Finally, this week's "The Letter" gets around to the importance of being fabulous on the radio, the need to make yourself special so you don't get lost in the shuffle:
Last week, I left off in the middle of a discussion that was leading to what you need to do, as a talent, to protect yourself as the industry changes and mutates and opportunities disappear and reappear. And, since then, a lot of things have happened, namely:
1. Everyone got fired.
2. I got stomach flu and the sewer line broke (separate incidents, I think).
All right, the second thing has nothing to do with you, unless you're my wife, my cat, or the insanely well-paid gentlemen who are in the crawlspace right now replacing several feet of pipe. But the first got a lot of attention in the business, especially since the layoffs were mostly budget-based. Great ratings? Pillar of the community? You make too much -- there's the door, and wish your kids a happy holiday for us. (By the way, when executives tell you it's a "redeployment of assets to growth areas," they don't mean that they're taking the salaries and moving them to Internet operations, they mean that your salary's being reallocated from your pocket to the shareholders -- if revenues continue to slip, there's only one guaranteed way to come closer to next quarter's numbers, and it isn't by paying you)
How do you avoid being the next victim? You can't, not when the amount on your paycheck would turn red ink to black when applied to the cluster's quarterly bottom line. What you CAN do, however, is make yourself more marketable than the next guy. You CAN make it so that you will survive whatever happens to the business, whether it's more budget cuts or a wholesale shift to streaming or podcasting or whatever else changes the industry while we're still in it. Here's the simple fact of life for survival as a talent, or, indeed, as anything in radio in 2007:
You have to be a star.
Before you say "how the heck do I do THAT?," here's what I mean: You have to be unique. You have to be irreplaceable. You have to be the kind of personality that people will want to follow wherever you are. That may seem obvious, but how many shows on the radio are really like that? How many talk radio shows are appointment listening? You have to ask yourself if what you're doing right now is a show that people will go out of their way to find, or whether you're what people pop on for the 10 minutes it takes to get to the Kroger for their grocery run. If you announced this afternoon that your show would no longer be available on the regular radio but would be available only as a podcast via iTunes, would a large, loyal contingent of fans make the effort to download and listen or would people just kinda wait and check out whoever showed up in your time slot next week? That's the scenario you have to consider, the sooner the better. The more you make yourself a "star," the more you make yourself that person people go looking for in any medium, the better you'll survive whatever changes the industry will throw at you. (Want proof? Why do you think Howard Stern got that half-a-billion?)
So, what makes you a star? There are several things I look for when I'm monitoring a show, and among them are not only whether the topic is good and the host knows what he or she is talking about, but whether it's entertaining, whether the host makes me want to listen to see what he or she will say about whatever comes up in the news or in life. Too many shows I hear sound generic. The good ones sound different. The great ones make me want to hear them again; they make me a fan. If you're doing standard-issue safe whatever's-on-the-front-page talk, I can find that any time, anywhere. I'm looking for personality; it's not just hearing someone's opinion on a topic, it's wanting to hear YOUR opinion, YOU, YOUR take, YOUR angle. THAT'S the star part. If someone picks up the L.A. Times, sees a big story, and thinks, "I wonder what (YOUR NAME HERE) will say about this one," you're where you need to be. And you can't get there by sounding like everyone else.
I think there are stars out there, and I think we have some undiscovered or underutilized stars-in-training lurking about, but that's where coaching comes in, and the industry is weak on... hey, that's another topic, and let's save it for the next letter, which will be coming to you in January, because we're done for 2007 here. All Access isn't done -- we're going to be there with the latest breaking news all through the holidays and right into the New Year, so keep coming to AllAccess.com for that, plus daily ratings information, job listings, and much more. Talk Topics, your show prep monstrosity, will be updated as usual through the middle of next week before I take a little holiday break, but don't be surprised if new material somehow pops up there anyway-- I get restless. (Oh, yeah, there's a ton of material there right now -- I'll skip the long list and just refer you there for topics to get you through even the toughest holiday-week no-callers everyone's-thinking-about-shopping scenario)
"The Letter" will return in the first week of January; in the meantime, have a great holiday, thank you for your support and encouragement, and remember, the best holiday gift is love. And anonymously paying someone's plumbing bills.
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