DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

I was about to board a Virgin America flight from Boston to Los Angeles, and pop music streamed through speakers at the gate.

As I passed by them, one airline employee said to another, “Who picked that music??”

The colleague replied, “Pandora did.”

So much for certain corporate radio executives who insist on saying, “Pandora never can compete with *local radio, because it doesn’t have the personality of a real local station.”

Really?

Name the closest big commercial music station. Let’s call it KIIS-FM (not to single out that station, but to use a name for which there are numerous permutations).

When’s the last time someone asked “Who picked out that music?” and was told, “KIIS-FM did”?

Pandora is radio.

To its millions of fans, it is live.

And to those fans, it is local…if we define “local” as “relevant to the listener’s life.”

*Sometimes they’ll say “live radio,” sometimes “live local radio,” and probably what they mean is “simulated live radio in a simulated local setting.”

One of these days, the people who write commercials that air on major Los Angeles radio stations will learn:

The opening line of a radio commercial is the commercial for the commercial.

It’s your one opportunity to grab the attention of the targeted listener.

Check out the opening line of this radio ad:

Would you like to guess how many times in the history of the world one person has said to another, “You know what I’m looking for? A place where the options are limitless!”

That opening line is, in a word, idiotic.

While it may not be possible for the commercial to get any worse, it certainly doesn’t get any better.

Unless the spot promotes The Amazing Jonathan, no competent copywriter would say “amazing” — “The amazing spa.” “The amazing selection.” “The amazing _____.”

“Golf course? Whaddaya mean?”

(SFX: HITTING GOLF BALL)

“Oh, now I understand! Thanks for explaining that mystifying phrase.”

Another mark of an amateur copywriter: Using the word “experience” as a verb:

“Experience excitement.”

Yeah, that’s great. You found a way to make the word “excitement” boring.

Y’know, we all should get into the casino business. Obviously they have money to waste, month after month after month.

This is another in my series of brief yet relevant radio job descriptions.

A radio station’s I.T. (Information Technology) Department might be one guy who’s juggling multiple stations.

It might be an unknown number of “guys at corporate” (i.e., at the corporate office, somewhere far away) who may or may not respond to urgent emails from your station’s manager or program director.

The I.T. Department’s Job Description

To manage the flow of information to and from employees.

That means maximizing the ease of information flow while protecting the integrity of the company’s information.

It does not mean erecting clumsy, inefficient systems that inhibit the ability to communicate with each other and with others.

It doesn’t require any special ability to erect a firewall that promiscuously rejects e-mails with no flexibility or accountability.

Your I.T. department should be working for you. Not the other way around.

If your I.T. department tells you what your company can and cannot do — regardless of what the owners and managers want to do — then at least call it by its appropriate name:

The I.P. (Information Prevention) Department.

The opening line of this commercial is promising.

As an experiment, stop the audio player after the ad’s first sentence. Then imagine what kinds of information you’ll learn during the rest of the commercial.

You played just the first line, right? Okay, now play the rest of the radio commercial.

The opening line promises to share some “amazing” information with us regarding the amount of food our family goes through in a single day.

Okay, I’m intrigued.

Is it X number of calories, which converts to enough electricity to power Y number of light bulbs for Z hours?

Is it twice as much as the amount of food a typical American family consumed two generations ago?

Here’s the “amazing” information: Our family has breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

Wow. Who knew?

Hint: An insipid, inane opening line does not encourage the audience to keep listening. Which is why so few of them ever will hear the rest of that commercial.