RADIO MUSIC, CONVERSATION and THE ILLUSION OF FORWARD MOMENTUM

I received an e-mail from a quite famous radio consultant.

You won’t be able to guess who it is. For one thing, he has not ever spoken at my PD Grad School — so that eliminates your first several guesses.

Despite his enviable track record of unbroken successes, he sounded despondent.

“I had occasion to think of you numerous times this week.

“I’m working with a station where whenever the DJ has something to say, they fire up a music bed and talk over it.

“I know you have written about this, and I think that we have the same opinion: ‘No, just say what you’re going to say, like real people talk to each other.’

“The program director disagreed with me, said everybody in his market does it. And that it keeps the momentum going. He thinks it is a matter of what the music is, that the only problem is if the station doesn’t choose its music beds well.

“Is my thinking flawed? This just seems SO obvious to me. It really makes my skin crawl. Am I nuts?”

You are correct: I’ve preached about this before.

You are correct; It’s really, really dumb.

(I just insulted 75% of the PDs reading this.)

And doing something because “everyone else in the market” (or “everyone else in radio”) does it is stupid, stupid, stupid.

That’s a brilliant approach: “Let’s do what all of our competitors are doing! That way we can’t lose!”

Maybe they should make that their positioning statement:

“Radio X. We sound just like everybody else!”

Two Very Different Examples

It’s hard to imagine two radio personalities with less in common personally than Howard Stern and the late Paul Harvey.

Many American readers of this radio blog loved one and never would listen to the other.

(If you’re outside North America: Paul Harvey was a very conservative news “commentator.” He wasn’t a journalist. He was a story teller. Even people who hated his politics conceded he was an excellent radio performer.)

Howard Stern, of course, is known to radio people around the world. (I’ve coached radio people in 37 countries, and I’ve yet to be inside a station where at least several of the programming staff haven’t seen the movie, PRIVATE PARTS.)

No music beds played under Harvey’s voice; none plays under Stern’s voice.

Why not?

Because neither of them needed one.

That program director who thinks it’s all a matter of choosing the right music to put under a DJ’s voice doesn’t understand:

If you think you need to put music under the jock’s voice to keep the audience interested, the problem isn’t “which music bed should we play?”

The problem is your jock is saying something that you don’t believe is interesting enough to command the attention of your audience.

Two Scenarios

1. You’re the expectant father, nervously pacing the hospital waiting room.

Finally the doctor comes out and says, “Congratulations. It’s a boy. Both he and his mother are doing great.”

2. The police officer stands in your doorway, awkwardly shifting his weight. “Your son has been in an automobile accident. I’m very sorry, but…Your son is dead.”

Would the impact of either of those messages have been heightened if music had been playing underneath the voice of the doctor or the police officer?

“Oh, you’re just being ridiculous, Dan. You’re talking about life and death situations.”

Exactly. I’m talking about messages that have great relevance to the lives of the people hearing them.

Usually we are not delivering life-or-death messages over the radio. (Although some of the PSAs you’ve rushed through might well have saved someone’s life, if only they had heard you.)

But the more relevant your words are to the lives of your listeners, the less you need to dress them up with music or “production values.”

“Relevant” does not need to be “life or death.”

It does, however, need to be “life.”

If what you say affects or reflects your listeners’ lives, they will listen.

Assuming, of course, that you are saying it in an interesting, compelling way.

If you are saying it in a manner that does not engage their attention, adding a music bed won’t help.

Conditioned Response

That’s what Pavlov called it. It’s also known as Classical Conditioning.

If you always put music underneath the DJ chatter, you condition your audience to perceive it as just that: chatter.

It’s nothing important, just part of the package they get when turn on your radio station.

It doesn’t take long for them to realize the equation:

DJ Voice + Extraneous Music Bed = Nothing Important.

Oh, you disagree? Really?

When something terrible happens — assassination, school shooting, mine explosion — Do you put music underneath the announcer’s voice?

“Yeah, but those are tragedies. Unfair comparison.”

Okay. Paul McCartney is in your studio, being interviewed by you live on-air. Are you really dumb enough to make the interview “more interesting” by putting an intensity bed underneath it?

The conditioned response you elicit from your listeners is:

Radio DJ Voice + Extraneous Music Bed = Nothing Special.

Just the same old stuff.