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…

Talk to virtually any radio group owner or operator and they’ll say the same thing, ‘We’re not doing near enough with digital.’ Have a conversation with anyone on the programming side and they’ll tell you how they need to be…

Typically, I coach on-air personalities to only choose content they can add to and, for the most part, I believe that advice holds up. After all, it’s not like any of our listeners are tuning in to our entire shows…

The challenge when building clocks for the hours a music station has live and local on-air talent is balancing their entertainment elements (music, contests, features, benchmarks and content breaks) with all of the service elements, stationality stuff and of course…

As soon as it started to dawn on everyone that radio is going to have to get on board with embracing the emerging digital side of our business, radio groups across the country started dabbling in digital and calling themselves…

I’ve spent the majority of my radio career as the guy tasked with setting the parameters that help build and protect station brands. As a creative person that wasn’t an easy role for me to adapt to. I much prefer…

When we’re coaching team shows one of the big things we talk about are derails and detours, those little off-topic comments that on air talent can either choose to follow down a rabbit hole or stay the course. But there’s…