(Excerpted from Randy Michaels’ FUNDAMENTALS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING.
There is a hierarchy of importance in any radio station.
What is most important about your radio station?
The Product?
No.
Bottom Line?
No. The most important thing is your signal.
If they can’t hear you, it doesn’t matter.
You can put together the greatest radio station anyone has ever conceived, but if people can’t hear it then it isn’t worth it.
The first thing you do when you program a radio station is look at who you cover, where the signal is strong.
The signal, by the way, isn’t that circle they have on the map in the Sales Department. “Signal” is a very complex thing.
How much signal does it take for the average radio to work? There’s no good answer to that.
In the absence of any other strong signals, .5 millivolts may be killer on FM.
But if you have a very strong transmitter next door, you can have what’s called desense. Cheap radios have their internal amplifiers all turned down by a nearby strong signal. A car radio hears it while a clock radio doesn’t and a Walkman doesn’t.
You have signals that cause intermodulation, which spoils the reception of another signal. As you think about your programming, you should know a lot about your signal.
There are neighborhoods where it’s good and neighborhoods where it’s bad. Radios where it’s good, radios where it’s bad.
When I go to a market for the first time, I drive around with a dozen different radios. I go through office buildings, I listen in different neighborhoods on different kinds of radios and really try to understand the signal.
The signal is first & foremost; that’s your Distribution. Procter & Gamble knows you can’t buy Tide if you can’t find it on the shelf. It’s all about Distribution.
If you don’t have the best signal in the market, doing too well can be a problem. Because if you do really well on a secondary signal, somebody with a great signal can take your position just because they’re easier to find on the dial. There are dozens of examples of this.
Signal is the most important thing. If they can’t hear you, it’s a problem.
When I was building Jacor and later Clear Channel, I started with transmitter power. I didn’t care if the format was Religion or Polka or whatever. Just give me the biggest transmitter. WLW/Cincinnati was the first radio station I was a part of buying, and it was bankrupt. But I wanted the 50,000-watt transmitter.
It all starts with the signal
Here is where you can read the entire FUNDAMENTALS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING, and here’s where you can hear it.
September, 1994 (continued):
Two incidents stand out in memory of my return to the Leipzig (Germany) airport, as I prepared to fly to Hamburg. One was running into European radio legend Ad Roland
(pictured below, in his pirate radio days) as I waited to go through security.
If you’ve ever attended my How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising seminar and heard me tell the “Matthew In Leipzig” story, here’s the first-hand account of that event.
Ad greeted me with a loud, cheerful, “So, Dan, do you have a bomb in that suitcase?” In the U.S, of course, making a joke like that in an airport is against the law. It didn’t seem to please the Leipzig security guards, either.
There were two guards, both of them big and surly, looking like the stereotype of an East German border guard. They spoke very little English. One noticed my computer case and demanded, “What is that?”
“A computer,” I replied.
“Turn it on.”
So I fired up my Macintosh Powerbook. Seeing that it really was a computer, he scowled and turned away, gesturing to indicate that he was through with me.
I started to shut down the computer when an odd thought struck me. The Powerbook had a built-in condenser microphone, and I had recorded my two kids on it. I opened the appropriate file and called to the guard, “Excuse me??”
He looked up, surprised and suspicious. Unsmilingly, I waved him back toward me — a rather insolent move, I thought. He came over and I pointed to the computer screen and then clicked on the mouse. Out of the computer came the voice of my four-year old boy: “Hi, my name is Matthew!”
I don’t know what the guard had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Matthew saying hi. I smiled and said — in completely ungrammatical German — “Mein kinder.” The guard smiled broadly and called his partner over to see this.
I played it for them a couple of more times and then closed up the computer. They turned back to the people standing in line — but this time with smiles instead of scowls.
Meanwhile I kept thinking, “This should be a tv commercial for Powerbooks.”
A Radio Station Program Director Writes:
One of my announcers is the super-sensitive/actress type. She once cried when a listener called to complain. She is always building people up, telling them how great they are, which naturally leads some of those people to return that edification to her.
I, on the other hand, won’t tell her she’s great when she isn’t. Often, right after a break, she will come to me and say, “Did you like what I said about X?”
Even when I tell her, “I would have preferred you did it this way,” or anything else that’s not 100% affirming, I run the risk of upsetting her. Not my problem I know, but if she does get upset, this often leads to less than stellar breaks for the rest of the shift.
On the occasions we do meet outside of her shift, she claims to understand how I want her to do certain things, yet she still does them her way. She claims she can disagree with my comments and still do her job. I’m not so sure.
She has difficulty accepting any kind of feedback unless it’s 100% positive. I realize that the use of language is important, and I make every effort to incorporate positive language when giving her this feedback.
I’ve even tried using the actress analogy (just like acting, you follow the guidelines of the director and know your lines…I need you to be prepared/do it this way for radio). That doesn’t resonate with her. She says, “It takes a hell of a lot more work to act.”
My response is maybe so, but this is a professional setting as well, and I need you to do things this way for these reasons.
Any thoughts as to how can I get that “buy in” from her?
Dan Replies:
From your query, it sounds as though you do not conduct regular aircheck sessions with your super-sensitive/actress type. Assuming that is correct….
1. Schedule weekly or twice-monthly aircheck sessions with her, during which you address your general performance concerns.
2. Whenever she comes to you right after a break to ask what you thought of it, gently remind her that she is supposed to be in the studio, preparing for the next break. She is not supposed to be focusing on anything that is not directly related to the rest of her program. Refuse to give any feedback on such occasions, instead reminding her that she has a critique session coming up later in the week.
If you, as Program Director, upset your jock during her shift, you are not doing your job properly. As you point out, when she’s upset her program suffers. So it’s up to you to remove the opportunity for her to be upset by you during her show.
Finally, it doesn’t matter if she agrees with your comments. What matters is whether she follows the instructions and guidelines set down by her program director.
Yesterday in Santa Monica, I walked past a store I’d passed perhaps a hundred times before but never entered: Gallery 319. They appear to specialize in artwork — paintings, lithos, photographs — related to music or sports.
I’d never entered, and once again I walked past it on my way to an appointment. But then I flashed on something: In a couple of weeks I’ll be seeing a friend who used to love The Kinks.
Maybe this place had some cool Kinks-related piece? A long shot, but I did an about face and, curious, went inside.
As far as I could tell, there was only one other person in the gallery: a woman bent over a desk or table, intent on…something. To me, she had the look of a shop owner.
I know she knew I was there, because when I entered a startlingly loud bell rang. She didn’t look up.
I stood a few feet inside the doorway and glanced around at the walls. Looked like some pretty pricey stuff. Didn’t see anything Kinks-ish, but who knew what else they might have in the back, in storage, or otherwise available?
The Looks Like The Owner woman still had not acknowledged my presence. Not a glance, not a word. I had walked into her gallery with money in my pocket and a desire to make a purchase. But it was a desire, not a need. And I’d be damned if I’d apologetically interrupt her concentration to ask if she’d be interested in selling me something.
So I turned and walked out — half expecting her to call out, “Was there something you were interested in?” Nope. My exit made no more of an impact than my entrance: the loud bell rang again, nothing more.
Maybe she’d caught a glimpse of me, instantly spotted me as a former radio guy, and assumed there’s no way I could afford any of their pieces. I just checked their website which declares, “We pride ourselves on warm hospitality.” Maybe that’s reserved for the artists whose works they display.
Does This Have Anything To Do With Radio?
When someone initiates contact with anyone who works for your radio station, they are saying, “I want to buy.”
If yours is one of the increasingly rare stations that employ a live receptionist, when someone calls and asks to a particular account executive whom she knows is out of the building, is the caller put directly through to the A.E’s voice mail?
Or does the receptionist understand that the caller wants to buy and, instead, say, “Ms. Account Exec isn’t here at the moment, but I do expect her to be back this afternoon. Is there something I might be able to help you with, or would you like me to put you through to her voice mail?”
When a listener calls the studio line to complain that you don’t play enough Maroon 5 — let’s pretend your jocks actually answer the studio line and not just the “warm line” they’ve set aside for their friends — do your jocks say, “Sorry, we do the best we can”?
Or do they engage the caller in a brief conversation about Maroon 5 or ask what they think of another new artist whose music is a bit similar?
Has your program director explained to the entire air staff that those blinking lights are customers?
When your promotions assistant is “working the remote” and notices a civilian shyly standing at the sidelines, watching wordlessly and nervously, does the promo person call out a cheery, “Hi! Glad you could make it here”?
If you answered “yes” to that last question: C’mon, really? I doubt it.
Which is too bad, because that “pathetic loser standing over there gawking” heeded your call to come to your remote. He came to buy.
