In the age of short attention spans we currently live in asking someone to listen to a story is more challenging than ever. That’s because when they’re not thought out and preplanned stories tend to include too many unnecessary details…

There are many within our industry who choose to ignore the inevitable. They keep their head down, continue grinding, clinging to old habits and doing things essentially the same way they’ve always done them. Then they’re surprised when they come…

There are a lot of reasons why live radio shows should work the phones. It makes the audience feel like they are part of the show, plays to an advantage live shows have over tracked shows, crowdsources content creation and…

I grew up in Junction, an incredibly small town in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. It’s a beautiful place, nestled in between two rivers and completely surrounded by hills, creating a quiet and peaceful sanctuary. It’s the kind…

Like it or not, technology has shortened all of our attention spans. When we’re watching a show and a scene is dragging on a little longer than it should we reach for our phones to entertain us during the lull.…

Right now people are developing technologies that will replace a percentage of us in all departments within a radio station. With each passing day more celebrities and talented people from other industries are infringing on our audio space by creating…

We’ve all heard it, and probably said it, before. ‘When they zig, we gotta zag’. Like most cliches it was created for a reason and, on the surface, it’s often solid radio advice. In general, finding a hole in a…

To some outsiders looking in, the job of talking on the radio requires little more than a decent set of pipes and the gift of gab. But, those of us who have had any level of lasting success sitting behind…

If you’re reading this, I’m sure you’ve gotten that question from people throughout your career. Either in the beginning from a parent or other family member who thought you should’ve gone into something more lucrative and stable. Or, more recently…

As a kid growing up in the radio business I used to marvel at the stark difference between the attire of the different groups of people within a station. At that time, there was very little grey area. On the…

For years we’ve been telling radio that their big advantage over digital competitors is their ability to be live and local. I’ve made that statement myself quite a few times. As the major groups continue to scale back their…

Most of the questions I’ve been asked lately from radio broadcasters are A.I. related. So, I thought I’d put together a list of some of the A.I. sites I recommend testing and using. To be clear, I do NOT use…

We’ve reached a critical time for our industry. It’s painfully obvious that things are changing rapidly all around us and the path forward is less certain than it’s ever been. We all know that taking the same exact approach next…

Ask anyone who’s ever gone viral how they did it and they’ll give you some version of the same answer. Essentially, they’ll say that there’s no formula for it. Just trial and error to see what works and starts to…

At the TAB convention in Austin earlier this month I was in the middle of one of many great conversations I had with broadcasters when one of them said, ‘this is why we come to conventions, nothing compares to the…

Airchecking on-air talent is still hands down the best way to improve their performance, regardless of whether we’re working with rookies or experienced radio veterans. No matter how good we get at self-coaching, which is important, there are simply some…

Growing up I wanted to be a writer. So, from the time I could string a few sentences together I started writing short stories. Which I know because my mother kept everything so many of them are still in a…

Writing off an entire generation of potential radio listeners isn’t a good long-term plan for our industry. Yes, it’s true that in general younger people are less likely to listen to terrestrial radio than previous generations. It’s also true that…

Back in May tensions boiled over between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the studio chiefs in Hollywood represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). As of the publishing of this blog that strike continues…

In radio everything that plays through the speakers sends a message to our audience. Some of those messages are pretty obvious, like our strategic imaging that clearly defines our point of difference from competitors and, on music stations, the tunes…

Coming up with original on-air content daily on our own is incredibly challenging. We don’t have a team of writers, there’s not always an obvious thing that everyone is talking about that day and even the most creative among us…

It’s easy to look at an industry that’s in transition, like radio is, and assume that the days of on-air talent making big bucks are all but over. But, they are not. I’m not going to lie and say there’s…

One of our main jobs on the air is to identify the thing that everyone is talking about that day and find our angle to make it interesting and relatable to our target audience. Doing so allows us to utilize…

In a few years the only people left standing in this industry will either be the best of the best or whatever is left. It’s up to the people who read blogs like this to decide which way our industry…