Reynolds’ Riffs: Number One
Three thoughts on talent, listener loyalty, and the ingredients of long-term success. We have a responsibility to earn an audience’s attention. Here are three things to ponder as you check your brand.
Convincing Talent to Update Their Show – The Inside/Outside Game
Trying to get a morning talent to change their show so it wins can be one of the hardest things. Giving up control is tough, which is why I use lots of analogies to pull them outside of radio to make points. If delivered well, they’re tough to refute and put you in the best possible position to get them to make strategic changes so ratings go up.
I talk with shows all the time about how, instead of being on the receiving end of ratings in radio, we’ve been on the giving end of it in TV – each night as we sit on the sofa – with the remote control. Every one of us cruises up and down the channel guide with lightning speed in search of a show that captivates and entertains. One that makes us laugh or engages us. We make that decision in micro-seconds before pushing the button again. Same with the internet. Say a friend sends a YouTube link saying it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. We click on the link, immediately look at the clip length, and if it isn’t “the funniest thing we’ve ever seen”, we click away.
Listeners leave us sometimes when the content isn’t working for them. I proffer to shows that if we treat TV and the internet that way when the content there isn’t engaging, why should we believe listeners would treat us any differently? If we’re that ruthless with our remote controls, why would we expect listeners to be any more patient with us?
Update your show, give listeners new ideas, and they’ll stop and stay when coming to you.
Building Loyalty in a Disloyal World
This quote in a recent NY Times article captured me:
“In an accelerated culture, our loyalties toward just about everything — laundry detergents, celebrities, even churches and spouses — transfer more readily than our grandparents could have imagined. We dispose of phone carriers and cash-back credit cards from one month to the next, forever in search of some better deal.”
As consumers, we are less and less loyal to brands that don’t deliver a positive experience each and every moment That includes personality radio, which is why I impress on shows how imperative it is to re-design their program to better play to an audience that’d rather text to communicate than do anything long-form (aka “have a conversation”).
Listeners don’t owe us their loyalty. We have to keep earning it by the content we choose and how we do that content.
Earning Images for Long-Term Wins
What images assure long term success for any personality show? The images any show needs to make an imprint on listeners? I work with talent in markets all over the country and in Europe. They all face the same consistent challenges. Here are four critical images you must earn to win:
- Relevance. Maintaining their sense of relevancy, show after show, break after break, knowing what will entertain listeners (which is by and large being topical in content choices). Relevance is about whatever is happening right now.
- Authenticity. Being honest, real, authentic, and vulnerable so P1s and new listeners get to know them. Make the audience care about you and they’ll wanna spend more time with you, just like our friends do in real life.
- Knowing Your Audience by Connection. Staying in touch with the station core demo (knowing their likes, dislikes, and lifestyle so great content choices can be made). There’s deep connection in building a community with an audience that sees themselves in you through connection.
- Memorability. Developing fun and entertaining ideas for the show so it stands out in the ground clutter of life and competition. It’s the treatment of the right topics that is one of the things that compel fans to come back to the show. These items make your show memorable in the marketplace, especially in an Attention Economy.
If you have tenured talent, how do you think they score in these areas?