This is the second in a series dedicated to that rare and increasingly endangered breed: the radio personality.

Grow As A Person.  

Most on-air people entered radio at a young age — the majority, I suspect, before the age of 21.

Upon embarking on a career in such a competitive, demanding field, it’s all too easy to concentrate 100% of your energies on “radio” and 0% on your own mental and personal growth.

The result is an oversupply of 30- and 40-year old disc jockeys who are no more well-rounded (i.e., no more interesting) than they were when they were 20.

Read more than the trades and the tabloids.

Find and explore your own special corners of the human experience.

Example: One of my favorite air personalities subscribes to Soldier of Fortune magazine…because he finds it interesting. And those interests in turn help create some amazingly entertaining radio features.

When during prehistoric times I hosted my own show, I knew I could rely on three magazines to provide me with fresh ideas for interesting guests and topics that weren’t featured on every other station: Harper’s,  Inc., and Columbia Journalism Review.

I didn’t read them because they’re a source of radio ideas; I read them because I happened to find them interesting.

No matter what you read for pleasure (or for mental stimulation), I guarantee you can find a way to use the material to make your on-air performance more original and more reflective of your personality.

This is the fourth in a series of articles helping account executives educate their radio advertising clients enough for the clients’ commercial campaigns to succeed.

Don’t Claim; Prove

You say your car dealership is friendly and 100% service-oriented?

I don’t believe you.

One of your customers talks about what a pleasure it is when she takes her car in for servicing?

How clean & comfortable the “customer’s lounge” is, complete with freshly brewed coffee and homemade cookies?

And how your staff offers to give her a ride to work while her car is being tended to?

And she uses real language, not clunky, fake advertising-speech?

And she’s really talking, not reading?

And we’re told her full name and her occupation?

I might believe her.

No, I’m not suggesting all of commercials should feature customer testimonials.

Yes, I am suggesting that you need to do something to enable listeners to believe you.

Focus on the listener.  

The stereotype of the disc jockey as egotistical and self-involved is not entirely fictional.

Most jocks ask themselves, “What can I do that will get attention? That will make me look good?”

They should be asking, “What can I do that will entertain, interest or touch my audience in a meaningful way?”
    
A true entertainer will follow his own interests…but will in a way that includes his listeners.

One vital way to keep your focus on “delivering the goods” for your listeners is to prepare for your show.

For many jocks, preparing means going online just before their air shifts and checking the latest headlines and the free show prep services.

A more effective approach is to find out what’s happening in the world and to discover how you react to the various events of the day.

(That, of course, requires more effort than simply finding out how shows in other markets reacted to the same events.)
    
Remember: Most jocks don’t prepare for their shows. That’s why we have the word “average.”

The purpose of a radio commercial critique isn’t to criticize; it’s to show how the spot could have been improved.

But this commercial that’s airing on a major Los Angeles station is an embarrassment to the radio advertising industry…

Not because it’s so bad, but because the radio station allowed it to be broadcast.

I don’t care what the excuses might be:

“That’s what the client gave us.”

or

“That’s what the client wanted.”

or

“They didn’t give us enough time to do it right.”

or

“That spot was part of a package, and we had to cut it down from a much longer version.”

There’s no excuse for airing a commercial with such poor audio quality.

There’s no excuse for beginning with the name of someone unknown to the audience, followed by the rushed, garbled name of the advertiser. (The advertiser’s name is not particularly known in L.A., so they couldn’t rely on listeners to recognize it.)

People stop thinking about “the new year” about a week after January 1. No one is thinking about “New Year’s resolutions.”

If listeners were searching for worthy resolutions, “making this the year I finally put a BMW in my driveway” would not make the cut

Then an incredibly bad edit (probably because the station’s producer desperately tried to salvage and truncate the original recording) to a sentence that can’t be understood in its entirety by any casual listener.

Then, even a telephone number that can’t be understood (!).

“Nick can’t say no?” It’s obvious that this radio station couldn’t say no.

Because the station couldn’t say no, they made themselves, their client, and the commercial radio industry look bad.