SCOTT SHANNON'S FOCUS KEYS

When I speak of “focus keys,” I’m talking about making sure you keep the important things important.

Example:

One day when I was programming in Nashville, I was driving home from the station and thinking, “Man, I had a great day! I had a lot of fun, did an interview with the paper, went to lunch with a couple of record guys, and took some phone calls from people telling me how great I am.”

And then I realized something: I didn’t really do that much.

In fact, I didn’t accomplish a damn thing that day!

There’s only a couple of things about your job that are really important during any given week. Make sure those important things stay important.

Concentrate on the critical inch of your business.

Take all the power you have — your problem-solving abilities, your concentration — and focus on something that will make your station better.

You can do it. But first you need to figure out and isolate what’s important.

One station I consulted drove me crazy because it’s in a market where there’s not a lot of good morning shows. I told the PD, “Your morning show has a lot of potential and talent, but it needs nurturing and guidance. Your mission is to fix and maximize the morning show.”

After a couple of months I noticed the show hadn’t gotten any better, so I called him and said, “Are you spending enough time on that morning show?”

He said, “Yeah, I’ve got a concept sheet.”

I said, “All I want you to do is get your ass out of bed in the morning and go sit with them.”

“Well, that’s not my job.”

"No? What the hell is your job??"

He wasn’t focusing on the important things. I said, “You’ve got to make this morning show better. These guys have potential.”

“But I’ve never worked with a morning guy.”

“Well, now’s a good time to start!”

I’m sad to report he never did figure it out.

I’m not saying everybody’s got to sit with their morning show. Maybe not all morning shows are crucial to the success of the station. For this radio station it was important to maximize the morning show, and it wasn’t happening.

The critical inch on your station may not be the morning show.

It may be the music.

It may be marketing.

It may be something else.

But figure out what’s important, and allocate your time in such a way that the important thing gets a lot of your attention.

You need to spend time figuring out what’s important.

Excerpted from Living Your Dreams/Programming To Win by Scott Shannon.

© by Dan O'Day All Rights Reserved

HOW TO WIN THE RADIO RATINGS GAME: Provide The Most Compelling Context

The following is excerpted from CONTEXTUAL PROGRAMMING: The Only Way To Win In A Competitive Market.

Unhappy vs. Not Unhappy

Whenever your Internet experience is problem-free — your computer doesn’t crash, your phone line or DSL or cable or wireless connection is working, and your software works properly — are you conscious of feeling really, really happy about the fact that you’re able to go online?

No?

How do you feel when your Internet connection doesn’t work? When your computer keeps freezing up? When — the ultimate modern crisis — you can’t access your e-mail??

Upset? Frustrated? Depressed?

In our normal state, we’re not happy; we’re just not unhappy.

For much of our daily lives, we find ourselves in one of two states: Unhappy....or Not Unhappy.

What pushes us from “Not Unhappy” to “Unhappy” most often is chaos.

The dictionary definition of “chaos” is:

“The confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms.”

Humans attempt to overcome chaos by imposing some semblance of order upon it. And Radio helps by providing listeners with a context to the events in their lives.

What Does It Actually Mean, Anyway?

“Context” comes from the Latin word, “contexere”: “To weave together.”

Do you ever sing along with the radio or with a music CD or mp3 player? If so, do ever you find yourself singing in falsetto to match the vocals of the song?

Yes? Why? You could sing it in your own register, in the correct key...Just an octave or two lower.

You sing in falsetto to maximize the synchronicity of context: to weave the sound of your voice with the sounds coming out of your radio or CD player or mp3 player.

Radio weaves together the strands of listeners’ daily lives into a context that helps fend off the chaos.

Listeners don’t ask Radio to put them in a state of Happiness. They turn to Radio in the hopes that it will help take them out or perhaps keep them out of a state of Unhappiness.

How’s this for a corny (yet, for a successful radio station, honest) slogan?

“Radio helps people feel they’re tuned in to life.”

Our jobs as radio people: To provide meaningful contexts for our listeners' lives.

"Even for a pop music station, Dan?"

Do you know what you call a radio station that provides music with no context?

An iPod.

Here is where you can read the entire CONTEXTUAL PROGRAMMING.

YOUR RADIO STATION’S MOST IMPORTANT ASSET

(Excerpted from Randy Michaels' FUNDAMENTALS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING.

There is a hierarchy of importance in any radio station.

What is most important about your radio station?

The Product?

No.

Bottom Line?

No. The most important thing is your signal.

If they can’t hear you, it doesn’t matter.

You can put together the greatest radio station anyone has ever conceived, but if people can’t hear it then it isn’t worth it.

The first thing you do when you program a radio station is look at who you cover, where the signal is strong.

The signal, by the way, isn’t that circle they have on the map in the Sales Department. “Signal” is a very complex thing.

How much signal does it take for the average radio to work? There’s no good answer to that.

In the absence of any other strong signals, .5 millivolts may be killer on FM.

But if you have a very strong transmitter next door, you can have what’s called desense. Cheap radios have their internal amplifiers all turned down by a nearby strong signal. A car radio hears it while a clock radio doesn’t and a Walkman doesn’t.

You have signals that cause intermodulation, which spoils the reception of another signal. As you think about your programming, you should know a lot about your signal.

There are neighborhoods where it’s good and neighborhoods where it’s bad. Radios where it’s good, radios where it’s bad.

When I go to a market for the first time, I drive around with a dozen different radios. I go through office buildings, I listen in different neighborhoods on different kinds of radios and really try to understand the signal.

The signal is first & foremost; that’s your Distribution. Procter & Gamble knows you can’t buy Tide if you can’t find it on the shelf. It’s all about Distribution.

If you don’t have the best signal in the market, doing too well can be a problem. Because if you do really well on a secondary signal, somebody with a great signal can take your position just because they’re easier to find on the dial. There are dozens of examples of this.

Signal is the most important thing. If they can’t hear you, it’s a problem.

When I was building Jacor and later Clear Channel, I started with transmitter power. I didn’t care if the format was Religion or Polka or whatever. Just give me the biggest transmitter. WLW/Cincinnati was the first radio station I was a part of buying, and it was bankrupt. But I wanted the 50,000-watt transmitter.

It all starts with the signal

Here is where you can read the entire FUNDAMENTALS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING, and here's where you can hear it.