The Air Aces

The recent passing of an old friend Allison Harte from Grand Rapids brought up a lot of memories of working with her and an amazingly talented team at WLAV.

At WLAV the on-air team were (and still are) named 'Air Aces.'   It was sort of a tradition that reflected back on the 60s tradition of naming the air staff.  You had 'The Good Guys' - 'The Boss Jocks' and a number of other names.  I guess the thought was to brand the air staff and build them as a team.  I bet Air Aces started as a sarcastic response to this Top 40 marketing ploy by a station that prided itself in not being anything close to the top 40s of the day.   We'll top their Boss Jock hype - we'll be Air Aces - way cooler.

But, the reality was that being an Air Ace at WLAV was a true honor and much like being a skilled fighter pilot it also required that you be very talented and serious about your craft.  Over the years the Air Aces became way more than just voices between the songs.  They cut through and bonded with the audience in endless ways.  Some of them like Kevin Matthews and Rick Rumble cut through with amazing comedic moments.  Others like Aris Hampers brought an amazing wealth of music knowledge and understanding.   Aces like Tony Gates dug into the community and the music and built a loyal following.

Allison was was sort of the 'sister' to the whole team of Air Aces.  A daring and bold Air Ace herself that always put the listener first, brimming with energy, a genuine love of the music and a big heart for the community.   She was also authentic and honest with the audience.  Her real name was Prudence - not a great radio name so of course it was changed to Allison Harte.  But, she didn't hide her real name or the fact that Allison was made up.  She was active on the phones, always looking to jump out of the studio into the streets, and not scared to stand out or take chances behind the mic.

Being an Air Ace went beyond just a branding gimmick.  The real key was that many of the Air Aces understood this more as a goal of bonding with the listener, the audience and the community.  They honed their talents and built their on air presence to ace the task of building a bond with the people on the other side of the mic.

While many reading this never heard Allison on the air, but you can still learn a lot from her work.  Next time you look at your show think of the qualities that made her an Air Ace and work on mastering the craft and art of entertaining an audience with just your voice and words.  Yes these are pretty obvious qualities, but how often to we really find them in today's billboard/liner/positioning phrase break?  The true Air Ace took their opportunity to bond to entertaining heights way beyond.

Thanks Allison - RIP.

A little add on to this post

Another Air Ace - Aris Hampers - posted some audio of Allison on his sound cloud in case you want to catch her in action.  Now this is not her best work on the air - it's actually a bunch of breaks with the music edited out and the commercials mostly cut out.  You pretty much hear when the mic opens and when it closes.  In these breaks Allison is in the studio but Aris is on Remote doing live spots for a local music store and their holiday cd/record sale in 1987.  There is some pretty interesting banter between Allison and Aris - notice how they each have contrasting roles here in their characters.  They build a bite and friendly feud here that has wit, drama, fun, and a bit of an inside view of the station.  See if you can find some of the qualities above woven into these breaks.  

Getting the Staff Prepared Every Day

Formatic radio often ends up being very robotic.  We follow the same clocks day after day with the same 300 (or less) songs rotating around and read the same liners over and over.  

So what's to prepare for?  

Everyday is not the same for our audience and also every day is not the same for the station.  

These 2 points need to be at the center of every show every day.   

• What's important to the audience:  It might be the economy, Cramer was on The Daily Show, baseball started, the final 4, hockey playoffs or maybe the news that Metallica is coming to town.  It could also be that construction has started on the big freeway or any number of local issues that affect their lives.  

• What's important to the station: It could be very different from what's important to the audience.  The station may be having a big night to cap off the final 4 promotion at a local club.  You might be announcing that Harley giveaway for the Spring book.  The morning show may have pranked George Clooney.  

As you can see the 2 points are very different, but just as important when the air team hits the studio for their shows.  

Make sure they all know the 2 priorities and learn to build them into their shows.  It can make the difference from a station that just spinning the hits to one that is woven into their audience.  

Making a Syndicated Show Local

I think it's pretty obvious that the key to Radio's success and future lies in being Local and having strong ties to your local audience and community.   It's our BIG ADVANTAGE in the whole new media world that is very 'national and international' in its scope.  

We also see some big advantages in using Syndicated shows.  When you look at the debate in using a show like Bob and Tom in mornings the advantages usually outweigh everything.  Say it costs you 110K in market 120 to have the show.  If you tried to build a local show for 120K you would have to be very lucky to find 2 or 3 people who could even mount a very basic show for that price.  You wouldn't have the parade of comedians, stars, and the well timed humor of a veteran crew like Bob and Tom.  In many cases Bob and Tom outperform the rest of the station and add 20% or more to the overall shares and usually win (or come close) in 25-54s.  It takes a big local show to beat them.  

But, they can be beat with a local show.  A show that hits the streets, covers the local scene and preps with a vengeance can zip right past them.   Having worked on both sides of this street we've learned a few 'tricks':

• Working With A Syndicated Show:  No matter if it's B/T or Alice Cooper or any one of the other shows the key is making it a real part of the the station.  Don't just aim the satellite dish, program the digital studio and sit back.  Make the show as local as possible with tons of recycling, custom inserts in the show, special imaging (including lots cut by the show''s stars) in the breaks and make sure to use the show in as may promotions as you can.   Don't just give away a Harley - make it the Bob and Tom Harley and tie them in someway on the air.  Weave the show into the WHOLE day and on the flip side weave your station into their show as much as you possibly can.  
• Beating a Syndicated Show:  Make your show as local as possible and make it as great as possible.  Remember you are going up against great talent - average talent doesn't get syndicated.  Your team has to know the audience inside and out, know the community, and be super prepared every morning.  It takes lots of coaching, good talent in the room and a non stop effort in the streets.  You also need to package the show well, build a strong web interactive presence and make every show noteworthy/special.   

Yes they are simple steps, but so many times when look at the stations who don't win in either scenario they either thought that B/T would save the day all by themselves.   Or on the other side that just having a bit of local flavor would put their weak show on top.  

In the end it takes dedication and tons of hard work to make a show work today.  Especially in Mornings the field is often crowded.   And in today's tight belted world finding the resources to make a show into a winner is a challenge.   But, it can be done.  

Opportunities Ahead #2

Be Special: In our overcooked quest to be consistent and drill ourselves into the audience's brains, because ratings were mostly about un-aided recall, we've fallen into a very repetitive format drill.


--The breaks happen at the same calculated time every hour.


--We do 9 or 10 or 30 minutes of music every hour.


--The jock format is backsell, liner, billboard all the time - of course we open with the calls and positioning and the game is how many time can we drill it down without sounding way too obvious. Why listen - you know what they are going to say and we also nearly always know that a long SPOT set is next so let's just move on and ignore the jocks.


--Every hour is the same - you can almost smell the current tracks coming or the power 70s song in the mix.


--And it's the same day after day - week after week.


It's no wonder we can just 'hard drive' it and no one even notices.


Why does every hour and every day have to be the same?


If the new Guns and Roses is out today can't we break it up and throw in a few phones or play it a bit more than we would normally?


If it's Halloween can't we fire up some theme music around it, maybe drop in a 'haunted house' backdrop over the breaks, have the audience talk about their costumes and parties?


If AC/DC or even Seether is in town why not celebrate with some special music sets, maybe catch the band after the sound check or if you can't get that set just invite the audience to get fired up for the show on the air.


Nothing special today? Make it up - rewind back to the 90s for a 3 pack every hour and a little history of the era and maybe a few bands that we all remember but don't test in power anymore.


Yes, we all know the dangers of trying to spend a whole day with a one-hit wonder band or digging too deep into the music, but do we have to take that all the way to being so predictable and boring?


I bet if you could do a 'vulcan mind meld' with the audience you'd find that many of their complaints of being too repetitious and the same music 'over and over' are more directed at our formatics than they are at our playlist.


When we do research in Rock radio one of the highest testing features is nearly always Two For Tuesday. It's a day when the whole stations sounds different with 2 songs from every artist and one that we've done since the late 70s. We really don't know if it has killer numbers in the ratings with the diary system and so many filling it out 2 days later, but I bet when we start breaking out PPM numbers in markets where the feature runs you will see Tuesday is worth something.


The key is not to get too cute here or get too far from playing big artists and making sure the big hits are always close at hand.


It also doesn't always have to be music driven or filled with talk. You could use your imaging to have fun and entertain also. How about a 'quick movie clip' day dropping a few quick 10 sec movie audio - you could also have the audience guess and win a DVD or movie pass (movie Monday?).


Just remember that if you promote it for a few days and make it memorable on the air you don't need to do it for 5 years in the same repetitive manner to make it work.


Surprise them and you will entertain them. Be consistent to a fault and you will just be predictable and boring.


The problem we face in programming is that we've built this overly consistent and predictable system and now it's the norm and the rule. Our desire not to 'screw' it up and turn everything into a formula has closed more doors that it's opened. It's also produced an operation that is so easy for a computer to duplicate. Yes it keeps the meters humming on the transmitter, but does it make a warm spot in the audience's head? On top of that you don't need the annoying staff with their expenses, health care, and needs for a little extra every year on your back.

I the new world anyone with a stream can do the more music format and now you can also sort of do it on your Ipod, and let's not forget personalized streams like Slacker. Why does the audience really us? If you are just hitting F10 on Selector and firing the log off to the log interface why should we listen?


For many stations it may be too late as the budgets have already hit the wall and digging out the resources to find the time and effort to make a station that really entertains could be too big a mountain to climb. But, the opportunity to build a truly special station in your market has never been more open than it is today. The good news is that we still have a strong reach and considerable cumes to work with. Let's use them before they dry up.


Mix it up, make it special and make sure they know about it.

Opportunities Ahead #1

Be Local: No doubt the biggest opportunity for radio is that it's LOCAL. While most of the new media, cable networks, broadcast networks and nearly all the web is national or even world wide most of the audience's world lies in their local area. We all know this, but in the end we do little to capitalize on it.

We used to at least cover the local news, but now that is even in the backseat or not on the air at all for many stations. Much of our programming has become networked through syndication and our music playlists are tailored to national trends. It's resulted in one of the biggest complaints we get about terrestrial radio - it's the same everywhere.

Even if you have syndicated personalities like Bob and Tom you can work to make them at least seem local. Working them into your local segments through production, making them part of your promotions and imaging with a hometown spin can help. But, you have to back up that morning show with strong local personalities in the other dayparts.

You also have to give your local talent the room and coaching to build a local presence. If all they do is read the positioning, backsell a song, ramble through a liner and billboard you might as well voice track it from another market.

The key to making it happen is in designing the station to have room for the talent shine. Then you have to back it up with careful coaching and making sure they are well prepared for every opportunity. They also have to build themselves into the community both on and off air.

The stations I work with that do the best job in building their personalities into local fixtures put a lot of effort into working with the talent. Most of the PDs meet nearly daily with every jock and take 15 minutes to see what they are building into their shows. The staff knows what is the most important thing in the audience's world and also what is the most important thing going on at the station that day. These are the basic building blocks to making their show pop.

Spending 45 minutes with the other dayparts (outside of mornings) most days is a simple task and one that clearly pays off.

You also have lots of avenues to be local in your imaging and promotions. How many times do we jump on an AC/DC concert in another market and forget to look for ways to make it local? While the prize may be in Chicago why can't there be a local angle to doing it in Madison?

We also have to make sure we are present at as many local events as possible. Entertaining the local audience in our backyard has to be a top priority.

Being local is really central to all the next 3 or 4 opportunities we'll cover in this series, that's why it's FIRST ON THE LIST. Make it your top priority and you will have the foundation for a new world for radio as the biggest and perhaps the last local media in your community.

The Air Staff Critique

Sitting down with the air staff one on one with a trusty air check is probably not on the top of most PDs punch list most days. Over the years it's become almost a forgotten PD art. With voice tracking, digital/computer studios, and more and more formatic rules I bet most of the talent on the air has had very few of these meetings in the last few years.

In fact I've run into studios where you can't even run an air check, unless you tape the whole show off air. These are important meetings and you probably should be meeting on on one at least twice a month with everyone.

So where do we start? Just cue up the breaks and hit play?

Really the better meeting comes when the PD has taken a half hour or so and reviewed a show before the talent arrives. Although I usually review a whole station over a number of dayparts one of the tricks I use is recording the station's stream and going back with a generic wave editor and running through a couple of hours of breaks. You can get stream recorders from a bunch of on-line download sites (www.topdownloads.net - Absolute Sound Recorder 3 - is one of many shareware programs you can use).

The keys to look for in most presentations:

1. Is the talent COMFORTABLE on the air?
2. Are they talking TO the audience or announcing over them?
3. Do they know WHO the audience is?
4. Are they TOPICAL to the target audience?
5. Are they PREPARED?
6. Are they EXECUTING the basics - call letters, billboards, liners, and most important interfacing with the music.

The key is picking one of these topics for each session and focusing on just that area.

To get the talent into it - try brainstorming instead of preaching to them. Get them involved in answering these questions and let their ideas and thoughts jump out. If you do you will make a lot more progress with each session.

Selling THE MUSIC

One of the biggest complaints on radio that we constantly see in focus groups, listener panels, and just talking with the audience in passing is 'it's the same list of songs over and over.' We've all heard it and for the most part just thrown up our hands over this BIG issue with the audience.

We've all done the math and know that the minute we expand the playlist the ratings fall off as the audience can't keep up with the depth of the playlist. If we don't play the top testing current hits 20 or 30 times a week the audience's time spent with the station won't allow them to hear them enough to become familiar. The ratings consistently show that the bigger the list the harder it is to attract large enough cume to deliver a competitive share.

It's all translated by the audience as tight corporate playlists that don't challenge them or match what they can now carry around on any MP3 player.

We've faced this before. Many of you may not have been around at the time. Back in the early 70s top 40 radio ruled the world and was mostly on AM. As FM was building one of the cornerstones was the 'progressive rock' and early AOR formats.

Most of the AM - Top 40 stations had playlists of around 100 songs. At some the top song of the week was played every hour at the top of the hour. It truly was the same songs over and over. The top 40 DJs talked over the music with hyped up voices, on air gimmicks and a bunch of one liner jokes in some cases.

The complaints we heard as FM was launching on radio programming are not much different than what we hear today. As rock radio planted it's seed there were 4 rules:

• The DJs pick the music
• No talking over the songs
• No Hyped up voices - be laid back and just talk to the audience
• Blend the music together with segues and fewer interruptions in the hour.

While the FM rock audience didn't seem that big at first it grew as more and more got FM radios and by 1980 FM Rock radio had evolved to race past most of those top 40 stations and built a bond with the boomer audience. Yes we did build a controlled library with card systems and did play the hot current songs in a rotation over the day. But, the perception that the DJs picked the songs was still central to the format.

As music scheduling systems came about the jocks were taken out of the music selection process and pretty soon they were more used to sell liners, billboards, and maybe toss in a little audience interaction on the phones.

What would happen if we brought the air staff back into the music selection process now?

We've all watched the launch of the "Jack" formats and their positioning statement - Playing Whatever We Want (or something close). Often the first adaptors for the Jack stations come from an audience that remembers the day when the jocks picked the songs. We often found in the early research that it was Classic Rock and Rock listeners that jumped on the Jack stations and cited the positioning as a key reason to try the station. Of course most of them didn't stick around when they played ABBA and other train wrecks trying to prove their point. Also not having jocks on the Jack formats made you wonder - who is the WE in playing Whatever WE Want.

Is there a way to get the air staff more into the music? We all know there is and it's time to start experimenting. We all know that the listening 'math' won't allow a jock free for all, but just going around with the air staff sounding clueless and totally uninvolved in the music isn't working either. There's a middle ground here that need some exploration.

It's About The AUDIENCE

Ever been listening to the radio and heard the jock talk all about their world. "They were off on a vacation and are a little off tonight since they are jet lagged." "They have a dog that just wants to go out every 2 hours." Do you really care????

Probably not, but we hear these kind of breaks all the time. As if exposing little details of someones personal life is so important or entertaining to the audience that they will hang around the break, through the commercials and perhaps some songs they don't like just to hear all about someones little personal issues?

While great personalities can get away with a few tid-bits about themselves as antidotes in a bit or setting we all hear moments where the interpretation of 'being a personality' means revealing more about your personal life. As if that's entertainment? It might be if you are such a captivating person or star that your every move was entertaining. Sorry, but it's probably not as entertaining to the listener as you may think.

Remember to the listener it's about THEM - not you. If your experience or story can somehow entertain them or be funny it's worth it. If not it's just more dribble in a world filled with dribble.

Yes, you are important and you have the mic but the audience is who you have to entertain. The people on the air who become personalities look first at the audience and then relate to them. Have you looked first at the audience???? Ask that first.

Handling Sex With Class

I always marvel at David Letterman's show and how well he handles guests, topics and even controversy - and it's also a very funny and entertaining show. Often when meeting with morning shows examples pop up from Letterman's show that really help the talent see how to entertain the audience.

I was watching recently and Dave had on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover model. Dave managed to turn the segment into a pretty sexy moment on the show, but he didn't even get close to being crude, un classy or to risque for the mass audience. Take a look at the segment that covers a lot of topics that we often hear (or heard) on shows like Stern but watch how Dave manages the territory:

Instead of making it shocking - he makes it funny yet still titillating.




Also wanted to pass on a piece from Jaye Albright's excellent Breakfast Blog. Jaye consults mostly country stations and had a great piece on a recent Deloitte and Touche study on the media usage from the 4 big generations. It's clearly worth the read -

Entertaining The Audience

Making your radio station shine and deliver bigger audience's in today's world means more than having 'the 400 best songs from the 80s, 90s with 51 minutes of back to back music every hour.'

I can get that on my I pod, a billion Internet stations, and many other sources.

While traditional radio may offer it for 'free' (not counting the commercials) it's not enough to earn a P1 in today's media landscape.


We have to go out and actively ENTERTAIN the audience. All it takes is 3 basic ingredients to pull it off:

Ideas - They don't have to all be amazing - ground breaking - knock you off your feet ideas. But, you have to have a reasonable collection of on-air features, local events, audience participation vehicles, web attractions, and even sales tie ins.

Talent - A creative approach to the ideas. Sometimes that means the air staff executing it on air, other times it means producing it, and other times it comes from the creative juices in the promotion department. Brainstorm with your team every week and if you don't have a big team (maybe no team at all) collect some people from sales, production, or even the other stations in the cluster.

Organization - Having a promotion calendar is a start, but it's just scratching the surface. You need a much bigger view than planning a Valentines Day Date night at a bar. You need to look at everything from the music to the TV shows to the web sites to the community and more. If it's on the audience's radar you need to take a look at how to team up with it and even if it isn't you may want to work with it and put it on their radar. There are also lots of sales tie in oppotrunites with lots of the events and ideas, but you have to give the sales team time to circulate the idea, make sure to have your calendar set up months in advance for the ideas that have sales potential.

We have a lot going on right now with elections on the way, winter weather in may cities, big football weekends/games ahead, spring hopefully on the way, TV shows, movies, and lots of music news/releases to get involved with right now. What are your plans for St. Pats Day, Cinco de Mayo, the first day of Spring?

If you don't have anything going on this week MAKE SOMETHING UP. Maybe it's Pet Picture Day where everyone posts pics of their pets, the coolest leather - where people post their leather jackets on your site - or maybe a Commando Friday (the hell with casual days - let's go Commando). None of these ideas takes money but all of them could be entertaining with a little production and air staff magic. Integrate your web site, use the audience on the phone, - give the listeners something to talk about and have some fun with.

Often when we work on the entertainment factor with stations the issue of limited staff and budget comes up, often putting out the fire. It needn't be that way - you can do a lot with a small team, a simple idea, and a little radio magic.

The key is filling you your dance card with lots of ideas and making every day or week special. Let's go out and have some fun and entertain. If you're just pressing F10 on Selector and thinking the station is fine. Quit worrying about what you don't have and work with what you DO have.

Role Development

The 'key ingredient' for any jock/personality is to develop a 'role' with the audience. To visualize it take a look at sit coms where we have actors usually playing characters. Sinefeld was the 'observer with a unique angle' and used that platform to build a character that took funny views of the things in everyday life. Ray Romano built his show around a husband/wife/family relationship where he was mostly the 'unfortunate' one that couldn't quite get it while being lovable. Charlie Sheen plays the hip playboy in Two and Half Men living with an opposite nerdy brother and a little kid who gets more of his playboy lifestyle than we expect.

All of these people are actors and do a great job of playing their roles and developing their characters. How many of your air staff members approach their daily shows with an eye/ear on role development and realize that they are creating a character? I bet most of them would tell you they are seeking to 'be themselves' on the air.

So who wants to listen to a guy who lives in a sound proof room? We have to create and develop roles that the audience can understand in the time they have to listen. When Ray Romano creates his character he only has 20 minutes to develop the story and build his character. So we don't get a ton of insight - mostly that he's into having sex with his wife but she's a bit cool on it, his parents live across the street and are a pain in a rear, and his brother is mostly a loser. It's pretty simple stuff to build a show on and with only 20 minutes that's about all we can expect.

In Morning shows you have a whole different game to play with multiple personalities and a lot more time to develop them as we typically talk more. But, for years we've focused a lot on that daypart - it's time to work on the rest of the day and I bet most stations haven't spent the time and effort to coach and develop roles the rest of the day.

The lesson here is keep it pretty simple and basic and make sure to develop it well enough to cut through. Here's some roles that we often hear somewhat developed in our non-morning show air staffs that you might consider:

In Touch Jock: They know what's going on in the world on a general platform. They follow TV, Movies, Sports, Music, Personality, and the Community and work in the headlines almost every day.

Music Expert: Focused on the music and they know it inside and out. They offer some critiques, inside info on tours and new releases. Great on the concert scene also.

Everyday Joes: Almost as if you plucked someone out of the audience and put them on the air. They follow everything the audience does and relate to it in a way that sounds natural. This is usually not the deep voiced or formal sounding jock.

Wild Ones: It seems like they party all the time and are everywhere there's something happening in the market. Every event they hit is an adventure with drama, zany moments, and edgy actions.

Cool Ones: Rather laid back with a 'just the facts' attitude. This one is pretty hard to pull off and make an impression with. You can do it on screen with looks a lot easier than on the radio where we can't use those tools.

Rule Book: We hear this character a lot, but it usually doesn't make any impression on the audience. They execute the backsell, liner, billboard deal well with a smooth delivery and everything is well positioned, but it's usually about as entertaining as listening to auto phone answer systems.

The Mayor: Sooo plugged into the community. If there's 3 people at an event they are one of them. They have touched so many people personally they get known. How many times have you seen a jock who doesn't sound that great on the air, but seems to have huge numbers and a big following. Chances are they are The Mayor - they ran for the office and never quit once they got the job.

There are a lot more roles out there. If you're on the air or if you're coaching the air staff make sure to take some time and look closely at Role Development in every coaching session. If you want to build real personalities instead of just some taking heads this is THE KEY to doing it.

Building Your Air Talent Team

No doubt the last 10 years of content management in Radio has not helped develop much on the talent side of the ledger. As an industry we've learned to operate on a tight budget, multi-task with many PDs and talent team players handling multiple roles and many of the having very little to do with serving the audience.

We've also seen PDs crawl behind the computer screens dealing with the 'machine' that seems to run the programming. Listening in hotel rooms and on-line you can see it all the time - talent just rolling along on the air, talking to themselves (or about themselves), not paying attention to the audience and really not listening to their shows. I've even seen studios where there is no aircheck system - digital or even a boombox cassette.

As you think about coaching the talent in your halls here's a couple of tips I've found useful:

• Avoid the Critique - Looking back at all the mistakes or blown breaks and ranting while the talent squirms in the chair won't improve their game. It already went over the transmitter. Look ahead at show prep, their comfort level in the studio, their understanding of the audience and how confident they are behind the mic. If you can take a positive approach to finding ways to improve those areas you will end up with better shows. Just preaching - DON'T - only gets them uncomfortable, under confident and un-entertaining.


• Listen - Not just to their shows, but also to them. What are their struggles? You have to make things work in the studio and even though the engineering list with the bad pots, faulty phone system or software issues may seem like nit-picking it does make the job harder.


• Don't scare them - The more they dread the 'meeting' with you the less productive it will be. You can show your leadership and authority with the time sheets, showing up on time, and other 'hallway' areas. But when it comes to working on their show if they fear you your effectiveness in coaching will go down a ton. What you really want is their trust and respect - not their fear.
  

Lastly make sure you have a plan for each of the people you work with. For some it's role development, others it's getting comfortable on the air, some need to prep better, others may be challenged in understanding the target audience. Know what you need to work on before you open the tool box.

It takes time to work with the talent and the learning curve can be a tough one. It might even be an area where you want or need a coach to coach the coach.

PPM or Diary - It's Time to Charge Up The Audience

#5 in our series on the realities of PPM and the diary wraps up the week with an overview that applies to both data collection systems.

No matter which system you are facing there is one constant that stands out - Charge up your audience. To get them to pay attention to your station and either recall it in the diary or to tune in more with the trusty PPM attached to their belts, or in their purse, you have to motivate them.

While the little nuances of the music mix, contests, positioning, clock placement and all the other little rules we've applied to programming may be important you have to 'move the meter.' In a world with new media innovations popping up nearly every week radio still has the resources to win by a mile. No media is more convenient, omni present and universally used as radio. PPM shows it's reach is a lot wider and stronger than we had thought from decades of diary studies. In some cases it's triple when we look at PPM cume.

The audience also listens to more stations to more stations - around 50% more than we saw in diary data. The reality of these numbers is they don't listen to all these stations as much as the one on the top of their list which drives down the TSL. Imagine you grew up an only child, mom and dad had all the time just for you - move over to a family with 5 kids and obviously mon and dad can't be at every ball game.

The way to win in either environment is to charge up your audience. We need to start making an impact with them and just lining up the most obvious good testing songs over and over, hard drived with a few cute sweepers in between making unbelievable claims probably isn't going to do it. They can do that, without the cute sweepers, on an Ipod.

Charging up your personalities, creating a real community social network with your P1 and P2 audience, looking for music that's exciting, fresh and surprising to your target audience, and being completely plugged in with the lifestyle of your target audience are the keys to winning. It takes a plan, imagination, a big effort, and talent. It also takes people to make it happen, most of the assets mentioned here don't come from a keyboard and an Internet connection.

As you get rolling into the Fall book step back for a few minutes and take a look - have you charged up your audience? We are leaning a lot from PPM that is telling us what actually happens on the other side of the speakers, not just what the audience recalls in a diary world. It is showing us that some of the realities from the diaries we thought were true about the audience are false.

PPM is also showing us that the diary is missing a lot of what is going on with the listener. While those in the diary world will have to live with the shortfalls. The hassle of changing the sample every week in a world where the database we use for building the sample is shrinking quickly from cell phones and non-participation. The audience is also hassled by the diary, writing things down in today's world in a log seams like commuting in a horse and buggy.

In the end it comes back to THE PRODUCT. Be compelling, exciting and entertaining - charge it up and it doesn't matter if it's meters or diaries you are a lot more likely to WIN. Get out from behind the computer and tweaking selector and focus on what really charges up the audience.

Don't Be Yourself - Be THE AUDIENCE!

How many times have you flipped on the radio and caught the personalities chatting all about THEIR world. What a pain it is when the coffee pot is dirty, the printer is out of ink, Bill doesn't flush, or how they spent their time this weekend hanging out backstage with the stars being pampered. Often you have to wonder if the audience cares at all about the every hassle or activity your personalities are experiencing.

One of the things we will be able to see in analyzing PPM data analysis is that the audience reaction to self indulgence may be even worse than all of us imagined. By tracking listener tune out on the minute by minute data and comparing it to what happened on the air we'll be able to see graphically how damaging these moments are. While we still have to have more time with PPM data to really pull out this kind of analysis we all know in the 'common sense' sector of our brains that it's likely to show up as a key element in tune out. And in a PPM world tune out is directly reflected in the numbers - not just forgotten in a recall game.

While in the studio - protected from the audience by soundproof walls, double pane glass, a transmitter, stl, processing, and a really tall tower it's easy with all the flashing control sliders and computer screens to think that you are the center of the universe.

If that's the thought swirling around your studio its time for a big de-briefing. It might be time to sit down with your air personalities and make sure they know the golden rule - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE AUDIENCE. What are they thinking about, what are they laughing at, and what do they want to know more about? Make that the priority in each break and you will be a star - forget about it and you are just another self centered person behind a mic with some headphones on that thinks they are a big star.

Listen to your breaks all day long - this can easily go on well after the Morning Show has left the studio. Is the content all about ME or is it about the AUDIENCE? While a little of the 'ME' sprinkled in to relate to the AUDIENCE is fine - just remember to keep it in moderation, on topic and planed out. If you just start rambling pretty soon you will forget about the audience and it will all be about you. As you prep for a show look at what your target audience is reading about, following on the web, watching on TV, watching on DVD, going to see at the movies, music they are into, and what news or gossip is in the air today. Make sure your breaks center on those areas and not too much on your personal world.