What Happens Next When Steve’s Work Is Done?

Did you wake up one day about a year ago and think that suddenly, Travis Kelce was everywhere?  Yup, me, too.

Even for non-football fans who’d never heard of him, one day he wasn’t there and the next day he was.  That was not by accident.

In this terrific NY Times article, the story is told that he was driving around Los Angeles with his business managers, brothers Andre and Aaron Eanes, when they happened upon a billboard with The Rock.  Travis looked at them and wondered if he could ever be as famous.  The Eanes brothers said, “yes, you can.”  Which began a business plan to do just that.

Then came Travis’s second Super Bowl win, hosting SNL, starring in seven national commercials, doing a popular podcast with his brother, Jason, and a clothing line.  Dating the world’s biggest pop star (what’s her name again?) was unexpected, unplanned, and gravy on the meal.

Travis Kelce’s ascent was years in the making and, as the article says, a carefully manicured business plan developed by the 34-year-old Eanes team that blossomed at precisely the right moment.

In radio, I’m thinking Ryan Seacrest, Bobby Bones, and Charlamagne tha God.  All three more than just radio stars.  None of it “organic”.

My work with shows is to get the show right – we develop a strategy, working to get the program loved because of its content, features, and characters.  We work hard to get those on the show beloved, so the program is personality-based.

But what happens when we’re successful, and my work is done?  That’s when companies must invest in the next step by hiring PR teams and business managers to turn their radio stars into multimedia stars.

If we want our radio talent to be true difference makers, we’ll invest to help get them a presence on TV, put social media teams around them so hundreds of thousands (if not millions) follow their content on social media, and turn them into both the mayors of their local town and national super stars.  Like Ryan, Bobby, and Charlemagne.

Instead of telling our local personalities to “post more” and become friends with local dignitaries and TV personalities (which is not a strategy), they need a business plan much like the Eanes brothers did for Travis Kelce.  This business plan would not just be a ratings boost for the station, but a financial win, too.  Marketing money and products follow trusted, well-known talent.

If you’re a talent and work for a company that doesn’t agree or have those resources?  Then, how about investing in yourself if you do?  As I shared with one major market show I work with that keeps churning out #1 ratings in key demos month after month, doing that assures your relevancy and success for the future.

The work I do on the show and its content is the start of that multi-year process.

What are your plans that come after my work for the ratings, financial health, and relevancy of your brand?  What commitment can you make for all of that, and then some?  Because success, especially at that level, is never by accident.

In an age of dwindling resources, investing so your good talent become great, your great talent become epic, and your epic talent become legendary would be a no-brainer.

The Benefits of Being Big

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.

Bet on This January Reset

A new year is an appropriate time for a strategic reset of your show and the management of the talented people who are charged with connecting with and entertaining listeners who’ll decide your fate.

Here are five things to engage your creative talent on if you are a manager (and anchors of shows, you are managers of people).  Conversation around these important items will help continue to build a positive team who will help get you to the mountain top:

  1. We are all charged with being leaders. That said, give your people your most valuable commodity, your time.  Spend as much of it with them as possible, with your phone off.  That tells them they’re important and helps you become a listener to their lives.  They’ll leave that interaction feeling empowered.  That’s a core attribute of leadership.
  2. Understand what’s going on in the personal lives of your team. Reciprocate by sharing yours with them.  Vulnerability is the foundation to a relationship where you care about one another.  Do that and you’ll move mountains.  No one really leaves their personal life at the house when they head to work.  It’s all connected.
  3. Remember that culture isn’t free Panera once a month. Culture is building an environment where creating trust is non-negotiable, and everyone contributes to developing it in every conversation they have and every move they make.  A strategy without a great culture is less effective.  Culture comes when it’s We Not Me.
  4. Know what’s noise – those small things that really don’t matter. Steer your team away from the noise and focus on the big stuff.  Not everything is Defcon 1 (especially negative posts on social media).
  5. Practice gratitude. Openly telling members of your team how much they’re valued and appreciated gives you wide latitude to growing them as people first and team members second.  Plus, it’s the right thing to do.

Three important reminders if you are talent:

  1. The head thinks and the heart feels. All the ratings gimmickry in the world can’t match a talent and radio station emotionally connected to its fans.  Do you choose and share content that will define what your show is about, who you are, and make fans feel something about you?  Make the audience care about you with the content you do (and how you do it).  It’s an unbeatable combo to loyalty.  Don’t believe me?  Check out this widely watched Chevrolet commercial from the holidays.  They ain’t selling cars.  Or this Dutch ad for a pharmacy which isn’t selling drugs.  They’re both selling emotion.  Play to your fan’s hearts.
  2. To be great, be F.A.I.R. What images are you earning in every break?  Be Fun, Authentic, Innovative, and Relevant (in any format).  Remember the trajectory:  content leads to images which leads to perceptions which leads to ratings which leads to revenue.  Listeners come to you because of your brand image (your perceptions).  That’s how you get there.
  3. Winning shows are about the moment. Listeners come for content.  Make sure your content comes from whatever is going on now in pop (popular) culture, your town if you are a local show, and your life (in ways that make you relatable).  Be about the moment because you can’t win by being an evergreen show where any content choice could be done on any day.  Be about right now.

Have these conversations internally as you begin a new year.  We are dinged that radio is no longer relevant.  Go listen to a show that does these eight items and you’ll find big winners with ratings and revenue to match

Make My Day, Steal This Blog

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.

The Power and Peril of Paying Attention

Many of us know someone in radio who’s met Taylor Swift.  They gush about how nice she is.  Some reference a handwritten note they’ve received from her, with something personal inside, after the visit.

You’ll get no cynicism from me.  Taylor’s a smart marketer who understands her two customer bases:  her fans and those of us who play her songs and talk about her in our content breaks.  She pays attention to us, so we pay attention to her.

Reflecting on this, I ponder how much radio’s talent is paying attention to radio’s constituencies and if they derive power from it.

We are so conditioned to never hear back from anyone.  With all this technology, the power of a human touch still reigns supreme in developing a relationship with a brand.  I recently changed car companies.  The brand I was driving ignored me and made it very difficult to talk to an actual human being.  The new company won my loyalty because they paid attention to me.

Pay attention to the fans of your show.  How much time do you spend replying to listeners who interact with your program in any way (even on social media)?  It’s time consuming, but the upside is immense.  A show recently used the derisive term I hate for a listener who’s always looking to win a prize.  She gives us many quarter hours and can decide, if she got a meter, whether you’re in first or fifth place.  This isn’t about giving listeners prizes to win their affection.  It’s about paying attention to them, which is even more powerful.

Pay attention to your listeners and they’ll serve you the power of positive chatter and more listening.  I’ve been on market visits where I’ve seen talent, when out for dinner, pay attention to listeners who recognize them.  Those folks leave bigger fans and, like Taylor, gush about the talent.

Pay attention to those on your show and the rest of the airstaff.  Every success comes from having a positive culture.  If you’re emotionally connected to your team and the airstaff, they will help you move everything to a win.

Pay attention to your co-workers.  Do you manage up and down in the building regularly?  Do you spend time with the other people at the station to show appreciation and make them feel valued?  These people can help make your show more successful.  That engineer you talk to about his weekend?  I bet he’d fix a piece of equipment faster.  That salesperson who’s anniversary you celebrate?  It’ll be easier to say no to a promotion she wants that won’t fit.  These folks can help you power through tough times because you pay attention to them.

Pay attention to clients.  Do you have an active relationship with the biggest local clients of your radio station?  With respect to the hard-working folks in the sales department, you’re the star of the station to the clients.  Do you have a relationship with those people who trust your brand with their marketing dollars?  Do you pay attention to them?  Visit them at their store?  Know when their birthdays are and send a card?  Regularly thanking them for believing in your show and the station with their money is a difference maker.  Doing simple things like this makes you quite powerful in the building.  And it’ll shield you when ratings and revenue are down, and your market manager must make hard decisions.

We are an intimate medium.  Folks feel like they know us.  Return that favor by paying attention to them.  Paying attention gives you a superpower to craft your future because more people will believe in you and are on your side because you do that for them.  There’s great peril, too, if you don’t.

Maybe there’s a 2024 resolution here that elevates you to epic in how you grow your brand.

Three P’s to Perfect Personalities

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.

The Lamest Question to Create Compelling Content

Taylor Swift is dating an NFL player.  What can we do with that?

Our last Planet Reynolds touched on the importance of innovating with fresh ideas, so your fans don’t get bored.  This time let’s touch on how to do that.

The quickest way to thwart the brainstorming process is to ask the above:  what can we do with that?  That question brings pressure to the topic and brains racing.  Ask a group of creatives “what can we do with Taylor Swift dating an NFL player” and I guarantee you’ll leave with, “Let’s open the phones and ask the audience if they think it’ll last.”  L-A-M-E.  Your phones will ring, but it’s a weak treatment to the Hot Topic.

I like to have Pitch Meetings with the shows I work with.  Everyone goes off, creates an idea or two around the topic in their own time and own way, then pitches them at the team in the next meeting, where we can only make it better by adding to it so it’s more vibrant.  Kinda like how SNL writes its skits or Kimmel’s folks offer ideas.

How do I create my ideas?  What works for me?  I go for a walk.  It’s highly unlikely a great idea will come sitting at a desk or in a conference room or staring at a computer screen.  So, I grab one of the dogs (Sam on the left, Willow on the right below) and head into the park by my house for a stroll amongst the trees and nature.  Zero distractions, no phone, only the birds chirping and leaves blowing so my brain is cleared out.

I read a Stanford survey about creativity a few weeks ago and it affirmed the value of going for a walk to open your brain to get more creative.  When I do that, solutions to problems appear and better ideas than yes/no questions pop in my head.

High performing talent are deeply curious people.  They read a lot around the topics of the day and that inquisitiveness stimulates their creativity.

While on a morning walk last week thinking about Taylor, I wondered what it would sound like if a musically inclined person on a show pre-wrote and recorded the song Taylor will release when she breaks up with the NFL player, as many of her songs start.  Or to ask ChatGPT to write Taylor and Travis love poems and have a cute kid read them on the air.  Maybe those are good ideas, and maybe not.  But it’s what hit me on a walk in the woods and are better than a phone topic seeking a one-word answer.

My point is that if your show is little more than benchmarks, phone topics, and conversations amongst the cast, there is limited growth in that strategy.  It’s our creativity (in ways that fit the show) that keep your fans intrigued.  To do that, a walk works for me.  What works for you?

There is much competing for the attention of our fans.  What’s your game plan to prevent yours from straying?

Wonderment then a nice long walk (for Steve) = better ideas that will help you stand out.

And when you stand out and do something different, you become a one-of-a-kind, epic radio show fans crave to come back to.

Why My iPhone Bores Me in August, But Excites Me in September

I’m reminded each September why I go from being blasé about my iPhone to loving it again. Apple knows we bore easily so they update the software every September when they introduce new devices. And voila, the phone in my pocket does all new things which makes me play with it more.

What’s to learn from this for your talent?

I often ask personalities the same question: what new features or things have you added to your program so your audience doesn’t get bored, and you create an opportunity across the street? We’re in the relationships business, developing a bond with listeners to breed loyalty. One of the most efficient ways to lose that relationship is to never do anything new. Think of your significant other. If you never brought anything new to that relationship, the other person might lose interest. It’s that ethos we need our talent to bring their shows.

New features and ideas are not getting rid of the benchmarks or features that work. It’s using the same core content choices (pop culture, local stuff, stories in your life that define your character) and doing something never done before so your fans stay fascinated, and you remain “can’t miss”.

My iPhone does the same things I’ve always expected, but each September it does new stuff that reengages me and makes me love it all over again. For your show, it’s all about the treatment of the highly familiar content you’re already doing.

Let’s learn from Apple. Take an inventory of what your show does. The things that make listeners loyal because they come for you and your content. Review what works and fits and what might not. Then develop new ideas and, in your brainstorming, figure what could be fresh, so they don’t stray. Remember, the nightly talk shows hosts are always doing new stuff, so fans keep tuning in. That’s gotta be us, too.

Don’t be so predictable listeners get bored with what you’re doing.

Everything evolves. Staying still isn’t an option if you wanna stay relevant and in growth mode. In the face of all that competition for attention, that’s the move that’s epic.

The Greatest Story Never Told

A few weeks ago, when the Titan submarine story was all over the news, I got a late-night text from an anchor of a show I work with.

The show had befriended a local professor a year earlier who’d gone into space. Intrigued by the story, they talked with him on the program and found out he liked adventurous experiences which he brought into his classroom for discussion with students. They were going to do another break on the lost submarine and the anchor texted the professor to see if he’d ever been in a sub, wondering if he could offer something into the discussion no one on the show could.

The professor asked the talent to call him immediately. The professor shared that he was due to be on the actual Titan voyage that went missing and proved it by sending a picture of the sub on a boat ready to launch at the dock without him. He was uncomfortable with the language in the agreement and his instincts told him to bail from the trip.

If you’re thinking “wow” right now and getting chills, you’re not alone.

He wouldn’t come on the show because he knew it had blown up and everyone had perished, but that news hadn’t been released to America yet and he wanted to be respectful.

Why am I sharing this story? Because I want you to see how this show preps its daily content. Instead of a generic survey or bland phone topic, this show was so deeply curious about the biggest topic of the moment that they tried to figure out how to become the rabbit hole for listeners. Their efforts were to create a break around the topic no one else could.

If you’re a manager, listen to your entire morning show tomorrow and rate it against the funny graphic my friend Kris Rochester did to the left.  Where does your show fall on every break on the Steve Reynolds Content Tracker 3000? Is your show doing birthdays, this date in history, surveys and lists or some other equally bland and generic content? Or are you on top shelf content that makes you relevant?

More specifically, how hard are you prepping to be about the moment? About what’s going on right now? And not in a way that only shares the information or story readily available to everyone in every place they look.  How relevant are you? Relevance is an image that keeps fans returning to the show.

Despite the professor not coming on that show (yet), our team there is always thinking: what is the conversation the audience is having right now and how do we join it in a way no one else can? This show does that around every hot topic (nationally and locally) which makes me immensely proud and a reason they’re pulling a 16-share A25-54.

Take a random hour of your show tomorrow and re-air it in three weeks. On the re-air, listen to hear if the content feels stale. If it does, then it really worked on the day it was originally offered.

Being epic is about being in the moment.  Is the content you’re hearing bland, boring, generic, or evergreen? Or is your show about today’s topics, being done in a way that reflects the curiosity of your personalities so you continue to build a unique product that can’t be duplicated across the street?

HBO and the Perils of Change

Last Monday, I fired up the HBO Max app on my Apple TV to catch the finale of Succession and groaned.

HBO Max (formerly known as HBO Go formerly known as HBO) is rebranding again and they told me that to further engage their content (for $19.99 a month) I needed to download their new app called Max.  There was a heavy sigh because I don’t have the patience to do that and find these moves perilous.  I had no choice so I signed into the app store (what’s my password again?), downloaded the new app, had to reauthorize its use with my TV provider, and then enter a six-digit code on another device to make it work.  That’s lots of work to watch a TV show.  Prayers were said and the app worked.  But the process made me wish HBO were owned by Waystar Royco, with Kendall as CEO, because I know he wouldn’t make it so hard.

We can talk in another Planet Reynolds about the constant re-branding by HBO.  I’d always thought that the value of HBO’s programming over the years was in those three letters H-B-and-O and am not really sure what “Max” means.  But that’s for another time.  What I’m reminded is that change is fraught with peril.  Which is why I sighed again getting an email from them, suggesting I “find my way around the app to find everything.”  I have no time to learn a new app.  They’re making me work for it.  And no one likes that.

Change at your radio station, and more specifically, change on your morning show is a high wire act.  Some shows tell me they want to move their benchmarks around to “keep them fresh” or “let a different audience hear them”.  I always push back on that.  Because listeners/consumers/all humans hate change.  We sometimes have ideas with layers and nuance and make the audience work for it, which they won’t.  It’s easier to tune out, then to figure it out.  That’s for all of us when we are faced with change in anything.

We crave familiarity and routine when we wake up.  That good predictability and structure makes it easy to listen.

Think about it like this:  when you get out of bed each morning, you do the same thing in the same order every day.  I get up, I head to the bathroom, let the dogs out, then turn on the coffee, etcetera.  When you leave your house, you take the same exact route to work every day, despite being able to get to the studios dozens of ways from your home.  That routine wakes you up.  Predictability, familiarity, and structure!

I am looking at new cars.  The biggest downside in my decision?  I’ll need to learn where all the buttons are to do everything again.  It’ll be frustrating and is a vote to not do it because it’s taxiing and unnerving.  Change rattles us.  Which is why we keep gravitating back to what we know, even if it ain’t the best.  I know where to find my content on the (now defunct) HBO Max app.  I don’t on their new one.  Why did they make that change and why is it on me to learn it?

Benchmarks and known, familiar talent bring that to your listeners.  If done well, that’s another familiar item in the routine of your fans.  That structure plays in your favor.  Same for content – I have launched many shows over the years and my advice is always the same.  The audience pushes back at change so our ratings might go down.  So, play familiar music, choose the most familiar topics, and tell stories to introduce yourself to the audience so that that familiarity transfers to you.  For tenured shows, follow the same path and play inside that known topic which brings good unpredictability to the dynamic.

HBO Max, or whatever they’re calling themselves now, and their new app, makes it harder on those of us to find their content.  Thanks for the email, Max, suggesting I spend time learning your new app.  While that won’t happen, I guarantee when I fire it up next, looking for a show or movie I want to watch, there’ll be lots of profanity in the house, and the dogs will run and hide, as I endlessly scroll looking for it, because HBO changed things.

We know what we like and always seek what’s familiar.  Be careful before you thrust change into listeners’ lives.  Unless you’re patient, it could work against you and create an opportunity for a competitor to seize your spot.

Play to becoming familiar. Known, trusted brands tend to own the category and be epic.