Here's this week's hurriedly-dashed-off All Access newsletter, written while frantically packing to get on the road:
I'm fairly convinced sometimes that a lot of radio station managers don't actually listen to their stations. I was further convinced of it when I went running early Sunday morning and heard...
Wait a minute. Early Sunday morning? Are you kidding? Who listens to radio at that hour? NOBODY listens to radio at that hour! Right?
Well, most people don't, perhaps, but SOMEBODY does. I was. And every single one of those people is someone you want to listen at other times during the week. So maybe you're sleeping in at 6 or 7 am on a Sunday, but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't be watching the store. I raise that issue because I heard at least one station sending out two different audio streams at the same time for a while -- I don't know if they had problems at the transmitter or someone didn't completely bulk a tape (does anyone use tape anymore?) -- while others had taped shows with promos and PSAs that weren't firing at the right time and still others had that highly professional and desirable feature of your top talk radio stations everywhere, the infomercial. In the space of an hour and a half, I learned about all sorts of "dietary supplements" that were guaranteed to make me live longer and improve my, um, performance and it was all "secret" because the medical establishment doesn't want me to know about it, or something like that, and if I called right then I'd get not only a three month's supply but, absolutely free, another three months' supply through a "special radio offer." But there were other stations carrying good, live, local programming, even at that hour. Which one do you think listeners will favor? Which one will the listeners think is more professional, more entertaining, more legitimate? Which one do you think they'll come back to when the work week starts?
There is no such thing as a throwaway time slot. Your sales manager may think so, but for programming purposes, there is no throwaway time slot. If you're a programmer, you owe it to your station and yourself to fight for the best programming at all times, whether it's local and you can afford that or syndicated when you can't. Even your public affairs programming should sound good. And if you can't listen 24/7 -- if you actually have a life, or at least a desire to sleep on occasion -- someone should be monitoring what the computer's doing. Every moment of the day is a chance to convince listeners to listen to your station, to put their loyalty in your product. Don't kick that chance away. Tell yourself "aah, it doesn't matter, it's just early Sunday morning" all you want, but if you're not proud of everything your station does -- everything -- then why bother at all?
Yeah, I know, it costs money, the GM won't approve, can't do that. But, somewhere, there's management that isn't so beholden to making Wall Street analysts (who, incidentally, don't know or care what makes good radio) happy that it forgets what's needed to bring listeners in and keep them listening and loyal, who knows that doing so will make its stations stronger not just for this quarter but for years down the road. I know managers like that exist. I've met some. I've seen it in action. It's what makes me keep up hope for the future.
And then I scan my local dial on Sunday mornings and remember how rare that is.
The rest was just the usual ads without the story rundown, so I'll spare you that.
Share
