience – connection through content and vulnerability.  We hang out with people we know and care for who are just like us.  Our very best friends do all of the above, which is why we spend more time with them.

A universal human need is to know someone is in their corner.  Go do that in a world which moves too quickly that no one can make slow down and watch what happens to those relationships with fans you’ve yet to meet.

I uploaded this blog to ChatGPT to see how supportive A.I. would be.  While it did give some suggestions for improvement, here’s what it said overall:

This is a strong Planet Reynolds-style piece. It has a clear premise, a relatable personal entry point, a broader cultural observation, and a practical takeaway for talent. The best part is that it sneaks up on the reader. It starts as a Fitbit story and ends as a manifesto about connection. That’s good writing.

Google gives us three-free months of this upgraded A.I. service.  Wanna guess if I’ll renew it when the bill comes due?

Good Golly, the Folly of Losing Miss Dolly

Didja hear that Dolly Parton died a couple of weeks ago?  Of course you did.  Everyone did.  Her family released the news and it owned pop culture for several days.

I enjoyed the back-and-forth between people believing radio did a good job with it and those who feel we missed the mark.  From my listening, we mostly did good.  But I’m not hearing everyone.  One show I heard played “9 to 5” at 7:20, came on after, and told me what I already knew.  Yikes.

Can we pause for an unsponsored Steve Story® that starts with my least favorite phrase “back when I was on the air”?

Back when I was on the air, a big story broke the night before.  We had an intense general manager who was just coming out of a sales meeting (bonus tension there).  He stopped by the desk of my partner and me and asked what we did with that topic that morning.  I said, “We talked about it at 6:50.”  He said, “Well, I didn’t get up until 7:00.”  Then I said, “Well, get up fu$#ing earlier.”

No, I didn’t say that.  But I did think it.  Because I was a cocky know-it-all morning guy.

The super-smart GM then reminded us how listeners use radio.  They all come at a time that works for them and only stay for a short while.  His point was that we do a series of 15-20 minute shows and those who weren’t there from 6:50-6:54 had no idea we had a take on the big story of the day.

I have never forgotten that encounter and remind shows I work with who use this excuse to try and convince me they “were on it!” that I can’t give them relevance credit for what I don’t hear them do.

Same for Dolly.  Great shows were on it a lot over a few days.  Her unexpected passing was everywhere and near everyone felt emotionally connected to her, compelling us to find many treatments of that highly relevant topic.

Here’s my point:  when you have an all-consuming topic (like Dolly or the 25th anniversary of 9/11), we must, as content creators, come up with things to do that fit your brand and reflect your take.

The riveting things I saw and heard around 9/11 were all new.  It’s easy to do “where were you when” or relive that day.  But that’s lazy and we must be better than that in the Attention Economy to hold fans through the content.

It’s on us to come up with tons of camera angles so it’s not simply conveying information.  And that begins and ends with you.  The rabbit hole appeared on Dolly.  Know how I knew?  Besides it being all over social media feeds because of the algorithm, Apple Music and Spotify shared that people streaming her music was up 2840%.  That ain’t a typo and indicates to us the topic is huge and we must come up with many ways to align with it.

Great breaks start at your curiosity.  What do you know and what do you wonder about that big topic?  Did you fall down the rabbit hole and read all that you can to stimulate your imagination?

Here are five things I came up with that would have created more Dolly-centric content:

  1. Finding listeners who’d met her and having them on to tell their stories.
  2. Her Imagination Library is in almost every town. Having on the person who runs it.
  3. Doing a fundraiser of money or used books to give to the local Imagination Library.
  4. Doing a mass singing of Jolene with co-workers in the studio.
  5. Convincing three local drag queens dressed as Dolly, of course, to stand on a bridge with signs telling people in cars below to turn on your show.

How’d I do?  If you thought on any of them, “Damn, I wish I’d have done that,” then my point resonates with you.  Spend more time on prep or, if you do, change how you to it to come up with more camera angles.

I’m also open to that every one of those ideas could suck to you.  It’s very possible I went 0-5.  Then I’d ask, give the enormity of that topic two weeks ago and the subsequent conversation about whether radio did well or not, what are your ideas?

I wonder so that your show isn’t just a break or two and your fans don’t miss all that relevance.

Radio’s strength is to emotionally connect with whatever is going on right now.  But understanding how we’re used – as a series of 15-20 minute shows when a big topic appears – is critical to securing an image that you’re relevant.  You’ll then be more efficient meeting listeners where they are when that happens and when they tune in.

Dolly’s probably done as a topic.  Ditto the anniversary of 9/11.  But something else will appear soon that will be everywhere and own the news cycle.  To do one or two content breaks when that happens is a mistake.  What will your game plan be so you can do lots of breaks and be in the rabbit hole just like your listeners so your creativity and curiosity fuels your content?

The Monday Morning Free Idea page might help you here.

“No” Is a Complete Sentence

Several years ago, when Hubbard wanted to transition mornings on the iconic The Drive in Chicago, they asked me to help identify and launch a show.  It was a bit of a needle-thread because the daypart had been driven almost solely on music images.  But Hubbard knows how to build media brands, so they were all in on being strategic.

We had our sights set on Sherman and Tingle.  They’d done some time on Q101 in the market and had chemistry.  Steve Tingle and I had worked together before, so we knew each other.  In my conversations with Brian Sherman, I discovered something that made his hire an automatic yes.  In between radio gigs, he worked for his home city picking up trash in the morning.  That real life experience made him an interesting person to me.

The reason Brian interested me wasn’t because he was collecting trash.  It was because he had a life.  He had experiences outside of radio and interacted with people consultants and programmers never meet.  He had stories, perspective, and empathy.  Ditto Steve Tingle who survived a brain tumor.

I read a lot of radio advice where talent are implored to do even more to protect their jobs.  I understand why.  But at some point, we must ask what that “more” is costing us.  Where will the balance come from to keep our talent both interesting and protect their mental health.

Radio says to do more.  But more isn’t always better to create interesting people who have interesting lives.  Mental health matters, relationships matter, and creativity needs replenishment.

Which brings me to maybe the two most important words you’ll ever learn in a business that constantly asks for more:  say no.  And make it a complete sentence.

That’s no to another volunteer committee.  No to checking email at 11pm.  No to another appearance request.  No to another podcast.  No to another social media post.  And no to sacrificing your kid’s soccer game for a meeting that could have been an email.  Especially if it creates space for you to have interests outside of radio.

Saying no is hard for many of us in radio – an industry that wants us to do more.  Why?  Because we’re pleasers.  It’s almost impossible for me to say no to anyone in the industry who needs something.  When we rarely say no, our entire worlds – professional and personal – get out of whack.  Say no too much and that will certainly impact you.  But having your worlds in alignment makes for happy, productive people.

In my previous blog, My Love to Valentine, I shared the phrase “emotional hygiene”.  Where does yours come from?  What big or small things do you have in life that give you that balance, make you a more interesting person to be around, and create a more “whole you”?

Those who know me are aware that I officiate high school basketball in my hometown.  Officiating gives me a mission that has nothing to do with ratings, social media metrics, or coming up with another idea.  It gives me balance.

I am in leadership and working on creating a stronger organization and financial future for officials who come after me.  It’s quite rewarding.  That’s my jam.  What are yours?  And what should you say no to at work to create that space to find or do them for yourself?  We must.

How we do that is important.  It’s not no “because I’m not getting paid to do that.”  Or no “because it’s not in my job description.”  It’s no because I need space to be a real person in life – to find things outside of this industry that fill my cup with pleasure and happiness.

“No” is a complete sentence.  When we get there, we’ll be healthier mentally, preserve our relationships outside of radio, continue to have a better, more satisfying life, and become better talent.

Radio needs talented people.  But we only get that from mentally healthy people.  The goal isn’t to become less committed to radio.  The goal is to become more committed by having a life worth talking about on the air and the emotional hygiene that makes it worth living.

And to get there, it might just take an occasional no.

My Love Letter to Valentine

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:

  • Fort Myers Broadcasting and Sun Broadcasting in Florida know that without talent, they can’t make money. Mark Gilson and Jim Schwartzel are deeply committed to live and local all day and the growth of their people.
  • Jay Chapman owns Woof Boom Radio in Muncie, Indiana. We recently put a two-hour talk show on their oldies station as a differentiator in the marketplace.  The show’s goal is to “elevate and celebrate Madison County”.  Woof Boom’s mantra is “we use our voice to build and connect our community.”
  • And kudos to Kurt Johnson, Jared Willig, JB Wilde and their team at Townsquare. I get to work with live and local shows for them in markets like Binghamton, NY, Portsmouth, NH, Rockford, IL, and many others.  Shows that know that live and local ain’t just a marketing slogan.  They live it and take care of their communities in ways that’d shame many larger markets.

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.

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?

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