3-12-2014
Country music radio has had good reason to celebrate the success of Bobby Bones. That a former pop/rock jock could make the transition to Country is a phenomenon unto itself. I suspect there are elements in the business that are still shocked about how someone could be so successful without the expected, ?necessary? pedigrees, and the traditional ?God, guns and a git-tar" presuppositions that are rife across the genre.
In a recent article published in Radio Ink, Bobby is held up as an example of someone who can still make it in this business despite the crippling environments that are pervasive in most music radio outlets. I would argue that, while exciting, the success of Bobby Bones, or more accurately, the Bobby Bones Show has many contributing factors which will be very difficult to copy.
Let?s be clear by stating up front that the show?s success is a stand-alone exception and not a model that can be easily replicated. I repeat the obvious here only in order to lead to some less than obvious elements of the show. Most importantly, I would ask management to consider the impact of a show like Bobby?s on an audience. More specifically, this is an invitation to consider the impact on a single listener.
Like any terrific band, the half-dozen regular players on the show have been together long enough to form personal bonds and friendships. The ?band? is well rehearsed and tight, tight, tight. Plus, being based out of Nashville, the show is drawing the best performers in country music. Further, as the show provides a welcoming environment to the artists, most are eager to participate ? multiple times.
Other station owners can only salivate and drool over the total package that is headlined by Bobby Bones. And they can just forget about getting the ?gets? that the show will continue to be getting. The stars of country music are, as ?gets? go, the best ?gets? of all. Throwing them into the same room as six other, supportive professionals can make for some mighty fine radio.
Given this stellar roundup of talents, what, one might wonder, is the experience of audience members? The upcoming explanation, by the way, is neither obvious nor is it a topic of conversation or concern anywhere within the business. The explanation is, in fact, a destruction and total discount of radio?s holy dogma of the ?one-to-one? phenomenon.
Now, I have lost track of the number of times I have heard it myself or had it reported by other performers how a member of the audience will approach and say something along the lines of, ?When I listen to you on the radio, I can tell you are talking directly to me.? Even before I could articulate an explanation, I found these reports to be eerily creepy and disturbing. Yet, too many broadcasters cling to these submissions as treasured reports and as evidence that they are doing something right ? equally disturbing.
The psychology industry has their DSM-V (the fifth edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). This is a massive list of all the ways we can be screwed up and which will require immediate, long-term, expensive, and only professionally supplied therapeutic interventions. The belief that a disembodied disc jockey is speaking exclusively to them would qualify that person as a prime candidate for savage and immediate therapeutic attention. The technical term for someone who insists that the radio performer is talking directly to them is: ?Nuts.? Fostering and encouraging these kinds of reports from audience members on the part of the radio biz could be considered a form of ?aiding and abetting.?
Anyway, listeners to Bobby Bones and his gang are unlikely to come to such disconcerting conclusions. Why? Because Bobby and his colleagues are, for the most part, talking to each other and their guests! The audience members are just listening in. They are, essentially, audio voyeurs. They are not being contacted directly. They are eavesdropping ? overhearing a house party. The term that describes this audience behavior is ?vicarious association.?
This is the case for just about any talent-heavy morning show ? a group of on-air folks who are yakking back and forth to each other in the hope that audiences will also find the chats, conversation, and bits performed for each other to be appealing. It is these situations where ?vicarious association? rules and radio crashes through the clutter with astounding and gratifying effectiveness.
However, because of the traditional and universally accepted, linguistic brick wall we have constructed for all the other day parts, that?s where it stops. Single, on-air presenters are given no other choice but to go after audience members ? as individuals. That, after all, is an exact description of the ?one-to-one? mandate that has been forced on radio performers for, like, forever! Not only is it a poor and ineffective strategy, it fosters the need for more therapeutic treatment. I say, ?Let the psychology industry get its own clients!?
Radio folk have yet to be trained in the alternate strategies that are available ? strategies and methodologies that will allow them to be more effective and more appealing while retaining their own credibility and allowing for audience members to continue enjoying a form of vicarious association. That is so much more satisfying than being drilled at as the only listener.
So, congratulations to Bobby and to the squad of pros working with him. Not only are they exceptional performers, they are ? even inadvertently and (possibly) without conscious intent ? exploiting the intrinsic, vicariously associated elements that come with the territory when performing on the radio.
Most important, though, is how all these elements can impact the poor, forlorn folks who are individually hung out on the air during the rest of the broadcast day. With some knowledge and practice, they too can participate ? as ?communicators? ? as efficiently as any member of a larger, Big Time morning show.
Ronald T. Robinson has been involved in Canadian Radio since the '60s as a performer, writer and coach and has trained and certified as a personal counsellor. Ron makes the assertion that the most important communicative aspects of broadcasting, as they relate to Talent and Creative, have yet to be addressed. Check out his website www.voicetalentguy.com
(3/14/2014 9:58:57 AM)
For someone who "hates this rag", you sure do hang out here a lot.
(3/14/2014 4:26:55 AM)
Get a life - get a job!
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