There are lots of great radio show prep services out there, Cheat Sheet, Sheet Happens, Personality Magnet and many more. I strongly recommend that all on air talent subscribe to at least one of them as they can all help…

I’ve written a lot about stopset length and how I believe radio needs to shorten their commercial breaks to better compete with our digital opponents. But, I get that not every station can switch to something as extreme as my…

At best most shows have one or two spots a day where they’re connecting with the listeners, usually through contesting or their best daily benchmark. That’s certainly better than shows that don’t connect with the audience at all. But, it’s…

As someone who spent the better part of my life in a radio station, I understand how easy it is to get annoyed by prize pigs and diehard listeners that call in, and even drop by, constantly. I’ve also had…

Unless they’re a heritage personality that’s tied to lots of revenue, most radio groups struggle to figure out the real monetary value of their on-air talent. Sometimes that leads to under-budgeting for open positions and drastically narrowing the talent pool…

As I’ve mentioned before, for a few years now we’ve been internally tracking the performance of new songs weekly across all the major formats and a few niche formats as well. At first it seemed incredibly arduous and time consuming…

When you talk to owners, operators and managers of underperforming stations they typically give you a handful of stock excuses for why their stations aren’t measuring up. They can’t find good help, their market is down overall, the economy is…

Consistently creating multi-platform content sounds like a lot of heavy lifting when starting from scratch. But, unlike other businesses, radio stations should never have to start from scratch because they are already doing several things that could easily be turned…

Despite constantly quoting the listenership stats, ad spend numbers, and even writing an eBook about it, I still get a lot of pushback from broadcasters when I encourage them to start podcasting. So, let me approach it this way. If…

When coaching on air talent the goal is simple, get them to do the best air shift they possibly can. That’s because it’s in the best interest of not only the people paying you, or yourself for the success stories…

There’s a thread that ties everything we do together that sadly many radio stations continue to miss even now, years in to having access to all of these additional platforms. That thread is the key to growing a massive total…

Consistently successful radio stations don’t happen by accident. Everything they do is purposeful and strategic. When you ask them why they chose to do a specific promotion, selected an on-air feature, programmed certain music, or priced they’re commercials at a…

Today’s on-air personalities aren’t just being tasked with creating compelling daily on-air content. They’re being required, and hopefully rewarded, for all kinds of digital content as well (Blogs/Articles, videos, podcasts, etc.) Those who are doing it well have crossed…

In this business there are lots of incredibly talented on-air personalities who have only achieved a moderate level of success despite years of experience in a variety of formats. That’s because there is a limit to how far talent alone…

If listeners aren’t calling in to a live and local on-air show, or engaging with any of it’s digital content, it’s because they’re being told not to. That can happen a multitude of ways, some very directly, like how they…

One of the things we preach over and over again to on air talent is that they need to choose on-air content that the listener can relate to. It’s a good measuring stick to help us narrow down the pool…

While many in the industry are negative about the viability of new music formats on terrestrial radio, I am not. Their rationale for feeling that way stems from their belief whether verbalized or not, that we’ve essentially lost young people…

‘Uncoachable’ is one of the worst possible labels you can get as an on-air personality. Once someone gets that stain on them, despite former ratings success or how amazing their aircheck sounds, it’s very hard to shake. That’s because during…

If we want all of our on-air talent to consistently produce original digital content for station websites and social feeds, we have to create an environment that encourages that content creation. That’s why I believe all on-air studios, and some…

When I’m building a format for somebody from scratch, regardless of what kind of format, one thing they always bring up is tempo. Some will say they don’t want any slow songs out of stopsets, most will tell me they…

Airchecking on air talent seems to be a bit of a lost artform. It’s not rare to meet veteran on air personalities who haven’t been airchecked in years. That’s partly because people convince themselves that they aren’t really necessary for…

As we bounce back from the pandemic, we’re all being asked to do more with less. Budgets are tight, new personnel are hard to come by and in the midst of that we’re all trying to transition our business models…

Regardless of how long we’ve been on air on a particular station, but especially when we’re new to a station/market, the average listener doesn’t care about what kind of day we’re having. They don’t care whether there are technical issues…

It’s critically important to the successful operation of a music-based radio station over long periods of time that we program the music externally instead of internally. However, choosing the music we’re going to play is only one of the many…