Whether I’m talking to a potential new consulting client, someone at a convention or a radio friend, the conversation always turns to how understaffed their radio stations currently are. Without fail everyone brings up how many more people used to work at their station or group just a few years ago. While I certainly have existing clients who have far more staff than their competition and continue to see the benefits of that from a ratings and revenue standpoint. Industry-wide with revenue projections going the opposite way of cost of living increases, it’s highly unlikely that radio’s staffing shortages are going to change anytime soon for the majority of stations. Luckily, with recent advancements there are more ways than ever to run radio stations with a skeleton crew. Here are some of the keys to do that successfully.

Identifying and investing in purpose driven AI tools to use in every aspect of our business. There isn’t a single thing we do in radio daily that can’t be sped up by using the right AI tool. Finding leads, creating proposals, producing spec spots, show prepping, producing imaging and commercials, editing video for web/social YouTube, graphic design for web/social/marketing, diagnosing engineering issues, planning promotions and so on.

Being open to outside partnerships. Whether that’s with outside content creators and influencers who have built their own audience but might not know how to monetize it yet. Or other radio stations that aren’t direct in-market competitors. 

Embracing home and remote studios to allow our on-air content creators to create more content without having to spend half of their lives in our buildings. 

Shortening shifts to focus on live, interactive hours and stop overextending our talent by having them track so many stations they can’t add value to any of them.

Redefining roles and job descriptions to more accurately represent modern radio employees’ daily responsibilities.

When we’re running with smaller teams there simply isn’t much room left for specialists. Today’s radio employees have to be significantly more self-sufficient and well-rounded than radio employees have traditionally been. 

Incentivizing clickable shareable digital content creation while also capturing everything employees are already doing as digital content by adding cameras throughout. The amount of content that goes unrecorded, unedited and unshared in most radio stations is astounding. Capturing and sharing all of that is a huge timesaver because it reduces the time necessary to create additional content. Overall capturing radio’s share of digital dollars requires us to create significantly more digital content despite our staffing limitations.

Taking a data driven approach to programming. Other than utilizing AI, switching to a data driven approach to programming is my biggest time saver in recent years and the same goes for every one of my clients who have adapted to follow this approach. Letting data point us to the three or four new songs within our format we should listen to and evaluate every week instead of twenty to forty or more saves tons of man hours and leads to a better on-air product.

Creating our version of a self-checkout aisle that allows people to purchase advertising directly through our station websites.

Obviously, I also think it helps to work with a consultant like myself who specializes in coaching radio people on how to use modern tools and update antiquated practices to create better radio more efficiently.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for radio groups to downsize. The number of staff at the local level is one of the leading indicators of which stations are going to win the ratings and revenue battle at the local level today and tomorrow. That’s why I think most stations and groups would be better served by adding a few more full-time local employees. However, having the budget to do that starts with getting as much productivity as possible out of existing staff without over-working them.

What do you think? What are some other ways radio can still be productive and efficient with skeleton crews? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.

Pic AI generated using Gemini.