Sorry, registration now is closed.
But I’m keeping this posting online for our attendees to leave their comments about the teleseminar, below.
Is one of the passwords you use for your cell phone, email, etc., listed here?
If you just mention this link to your listeners, it’ll make an impact.
Even better, though, is to “make it your own.”
With my background in “mentalism,” here’s what I’d do:
As you know, I have a highly developed intuitive sense. Some might even say I have “psychic abilities”; I believe, however, that we all have the potential to use our minds more powerfully, and in this regard I just happen to have developed mine more than most.
So let’s try an experiment. Think of the password you most commonly use in your daily life. Maybe it’s for your email or what you use to log into Facebook — that kind of thing.
Are you thinking of one — the you use the most often?
Wait, wait — I’m picking up on some people thinking of more than one password; that just confuses me. Think of just the one password you use the most often.
Now, concentrate on your password. Concentrate….
Okay, I’m getting….Actually, I’m hearing three different passwords from three different people.
Here are the three I’m picking up on: “123456”….”password”….and “12345678.” Yeah, I’m hearing all three of those loud and clear.
If one of those is yours, then I’m picking up on your brainwaves. Give me a call at ( ) and let me know which of those three is yours. But don’t give your name when you call…unless you don’t mind changing your password as soon as you hang up.
October, 1997 (continued):
A week after my radio seminars in Wisconsin, I flew from Los Angeles to Chicago and then to Peoria, where the next morning I was to present The Total Quality Service Radio Station for Wally Gair and the Illinois Broadcasters Association. (This was my sixth time working with Wally and the IBA.)
The convention was held at the Pere Marquette Hotel, a local landmark.
I figured that for dinner I’d have my usual lonely Room Service club sandwich (or, in a rare moment of luxury, perhaps a chicken stir fry).
But from the moment I stepped into the hotel, I was flooded with advertising for their Carnegie Restaurant: menus posted in the lobby, in the elevator, everywhere… along with awards and rave reviews the restaurant had garnered.
I read the menu. Gee, some pretty good sounding dishes here. Maybe I’ll actually order a real dinner for a change. In fact, I’m going to do just that! I deserve a little pampering now and then.
So I went downstairs to the restaurant….only to discover that it’s closed on Sundays. (None of their in-hotel advertising mentioned that.)
So it was back to my room for some…yep, stir-fry chicken.
The next morning, prior to the seminar, I went to the hotel’s coffee shop — which also provided the Room Service food. I explained that I would be conducting a seminar until Noon and would have to leave for the airport at 12:45, and I would like to arrange for a club sandwich to be delivered to my room at 12:00.
“We don’t take pre-orders,” the coffee shop woman said.
“Well, if I wait until 12:00 to place the order, by the time it arrives I’ll have to leave for the airport.”
“Well, we don’t take pre-orders. If you want, I can write it down, but there’s no guarantee you’ll get it on time.”
I asked for the name of the hotel manager, went to his office, and explained the situation.
“That shouldn’t be any problem at all, Mr. O’Day. I’ll be happy to take care of that for you.”
Now, why do I bother sharing this story?
Because on the wall of the manager’s office was a large “Mission Statement” to the effect that the hotel staff is dedicated to doing “everything we can” to make their guests’ visits enjoyable.
The mission statement was adorned with dozens of signatures; I assume they were signatures of hotel employees.
But although the mission statement was on all the wall, signed by all the employees, that message was not lived up to by their Room Service manager.
Ironically, the seminar I gave that morning was all about Customer Service. I see this all too often — inside and outside of radio stations: a fine-sounding mission statement but no systems in place to make sure the company lives up to its promise.
The manager, by the way, was quite nice. And my sandwich was waiting for me when I got back to my hotel room.
The difference between a music personality and a jukebox:
With a jukebox, the music always comes out the same.
But a music personality does something to add value to the music.
It’s what I call Contextual Radio Programming. 
Casey Kasem created the countdown show, which is simply putting current music into a context: The 40 most popular songs, presented backward from 40 to 1!
“American Top 40” plays the same music you hear on all its affiliate stations; the only thing different is the context in which it’s presented.
A good countdown show (or, as our UK colleagues say, “chart show”) presents familiar music in a different context.
I remember many years ago reading an interview with Art Garfunkel in which he talked about how when he was a kid he’d eagerly await each new issue of Billboard magazine, to see which records moved up and which moved down the chart. And he mentioned how exciting it was on the rare occasions when a record that had begun to slide down the charts suddenly moved up again.
That was context.
A number of years ago I flew Lufthansa to Europe, and the in-flight video included a number of five-minute films made by the BBC.
Each one consisted of a series of images with accompanying music, no voiceover, and just a few words of text on the screen at any time.
The one that really stands out in my memory was about the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak.
It told how he came to the United States in 1892 and how lonely he was, how homesick he was for his native land.
But he also was overwhelmed by the physical beauty of America, which is what led him to write one of his best-known symphonies, entitled “From the New World.”
They told that story just a few words at a time, over a slowly changing series of pictures, with his music as the only sound.
I had barely heard of Dvorak. But after being exposed to that very brief film, his music meant something to me. It had meaning, because it had been placed in a context for me.
In his morning show in Hartford, J.D. Houston created a context for an especially upbeat music sweep that began each day at around 6:30.
But he didn’t call it “20 minutes of upbeat dance music.”
He called it the “20-Minute Morning Workout.”
The songs were on his playlist, but the context he created for them was that people could do their morning workout to the music before getting ready for work.
What a brilliant context!
If you’re a music jock who just plays the songs and throws in a smooth, “professional” intro or backsell but doesn’t ever add anything to the music….
Well, there’s an iPod ready and waiting to replace you in your listener’s life.
Subscribers to my Radio Advertising Letter know the most recent issue included my critique of an exceptionally bad, very recent major market sales promo on a music station.
If you’re a subscriber: This is not the one you heard in my Radio Advertising Letter. (That one was Very Bad. This one is Even Worse.)
I got this from Doug Harris, who was sent a copy of it 15 years ago.
Sadly, the only thing that prevents this from being a Typical Bad Radio Sales Promo Break from 2011 is the encouragement of listeners to fax (not email, text or tweet) their entries.
That break has too many bad elements to list them all here. So, just a few stand-outs…
* The host begins by announcing it’s time for the trivia contest…and then, bizarrely, launches into a pitch for a different station contest.
* He gives seven different phone numbers with which to enter.
* He gives those 7 phone numbers before telling listeners they aren’t for the trivia contest he’d just announced; it’s for the other thing.
* The radio station proudly lists among the valuable prizes for the person who correctly answers the trivia question: a keychain…a pen…and a bumper sticker.
* In listing the prizes for the trivia contest, he promotes a third event: a station remote “from Bernie’s Bagels.” (I can’t make up stuff this bad, folks.)
