The amount of content necessary to fill our airwaves, station websites and social feeds can be overwhelming. Especially when most stations are being asked to create all that content with less resources and staff each passing year. That’s part of…

It’s a battle as old as the industry itself. One that affects us all regardless of market size or location. In my experience, virtually every radio station seems to have some degree of tension between their programming and sales departments…

When programming any new music station it’s easy to get in the habit of having a specific, set amount of songs in each of our current categories. This practice can of course be a good thing because it keeps us…

With the rise of social media and the multitude of digital platforms competing for our attention throughout our daily lives, we’ve officially entered the era of the content creator. That segmenting of where people get their content, and the kinds…

The Seattle Seahawks are one of the best stories in the NFL this year, at least so far. Despite losing their franchise quarterback and turning to a guy the rest of the league had pretty much given up on, they’re…

I’m a huge proponent of on-air personalities doing lots of showprep and working further in advance because a lack of preparation, or only preparing right before the show begins, is one of the main things shows get wrong. However…

Like many people I grew up watching Saturday Night Live and I still quote lines from it with references that are increasingly lost on people with each passing year. Because I’m a superfan one of the podcasts I go out…

This is a hard blog for me to write. As a musician and a self-described music snob, there are few things I enjoy more than sitting in a room with other music lovers and evaluating new tunes. Even though I…

I know that sounds like a pretty basic question. But, it’s an important one that we should always ask ourselves if we’re lucky enough to do a live and local shift on any radio station. Because if we don’t start…

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…