Recorded at my Air Personality Plus+ seminar Charlotte, North Carolina, 1991.
June, 1997 (continued):
Thursday began a brief yet busy European seminar trip. I was to arrive in Nuremberg on Friday, and on Saturday I would present a full-day Air Personality Plus+ seminar for clients of the BCI consulting group.
Saturday evening I’d fly from Nuremberg, Germany, to Frankfurt, then from Frankfurt to Oslo, Norway.
On Sunday again I would present a full-day air talent seminar, this time for my friends at Radio 1. (A couple of their jocks had attended one of my seminars in the States a few years earlier.)
As soon as that seminar ended I’d rush to the airport to fly to Vienna, Austria, where the following day I would work with Ö3’s morning show, developing comedy and feature ideas, etc. (This was a return trip; I had worked with their air staff the previous autumn.)
If I was exceptionally lucky, I might have a few hours to walk around Vienna (unlike the previous visit) before catching an evening flight to London.
I’d be met at Heathrow Airport and driven the hour or so to Brighton, where the following day I would present How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising for the staff and clients of Southern Radio.
Then it would be back to Heathrow, fly to Frankfurt, maneuver my bags across the several yards that separate the hotel and the Frankfurt Sheraton Airport hotel….go to sleep….get up the next morning….and fly home to Los Angeles.
Just another typical, glamourous European trip.
The 11-hour flight from Los Angeles to Nuremberg was uneventful… with one small exception.
After the on-flight dinner, I went into the restroom to wash up and brush my teeth.
Doing so, I noticed a small bottle of “Elkadaent” mouthwash on display for use of customers.
Hmmm….Well, I wasn’t going to floss my teeth before going to sleep, so I figured perhaps a little mouthwash wouldn’t hurt.
I checked the directions on the bottle: “Four squirts into a cup. Then gargle or rinse.”
Easy enough.
I pulled down a paper cup, emptied four squirts of mouthwash into it, and poured the contents into my mouth.
I remember thinking as I emptied the cup onto my tongue, “Should I just rinse, or should I actually gargle? I mean, wouldn’t gargling make a lot of noi-“
My mouth was on fire. Raw, burning, aflame.
What was this, some super mouthwash, a challenge to only to the most machismo of airline passengers? Oh God, it burns! Drink some water, quick! No! That makes it worse! Now it’s twice as painful!
I grabbed the bottle and checked those directions once more. Yep, just like I thought: “Four squirts into a cup…” Um…. “…of water.”
Ah. Uh-huh.
I was supposed to dilute that stuff by a few thousand percent.
On the other hand….
How’s my breath smell?
Allowing your radio station’s webmaster to decide what kinds of content the site should offer visitors is like allowing your station engineer to program your radio station’s music.
I’m just sayin’….
If your competitors offer the same as you but don’t say so in their advertising….
And you do….
Then in the mind of the consumer, it’s exclusive to you.
I say “one” definition because other people might prefer other definitions. But from a structural point of view — i.e., from within the design of the radio station — no definition is more important than this:
It is the radio personality’s job to keep people listening as long as possible.
It is the programmer’s job to build cume (the cumulative audience), to get as many people as possible to sample the radio station. The PD uses marketing, advertising and promotions to accomplish this.
But once someone has tuned in your station — whether by accident or by design — if you are a personality, then it is your job to keep them there longer than they planned to stay….
To keep them there for as long as possible. To maximize the average Time Spent Listening.
If they just tuned in to hear the $1,000 Birthday Drawing, it is your job to keep them there for five or ten minutes more.
If they tuned in only to hear the weather and traffic, your job is to keep them a bit longer.
If they planned to listen to a couple of songs before switching to another station or to their iPod, it is your job to make them forget about their second destination and stay with you.
An “announcer,” of course, cannot do that. An announcer simply announces the songs, delivers the forecast, and reads the liner cards.
That kind of “announcer” does not increase Time Spent Listening any more than the train conductor who announces the various stops along the way causes you to take a longer train ride.
But a personality keeps the audience for as long as possible.
