8-27-2012
In a recent Radio Ink audio-interview, Mike Sheehan, CEO of Hill Holiday, one of the top ad agencies in the country, offered up some advice on how radio can compete for more of his budget. He urged stations to be ?fearless? and improve their content. Well damn! Maybe that?s the answer after all! Even though Mike may have some further, more specific revelations in his back pocket, he did not reveal them.
Now, I do appreciate his point and agree with his position. However, the consideration of approaching any new radio programming or spot production concepts does come with significant "fear factors." This leaves a manager or PD in a precarious situation where ?fearlessness? is no longer a viable option.
Rin Tin Tin had a fearlessness about him. Ol? ?Rinny? would charge into a dangerous, even life-threatening, scenario with complete abandon and come out of it with a large piece of pants torn from the butt of a defeated and humiliated villain between his teeth and with his tail wagging. Hero! But, that was fiction. In real life, the same kind of abandon can get a person killed. For a station manager or PD to do likewise could be even more terrible. It could get them blown out.
If I were a radio company line manager -- executive, sales, or programming -- these days, I would begin my day by ralphing my guts out until I was slumped on the floor in front of the bowl with nothing left in me except a few more throat-ripping, dry heaves. PDs, in particular, are being hosed down by company-provided blasts -- a combination of restricted, depleted resources, multi-platform responsibilities, the incapacity to attract or train talented, on-air presenters, and production departments that have been converted to extra storage spaces. Plus, for many, there is the necessity of serving and sacrificing to the false god of PPMs -- a fickle deity that is likely to reward the stronger, clearer signals before it deigns to bless an outfit that may be producing (alleged) terrific programming.
Then an audacious guy, say, someone like myself, saunters up with the claim that our most basic and assumed-solid model of communication is not only flawed, but is a dangerous and toxic detriment to what we want for our stations, including the continued and ever-developing acceptance of our programming on the part of our audiences and influence over those audiences on behalf of our advertising clients. At some point, PDs heads are going to start exploding as a direct result of trying to sustain an overwhelming load of responsibilities.
Yet, my claim stands. We have not addressed, changed, or developed the strategies and techniques -- the model -- of delivering language through broadcast communications media since well before ?payola? was an acceptable, if not legitimate, way of making a couple extra bucks in the business.
Still, it gets worse. My claim includes the admonition that until we are trained to be better, more efficient, more appealing and more influential communicators, any efforts directed at all the other issues creating challenges for our programming leadership will be generating minimal returns and will, practically, make those efforts almost inconsequential. Indeed, the multiple challenges facing contemporary radio are real not fantasies. Although mostly internally generated as these challenges may be only adds to the complexity and frustration of having to deal with enemies from within.
Of course, I appreciate how difficult it is to build something of value when most of the muscle is directed at digging out of the rubble -- even as much as the destruction was self (industry)-induced. Nor is it difficult to understand how we are behaving more like mangy, cowering curs -- snapping at anything and anyone who dares come near -- rather than the courageous K-9s we are being encouraged to emulate.
When I?m doing personal coaching work, I go into each relationship with a basic and historically effective approach: To challenge, to change, and to check. I also enjoy a tremendous advantage. This is as a result of having clients who are already willing to make changes. Most are in some crisis or other and are often, in some way, desperate. Of this, they are consciously and painfully aware. I can challenge their already-existing beliefs, values, behaviors, and habits-of-thought about the world and themselves with relative ease because it is those very attributes that contributed to their current state. It is then incumbent upon me to have the skills to assist them in accomplishing any necessary, agreed upon, remedial or generative outcomes, with them and for them. I am then obliged to check my work and be sure the changes were implemented and the client is satisfied.
This audience of readers -- serious radio-people -- however, is a completely different group and with this one, I have no similar advantage. This group of individuals have any number of radio-related issues on their minds and have yet to come to the consideration or suspicion -- never mind realization or conclusion -- that an immediate re-development of our communicative strategies and techniques is acutely necessary and is, therefore, deserving of the highest priority.
A couple of reminders: Ours is an indirect, passive medium that impacts consciously and unconsciously. Radio generates more emotional responses than it does intellectual ones. We have no authority to tell anybody to do anything. We are not directly connected to anybody, specifically, even while talent and management parrot the ?one-to-one? liturgy. This position is no more than an assertion that has become a wholly accepted and grossly inaccurate dogma. The proposition cannot stand even under the weakest of challenges. In these articles, I am constantly inviting evidence to be provided that might sustain or support the position. So far, and beyond a couple of boo's from the gallery, no takers.
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
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