WE DIDN'T TALK ABOUT THE MUSIC

In my position, I get to listen to and talk with a lot of people in and around the broadcast industry.

This past weekend was exceptionally gratifying. It was the Nevada Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame Gala.  The Lifetime Achievement Awards for Southern Nevada went to Sherry Swensk for television and Chet Buchanan from 98.5 KLUC for radio.

Now, the only bad thing I can say about Sherry is that we played media-league softball against her Channel 8 team and lost a few times.  Okay, we won more than we lost—but we always had a great time!

Several other people were inducted into the Nevada Broadcasters Hall of Fame, including John Moug, Tim "Rayne" Rainey and Bojo Ackah. What made the night especially meaningful to me was that I had hired all of those guys when I was at CBS/Las Vegas.  I know JB King, who was there and was my programming partner for years, felt the same way. When I left the CBS group to become a format VP at Cumulus, JB continued to nurture what we'd planted.  

Shout out to Other fellow fun seekers, including J-Love, Mojoe Roberts, Phil "Dangerboy" Maiorano, Joyce “Juicy” Balaoro, Chuck Field, Ken Benson, Jeff Conwell, Gus Pohrman-Swanson, and Casey McCabe, who all helped make it a great night.

But something happened that really stuck with me. Listeners and community organizations actually attended the gala because of their connection to these personalities.

Think about that.  How much do you have to matter to your audience for them to come and watch you receive an award? 

How fulfilling is it to return to a city you've been away from for years and have people recognize you, remember you and still be excited to talk with you? How exciting for those that still live and work here, to be shown the love and recognition you spend your career building?   THAT is what we're missing.

As our old KLUC crew talked that night, something became obvious. We didn't spend much time talking about which songs were Powers. We didn't talk about rotations. We didn't reminisce about whether a record should have gone from 52 spins to 85.

What we did talk about was Toy Drive, Bieber Bandit, Party Patrol, The Party Cruise, Hi-Lo to Mexico, etc.

We talked about having listeners play blackjack with *NSYNC.  We talked about playing HORSE on a pop-up basketball hoop with Imagine Dragons.  We talked about the things that made being a listener fun.

Those were experiences. Those created lifelong stories.  Those were memories we cherished and shared with our listeners. And, importantly, they started with the audience.

Create something people love first. Figure out how to monetize it second.

Somewhere along the way, much of radio flipped that equation.

YOU CAN'T WIN WITH ONE PITCH

I get tired of hearing that Gen Z and younger Millennials don't listen to radio.

But there's an uncomfortable truth buried inside that criticism. Maybe the problem isn't that radio can't connect with younger audiences. Maybe we haven't given them enough reasons to care.

Great brands remind me of great pitchers in baseball.  You can have an amazing fastball. Maybe you can blow it past everyone the first time through the lineup.  Eventually, though, hitters adjust.  

They've seen it. They know what's coming. They catch up.

For radio, music became our fastball. And it's still incredibly important. But somewhere along the way, we started acting like having the right songs in the right order was enough to create an emotional relationship with an audience.  It isn't.  Great stations—and great brands—need more pitches.

ENTERTAINMENT

Give me personalities who make me laugh, think, react or simply feel better about my day.  Create contests and promotions people actually remember.  Give listeners experiences they couldn't have created themselves.  Give them stories they'll tell their friends.

INFORMATION

Be useful. That doesn't mean every station needs to become a news station.  It means knowing what's happening in your listeners' world.  Lifestyle information. Local events. Breaking news. Weather emergencies. Traffic. Community issues. When something happens, your audience should know you're there.

COMMUNITY

Actually live in the community you claim to serve.  Sometimes that's something small, like helping a kid battling cancer fulfill a wish to be on the radio.  Sometimes it's living on scaffolding for 12 days in December collecting toys, bikes and money so kids who otherwise might not have much of a holiday have something under the tree. Both matter.  Because community isn't a liner. It's something you do.

AUTHENTICITY

This may be more important today than ever.  Be who you say you are. Your audience has access to too much information today to maintain some carefully manufactured persona forever. Be honest. Be human. And when you're wrong, own it.  Credibility takes years to build and seconds to destroy.

THEATER OF THE MIND STILL WORKS

One of my favorite memories was the KLUC Summer Beach House.

We spent months collecting audio from artists and celebrities, all pretending they were hanging out at our exclusive summer beach house.  Pitbull was grilling burgers. Eminem was hanging out in the Jacuzzi. Rihanna was chilling on the deck.  There was only one little problem.  There was no beach house.

But we created an entire world around it, and listeners were begging us to tell them where it was. That's theater of the mind.

We even opened the first-ever UNDERGROUND THEME PARK IN THE DESERT on April Fools' Day.  Again—none of this happened because one person had an idea.  It took a team.  People had to conduct interviews. Talent had to sell the story on the air.  Producers had to build the audio. Someone had to schedule the pieces. Promotions had to extend the idea into the streets. Sales had to find ways to monetize it without destroying what made it fun. Everyone owned a piece of the puzzle. And when everybody cared about their piece, we created magic.

Here's the crazy part: Imagine what we could do with those ideas today. Social media. Video. TikTok. Instagram. YouTube. Streaming. Podcasts. Texting. Push notifications. The Summer Beach House wouldn't just live inside the radio anymore. We could let listeners see inside the world we were creating. The technology didn't kill our ability to create theater of the mind. It gave us a bigger theater.

SO WHY AREN'T WE DOING MORE OF IT?

Because this kind of radio takes people.  It takes talent doing interviews. It takes producers creating audio. It takes promotion people developing ideas. It takes programmers building the story.  It takes salespeople who understand that the best sponsorship opportunities often begin with creating something audiences actually want—not figuring out what inventory still needs to be sold this month.

Creativity isn't always efficient. Neither is building a relationship. But relationships are exactly what we're asking listeners to have with our brands.  For years, much of radio focused heavily on serving the audiences it already had while younger Millennials and Gen Z built relationships somewhere else.

Now Millennials are firmly inside the 25–54 demographic, and older Gen Z listeners are entering it.

We're suddenly asking: How do we get them back?  Maybe that's the wrong question.

Maybe the better question is: What are we giving them that's worth coming to?

Music is everywhere. What they can't get everywhere is your people. Your experiences. Your community. Your creativity. Your personality. Your local connection.  Your ability to make them feel like they're part of something.

That's what I was reminded of at the Hall of Fame Gala.  Years later, nobody was standing around talking about what songs were in Power.

We were talking about what we did. What we created. Who we helped. How much we laughed. And the listeners who showed up that night reminded me of something else: They remembered, too.

So maybe the question for everyone running a radio station—or any brand—is pretty simple: Twenty years from now, what will your audience remember about you?

And more importantly...What are you doing today that's worth remembering?

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