Archive for category: Planet Reynolds

It’s not an easy job being on-the-air.  Lots of spinning plates and the wearing of many hats.  You can’t win today without having multiple skillsets.  When you factor in the stress that comes with being in today’s version of radio, it falls upon each of us as leaders and managers to get the best out of our content creators – our talent who bring us brand value.

A regular topic of conversation with the high-profile talent I coach, is how we lead each other to success.

Many ask when I start coaching a show if I think we’ll win and when that will happen.  My answer is always the same:  if you believe in your people and believe in the strategy, then be patient, because it’ll happen.

Here is some wisdom on managing the artisans who make great radio by other successful professionals and me.  Many thanks to those noted below for reminding each of us what’s important to get to the win:

Pick your battles.  Trust that you’ve hired a talented team.  They need you focused on the big things.

Patti Marshall, Q102, Cincinnati Program Director, Hubbard OM

Spend time together outside of work, with each other’s families.  You’ll appreciate and respect each other more when you are closer off air.  Listeners can sense that bond.

Steve Reynolds, The Reynolds Group

Let fun win on and off the air.  Let yourself be the butt of the jokes.  If you’re willing to allow for those moments of vulnerability, you will endear yourself to the audience and the team.

Jeff Thomas, Jeff and Jenn, Q102, Cincinnati

Be the show’s biggest fan.  When you are, you can coach the show on what needs to be fixed, because they know you believe in them.

Tony Travatto, Channel 95.5, Detroit Program Director

Own your shit.  Take responsibility for whatever happens, then work through it.  That way, no drama enters the room and throws off the chemistry of the team and show.

Jenn Jordan, Jeff and Jenn, Q102, Cincinnati

Let other people on the show shine.  Shows fail when each person doesn’t let the other cast members have the spotlight.

Mojo, Mojo in the Morning, Channel 95.5, Detroit

Trust is a product of vulnerability over time.  The more time you spend with your people, and the more open you are about your own life with them, they will reciprocate.  That’s the foundation of a relationship built on trust.

Steve Reynolds, The Reynolds Group

Each of us, regardless of our position, is charged with leading others.  Tack this up and, in the race to the goal, re-read it on occasion as a reminder that we get there not just for what we know, but because of the culture we build and how we manage our teams and our people.

Years ago, when he was on in Los Angeles, I had a chance to work with the iconic Rick Dees.  On a market visit and having lunch one day, Rick asked if I wanted to stop by his house.  Rick and I had our weekly chats on Sundays at 4pm and he wanted to show me where he was when we talked about content.

Who’d say no to that?  Not me.

There were many memorable moments touring Rick’s home (you won’t believe what was under the garbage can on the driveway – email me for that story)!  But it’s what happened in the bathroom that I’ll always remember.

As Rick brought me through his upstairs, we cut through a bathroom that connected two bedrooms.  Almost every drawer in that bathroom was partially opened.  I noted this to Rick and that’s when he told me his wife never shuts the drawers completely and it drove him crazy.  That’s when I shared with Rick that that was content.  Radio was changing from bits to being real with lots of storytelling.  And Rick sharing this tidbit about his relationship was quite relatable.

One of radio’s many superpowers is its intimacy.  Our ability to remind the audience that we are just like them.  How do you curate that valuable character-development content?

Every talent I’ve ever worked with thinks their life is boring.  I still ask them to journal through the weekend, keeping track of all they do, even if they don’t think it’s viable content.  Weekends are when we’re doing regular-person stuff, just like listeners.

My toughest day for email is Sunday nights, as every talent I work with shares their weekend journals with our entire content team.  Two things happen when I read them:  I get to know them better as people and can help make them stars because of the stories they tell and content they provide.  I also learn about their life so I can have a better relationship with them personally to build trust because I care about them.

Doing nothing but watching golf in your underwear on Sundays might be boring to you, but it might be fascinating to me.  I can make that relatable content that defines someone with a little bit of curiosity.  On Mondays and throughout the week (including our weekly chats), we all get inquisitive about what we learned from everyone.  And then, regular-person content appears that helps us position them as just like their fans so that connection forms (the initial building block to creating a fan is connection).

A sampling of what I’ve learned from those I work with in the last few weeks:

• A talent is having a deck built on the back of his house and the workers never show up on time and he’s very frustrated.
• A co-host said “I love you” to his new girlfriend for the first time.
• An anchor’s wife made him get together with neighbors and he doesn’t like the husband because he’s always boasting about himself.
• The talent who shopped for a new washer/dryer and was confused by all the choices.

All the above is potential content.  Yes, you can talk about yourself too much.  It backfires when the audience can’t see themselves in the stories you tell about yourself or they aren’t entertaining.  But we must be purposeful in aggregating that content.  The little stuff (sometimes the most connective stuff) is forgotten if you don’t collect all of it for a fair shot at sharing it with listeners to forge that connection.  Weekend journaling helps you do that.

When Rick shared his take on the bathroom drawers and told me it drove him nuts (Dees nuts?), that’s when we had the a-ha moment.  It became content the next day on his show.  Rick’s a superstar to his audience.  Telling that story said, “I’m just like you.”  Connection!

So, I’ll never forget that moment in Rick Dees’s bathroom.  A sentence I never thought I’d type.

Journal your life for content and be epic.  It’s in you if you’re strategic.

Now, what exactly was under that garbage can on the driveway…

I’m not sure when it happened, but I think I know why.

I listen to some personality-driven shows in radio and hear not much more than Carl and Carol talking with one another, the show becoming all about them.  With not much of a sense of how listeners are reacting to (getting bored by) the breaks where they’re just talking about stuff.

The high performers in our industry work extra hard on not just what topics they’ll put into their show, but what to do with them.

Imagine Jimmy Kimmel being introduced to his audience and then doing nothing more than yapping with Guillermo for the entire hour.  Who’d stay tuned for that (or click on the links online)?

Why did all this chatter and lack of matter happen?  We took resources away from our personality shows and said:  please also post online; please also come up with a promotion for a client; please also have a relationship with sales; please also do that remote.  Etcetera.  None of it unreasonable, but then we can’t tack on please also be creative because that bandwidth doesn’t exist.

For the shows and companies I work with, two things I do in our weekly Zooms are keep the show honest to its plot and content strategy.  We also come up with fun/engaging things to do around the topics of the day, things going on in their lives, and things happening locally.

Think of these choices for a typical four-minute content break:

Topic	Carl and Carol in the Morning	An Engaging Pivot
OJ Dies	Conversation between the hosts.	Talking to someone who once met OJ and has a story.
Taylor Swift’s new music	Conversation between the hosts.	A feisty/funny drag queen reviews all 31 tracks.
Taxes Are Due	Conversation between the hosts.	A CPA does a forensics on the credit card statements of a cast member to reveal how much they spent on Uber Eats and Door Dash last year.
Beyonce’s “Jolene”	Conversation between the hosts.	You do a mash-up of 10 artists who’ve recorded the song, asking listeners to name them.
Trump’s Trial	Conversation between the hosts.	A courtroom sketch artist does pictures that you use on socials during his trial and/or you talk to listeners who’ve been on juries to hear what that’s like.

I call the right column above “the pivot”.  Think of it like this around OJ dying (because it was a Hot Topic):

Carl and Carol with Option A:  “So OJ died.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here’s what we think, blah, blah, blah.”  Spots.

Option B:  “So OJ died.  Blah.  Then the pivot.  Here’s Steve Reynolds from Raleigh who met OJ in Las Vegas at the craps table a few years ago.”  Steve tells his compelling story about OJ.  Then they ask if he got the vibe that OJ was guilty.

Between the two options above, which is more engaging for the audience and never lets them drift or tune away?  Notice in option B there are 90% fewer blahs.  Pivots are treatments of the relatable, relevant content in column one designed to keep listeners engaged so they don’t lose interest.

For my high performers, I know you spend time prepping for these pivots once the show is over.  I can hear it.  If your prep process is lax or non-existent, it’s best you fix that so your show is distinctive and unique.  It should reflect your take by exploring your curiosity on the topics and not just be conversation.  It’s rare those who tell me they do this prep at home are right.  The power of being together to brainstorm these pivots is far greater.  But spending more time on those pivots keeps fans tuned in.

For our managers and companies who believe in your people, we must get back to supporting our talent (aka “our sellable product because they bring the content”) even more with the resources they need to come up with these pivots.  Kimmel has a dozen writers.  We just have us, because the industry’s changed.  But if we expect our personality shows to truly do interesting and epic things with topics, we’ll support them to come up with those ideas (more fun, inquisitive people associated with the prep process) and help get them done.

If we don’t…if all you are is conversation and maybe a phone topic here and there, the audience will stray sooner than any of us think and maybe something/someone else will capture their imagination and build new loyalties to your fans.

If not, it’ll be the Carl and Carol Morning Show –  All We Wanna Do Is Talk.  And that’ll get us nowhere as an industry.

There are a handful of memorable moments in my time coaching radio’s premiere talent.  What happened in a Zoom on March 8 is one I will never forget.

I got a text from a talent I work with in the Netherlands.  I introduced you to Wijnand Spellman in the Planet Reynolds The Benefits of Being Big.  Wijnand’s cause is ALS.  He, along with two other station talent, did The Glass House at Christmas and raised over $8,000,000 for One Dutch, a charity that helps find a cure for the disease.

Wijnand needed help with a request that would change him and his listeners.  Last fall, in preparation for The Glass House, I impressed upon Wijnand the need for it to be a story-telling event.  So, he set out to meet people who had ALS – to get in their world so he could see firsthand how it changed them.

In the course of that work, he met Anjo, a husband and father of two, who was afflicted with ALS.  They bonded immediately and became friends.  Then, the email and request that will forever impact him.  Anjo was in the final stages of his disease and had decided, because it’s legal in the Netherlands, to be euthanized.  He chose Wednesday, March 13 as the day.  Anjo then requested of Wijnand something unique.  He wanted to be interviewed on Wijnand’s show that morning before he said goodbye.  Wijnand wanted to talk through how to do that.

Wow.  What connection.  What humanity.

It’s almost surreal what we talked about.  From the questions to explore to how long it would go.  It was all about what Wijnand wanted to learn from him.  It was both an honor and privilege to be asked to do this and one he embraced, despite its difficulty.  I wanted him to have as soft and reflective a conversation as he could, so the audience received the gift, too.

Think for a moment the intimacy of that conversation.  What that humanity and emotion would bring his listeners.  I tear up writing this because it was so special for me, as well.

A question I ask talent is what impact do you want your show to have on those who tune in?  Do you understand your power to make listeners feel a part of something special and big?

The interview happened and it garnered an immense reaction from his audience.

Let me contrast this with a Tweet I saw in that same week.  Another believer in radio was scanning the dial in their market and heard two shows do the same phone topic from a prep service on the same day.

Compare the two content choices above.  Which one do you want your show to be?  Which one builds greater loyalty and a relationship where listeners become fans and fans come back the next day because they feel deeply connected to your personalities?  One is inspiring, the other forgettable.

I have been inspired many times doing this work by passionate, hard-working talent who want their shows to be one-of-a-kind.  Every break, every day is an open canvas.  What will your talent choose to do with it?

To help Wijnand do this rates at the top.

Talent make radio stations great.  The great talent relentlessly compete in every break on every show and never give anybody a chance to make them sound average.

Later this evening, watch Wheel of Fortune.  Time how long it takes from when the show starts until there’s the true viewer benefit, Vanna reveals the first letter in the first puzzle.   Betcha it’s less than 30 seconds.  When the first letter shows, that’s when we’re playing along on the sofa.

Wheel used to follow the old format.  Pat and Vanna were introduced, they had some banter, Pat interviewed the three contestants, then they actually played the game.  But they realized those of us at home don’t care about any of that.  We want to play the puzzles.  They also used to shop when someone won a puzzle.  Remember those days of contestants “buying” washers and dryers and ceramic Dalmatians?  None of that mattered.  Because it was all about them and not us.

Ditto Jeopardy.  They play one-half of the first puzzle board right when the show starts.  When they come back from the first commercials and Ken Jennings interviews the three contestants, those of us at home don’t care about that either.  We show up to play along with the game.

We keep hearing about consumers’ shortening attention spans.  The three P’s of a break:  promotion (it’s all about me), process (here’s what we’re doing), and protein (time for content – the reason listeners show up).  Dispense with the first two P’s and get to the third.

To be honest, I’m already worried you’ve lost interest and it’s only been four short paragraphs.  So, I’ll sexy it up.  Time to talk about what I learned about radio from porn.

The porn industry dramatically changed years ago when they realized viewers cared less about plot and storylines.  They just want the action.  Porn clips online are rarely over three minutes (no idea why – ha, ha) and there’s no process or promotion.  Just…protein.

Don’t ask me why.  Read about it in the New York Times who profiled the change.  When we were young and found porn, few people sat through the scene of the pizza delivery guy ringing the doorbell, the woman in the negligee answering and saying she didn’t order any pizza, but inviting him in to deliver it anyway.  Everyone fast forwards to the bedroom scene.  The reason viewers showed up.

At a convention years ago, I used this analogy.  To the nervous laughter of the room, I reminded all to open the mic and “get to the fu@$ing.”  It’s a line that might live in infamy as it continues coming back to me.

Grab some breaks and see how long it takes before your talent start the actual content.  Then figure out how to get there sooner.  Your fans will reward you by staying longer.