Archive for category: Planet Reynolds

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.

Can you imagine your radio station spending one week and raising over $8,000,000 to help a cause important to you?  What would it say to your fans, those on your team, and to your sales department about the power of local radio?

I provide talent coaching to the national public radio system in the Netherlands (NPO) and that happened in December with their annual fundraiser called The Glass House.  Three 3FM (their CHR) personalities are locked in a glass house in a public square and spend one week raising money for One Dutch, a charity working to find a cure for ALS.  One of the personalities, Wijnand Speelman (seen here on the right), has been personally affected by this disease – his grandfather died from it.  So, he spent the week with his fellow talent personalizing the cause, drawing listeners close, to help reach their total of over 7.5 million Euros, triple what they raised last year.  I reminded them that facts tell, and stories sell in the coaching leading up to the start of The Glass House.  When viewed as a story-telling event, you can see why this was so successful.  See their wrap-up video below or here.  You won’t understand it unless you speak Dutch, but I guarantee you will feel it.  That’s when the win happens.  (Do yourself a favor and watch the video to see how incredibly big this was.)  The head thinks and the heart feels – this event is all the feels.

Listeners don’t get small things.  When radio plays on the margins, it’s likely to be missed.  Those I work with know I like doing big, gigantic things.  As that’s heard and remembered.  When it comes to cause-oriented work, we have two goals:  raise whatever we’re looking for from active fans and (much more importantly) impact positively the images of the show with those who won’t.  Whether you’re doing a community-service project, giving out concert tickets, or running a narrative content story arc about a talent to define their character, be big.

Listeners are looking to join brands that do good in the community.  Hang out with other media for a minute and the world is an ugly, abusive place.  Positioning your radio show as the place for goodness, then rallying your listeners to do that, creates more loyalty.  Radio is an intimate medium, and this helps build relationships with listeners who want more of that intimacy in their daily lives.  That’s one of our superpowers.  Give listeners an opportunity to join your team in this way makes them feel better about you and it makes them feel better about themselves.  That’s when they transition from listeners to fans.

The benefit of being big and different:

• Josie, Carlin, and Brent, Indie 88, Toronto did their seventh annual Socks for the Streets campaign, asking listeners to donate socks which are given to the homeless community.  This year 309,934 pairs of socks were donated.  Their seven-year total is close to 1.5 million.
• Hawkeye and Michelle at KSCS, Dallas did their annual 10,000 For the Troops around Thanksgiving where they ask listeners to write a thank you card, which is then sent to a member of the military overseas, thanking them for what they do. This is a program we put on the show years ago.  This year they asked for 10,000 cards and got over 150,000.  For the price of a thank you card and stamp (I love the old school nature of this), a fan felt better about themselves.
• Logan and Sadie, WINK-FM, Fort Myers, FL and AD and Chris, KSHE, St. Louis each did Santa Paws.  Sharing that Santa Claus takes care of kids Christmas Eve, our mission was to get toys for animals in local shelters.  Logan and Sadie’s event is tenured, and listeners sent them 6,262 dogs toys.  AD and Chris did it for the first time and raised close to 3000.
• Karen, Johnny, and Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York and Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston do Toys for Girls and Boys. Each campaign lasted a few weeks.  Karen, Johnny, and Anthony, in their first effort, got 6,224 toys and Karson and Kennedy received from fans over 10,000.  Big and gigantic.

In every instance above, the items were sent to the station on purpose.  So that those who work in the building, and especially those who have the hard task of selling the airtime, see the power of radio and authentic, compassionate personalities.

As 2024 continues to unfold and we plan for growth, we can do a bunch of little things with our brands (cause and non-cause oriented) or we can commit to doing big things, which helps us be remembered.

Radio doesn’t have a listening problem as much as we have a top-of-mind awareness problem.

Do big, epic things with your content and we’ll solve that.

This blog isn’t for you.  I’ll explain why after I tell you how I met my friend Lori Lewis, radio’s social media guru.

“We define our image every day by how we make people feel.”  I didn’t say that.  Lori Lewis did.  I was a fan and read everything Lori wrote because I always learned something from her.  Joel Denver had asked me to present at one of his Worldwide Radio Summits and I wanted to include her quote in my talk.  I did and credited her because she said it, I didn’t.

Several people took screenshots of the slide and texted it to her.  By the end of the day, she’d emailed a thanks and we’ve been friends since.  When putting the presentation together, I decided if I couldn’t be the smart person who said it, the second best thing was to be a smart person who quoted the smart person.

This blog isn’t for you because you probably don’t steal other people’s work.  But, someone has stolen from Lori Lewis recently and she’s rightfully pissed off.  She wrote a piece for Inside Radio on this then posted about it on Facebook to much reaction.

I’ve been stolen from, too.  By a handful of people over the years.  I almost always hear about it.

Which brings me to a blog I co-wrote about Yacht Rock for Coleman Insights a year ago.  One of the takeaways I shared was how important it is to legally protect your intellectual property.  Lori has her IP, I have mine.  It’s what fuels our work because it’s what we believe and it’s also our livelihood.  But that doesn’t mean people can’t steal the stuff any of us have worked hard to create and present it as theirs.  One of the best things Jon Coleman taught me when I started my company was to protect my stuff legally.  So, I do.  In the past when others took the things I worked hard to create and passed it off as theirs, the lawyers said it was a violation.  I’m not one to wither from that, so I placed tough phone calls to tell those people that that © is real.

I bet lawyers work for the radio company you work for, right?  Snicker at that and then put them to work.  If you come up with something all yours, get trademarks for all of it to protect yourself.

As I was finding my on-air style when I was young, a caring PD named a bunch of successful personalities to listen to so I could hear how they did it.  He then said, “To copy one is plagiarism, to copy six is research.  Do your research.”  We all borrow ideas from other shows.  There’s nothing wrong with that, until you take someone’s actual content and present it as yours.  Good broadcasters are always listening to other shows for inspiration.  Continue to do that.

But if you plagiarize content and do it verbatim without permission or accreditation, you’re stealing.  I know of shows that take callers from others podcasts and use them on their show with the same phone topic.  Some programs have the same trivia feature.  Show A works hard on their questions and Show B listens to A’s posted version and takes (pilfers) their questions.  I am aware of one show only hours away from another who does something worse.  They’re both major markets a few hours apart in a big southern state so let’s call them Show D and Show H.  Both have the same dating feature.  Show D does the original, Show H transcribes the back-and-forth word for word, records it, and presents it as their own weeks later.  Don’t believe me?  I have the receipts (audio proving it).

You don’t do this, I bet, so get those lawyers working to protect your stuff.  That’s my main message to you.  What can be service marked?  Well, I am not an attorney (sorry, mom) so dial up those lawyers who always seem to say no and run those things you developed by them and let them tell you what can and can’t be legally protected.

Please know, I am not angry.  My effort here has been to do two things:  remind you to get service marks on the things you do that you truly own (your intellectual property) and to inspire you, and all of us in the business, to make your show a true reflection of you, not someone else.

We learned when we were young that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  In Steve speak, I’ve added to that:  imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but taking someone else’s intellectual property without permission or attribution is unethical and a shitty thing to do.

Protect yourself.

Over the years, I’ve heard hundreds of shows do thousands of breaks.  Most of us never really explore what we like about a break.  As a young program director, I relied much more on that it felt right.

Well, feelings aren’t going to make you a success.  Strategy and tactics will.  Judging content against a strategy is the ultimate test.  Does it fit the show’s plot?  Does it affirm positive imagery for the show that leads to a brand image?  Is it of the length and vibe that would resonate with the demo?

My friends at Coleman Insights talk about the Three T’s of Content.  It’s excellent and I’m jealous I didn’t think of it.  They get full credit for Topic (are you on the right topics), Treatment (what are you doing with that stellar content, so you own it), and Tone (how do you want the audience to feel after they hear it).

But structure of the above matters, too.  Once you’ve figured out the three T’s, think about how to present it all.  So, with a nod of respect to Coleman, here are Steve’s Three P’s of Perfection in executing a great content break:

• Promotion.  I often hear at the top of many breaks gab that is self-promotion.  What the show is giving away, where we’ll be this weekend with tickets, what we just posted on Facebook, why you should look at our Instagram feed, how we’ll have an hour of commercial-free music at 9:00.  Don’t get me wrong.  Promoting benefits of the station is important. The question is how much time will you give it before listeners lose interest?  I’ll regularly hear minutes of this, and fear the audience is shrugging its shoulders.  I wonder if any promotion is more effective at the end of a break, after you’ve engaged the audience with entertaining content.  Remember, if Tom Cruise is on Kimmel, they’ll do content for all of the audience before they promote his new film to those interested in hearing it.
• Process.  These are the big, long setups many shows do.  The appetizer to get to the entrée.  No, again.  Minimize the foreplay.  Figure out how to navigate this in a couple of sentences because few of us like process stuff.
• Protein.  This is the content portion of the break and the most valuable of the P’s.  The details that make your story come alive, the caller with her story, the interviewee being asked a probing question, the first query in a trivia game.  Fans come for content.  Getting to what I affectionately refer to as “the moment you’ve all be waiting for” quickly satiates almost all of your audience around the reason they tuned in, for content that interests them.  Measured in seconds, the longer it takes to get to this most important P, the protein – content is why they’re there – the less peril you have in listeners losing interest.

Promotion.  Process.  Protein.  The Three P’s.

Don’t believe me?  Go watch a YouTube video and tick off the amount of time at the beginning of self-promotion and process when all you want is to see them blow up that thing with the firecrackers or start reviewing the gadget.  Watch how itchy you get for the protein.  The more time they spend on self-promotion and process, the quicker you will zone out. I promise.

Listen to each break on your show and judge them the same.  Around the Three P’s that will make your personalities epically perfect.