DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

July, 1995: I travelled to England to present the very first European PD GRAD SCHOOL, which featured as speakers Mike McVay, Larry Rosin, Harold Taylor (the great Time Management speaker) and myself. We were pleased to have attendees from 16 different countries.

I picked the Heathrow Hilton Hotel because it is advertised as within walking distance from Heathrow Airport. And it is — at least, from one of Heathrow’s (then) four terminals.

Heathrow, however, is a big sprawling mess of an airport, and if you land at one of the other three terminals it takes as long as 45 minutes for the airport shuttle bus to get from one end to the other. (I am not exaggerating.)

After this two-day event I spent a day outside of London, conducting my Air Personality Plus+ seminar for Mike Powell and Infinity Radio.

From there I got a ride into London, where I rode a train to Coventry…sharing the ride with Steve Orchard, who had arranged for me to present a series of seminars the following day for his GWR group.

The Hotel Room Room I Expected To Stay In...But Didn't

But first there was the hotel, which turned out not to be the Hilton I had been told to expect but instead was Coombe Abbey — certainly the most extraordinary hotel I’ve ever experienced.

Originally an 11th Century Cistercian Abbey, it’s surrounded by 500 acres of parkland, formal gardens, an 80 acre lake…and a moat. Each sleeping room is different in its own luxurious, eccentric way.

Notice The Loo Hiding Behind The Swinging Bookcase

Mine had a “hidden” bathroom; the only way to access it was to push back the false bookcase (above).

The company that operates Coombe Abbey is “No Ordinary Hotels.” They also operate Lumley Castle in County Durham, dating back from the 14th Century.

Steve had scheduled a grueling day for me. (It was made considerably more grueling by the seminar hotel’s completely non-functioning air conditioning on a hot July day. The hotel? The Hilton where I originally was told I’d be staying.)

GWR programme controllers and presenters came from all over England, and Steve staggered the sessions so there would be room for everyone (and to accommodate their various schedules).

The day began with two back-to-back 2-hour sessions for presenters: Developing a Personality Style Within A Format. That was followed by Building A Great Breakfast Show, and the day ended with a 75-minute Programme Controllers’ Session in which we talked about Leading, Critiquing and Motivating Your Air Staff.

When it was all over, GWR’s Nick Piggott drove me to the train station for the ride back to London, followed by the cab ride to a different hotel near Heathrow Airport (the Sheraton; I recommend it if you want to be close to the airport), where I spent the night before flying back home to L.A. the next morning.

If you can’t think of anything good and you’ve got very little time, write your basic bad commercial as quickly as you can.

I don’t mean you should try to make it bad. Just write it fast, just the facts; your typical boring, ineffective radio commercial.

When you’ve finished, pick just one thing in your copy to blow up into something huge.

“The largest selection in the Midwest” — try exaggerating the concept of “largest selection” until it’s just plain ridiculous:

“You’ve heard that the universe is expanding? That’s because we have so many pre-owned cars on our lot that there just isn’t room for them in our present universe.”

Ideally you’ll select the most important selling point in that brochure or that newspaper ad or that list of bullet  points, and you’ll exaggerate it to the point where a light bulb goes off and you say, “Wait! I actually could  build a commercial around this theme!”

During Mike McVay’s Radio Programming Secrets teleseminar, someone asked:

Many stations use loyalty programs through their websites to engage listeners. How effective is this as it relates to ratings, and how much on-air time should be devoted to promoting it?

McVay: I have worked with loyalty programs in a number of markets, and I like them very much. The problem is that some radio stations get so hung up overpromoting them that it becomes white noise.

In Atlanta, the radio station we worked with for a long time had its own loyalty program. The syndicator who sold it to them sold it to them with:

“You’ve got to promote this two times an hour, every hour. And all the contests you do and everything you do on the air should run through the station’s website.”

Well, at some point, if it becomes fully about promoting the website, you are alienating a part of your audience.

Now, let me interrupt myself. I have zero problem with promoting a website, and I think you should use your radio station to promote your website.

But if there’s never a “call in to win,” if there’s never a connection between “I’m listening to the radio” and “I call the radio station,” then you’ve lost that connectivity that’s always been a direct stream with the listener.

So my suggestion would be to use the loyalty program to reward listeners for listening longer, but don’t make it so overwhelming on the air that it clutters the programming and decreases time spent listening.

Don’t make it so intrusive that it irritates the listener. Don’t make it so frequent that it becomes white noise and it loses its effectiveness.

O’Day: It shouldn’t be competing with the station’s on-air programming. It should simply be another interesting thing that is being shared with the audience.

McVay: Yeah. This is the frequent flyer program. I use my frequent flyer number when I book my plane ticket.

I get to the airport, and I use my frequent flyer number to get my seat assignment out of the computer. When I get on the airline, they announce that frequent flyers will earn 1,000 miles today. And they tell people how their frequent flyers sign up. When I fly enough, I can get free tickets or I can use that mileage for hotel stays or other prizes.

I don’t have someone tell me two times an hour during my 5-hour flight to L.A. how many miles I’m getting for flying to L.A. that day.

O’Day: If you’re taking a nap, they don’t awaken you to ask if you’ve joined their frequent flyer program.

Mike: Exactly.

O’Day: Actually, you know what? A more apt analogy might be: You’re watching the in-flight movie, and they interrupt it to talk about their frequent flyer program.

That might be the analogy for radio, where it actually is getting in the way of the flow of your programming and it annoys people rather than augmenting what you’re doing.

McVay: Right. Absolutely. That’s a great analogy.

Excepted from Radio Programming Secrets.

Christine Coyle, Creative Director of The Famous Radio Ranch, shows how to get better performances from voiceover performers — whether highly experienced (as are Natalie Stanfield Thomas and Bob Souer) or “whoever is available to help voice this spot.”

Coyle was a featured guest speaker at this year’s International Radio Creative & Voiceover Summit.

We’ve just released a limited edition of the Summit 2009 Complete Audio Record. Lots of great tips from Christine Coyle, Dave Foxx, Nancy Wolfson…and some guy named O’Day.