Virtually all stations, especially heritage ones, have a few things they do every year that they blow off their normal structure for. Like Radiothons, live on-site broadcasts, auctions, sports programming on music stations, specific book promotions or major station events. Usually, they involve a relationship with a major sponsor or charity that’s important to the station or group from a big-picture standpoint. That, coupled with the fact that the staff either have a personal tie-in with these major things or they simply enjoy taking part in them, makes them incredibly hard to adjust.

As a consultant, when I even broach the subject of tweaking any of these, I’m often met with massive resistance and some iteration of this phrase ‘we’ve always done it this way’. Which I fully understand. I’ve been in their shoes and I get that we all have to pick our battles. But, I also know why it’s so important that we’re open to assessing and potentially dropping or at least changing these things. They can all be major tune out factors for P2s and even some die-hard P1s. Listening to the radio is a habit. Our success is directly related to a lot of people making listening to our stations and shows part of their daily routine when their driving to and from work, running errands or in the background as they do mundane work tasks that are easier with a little, fun radio distraction. So, we have to be incredibly careful about how and when we willingly disrupt that routine.

That’s why great shows and stations are VERY protective of their structure. They are extremely picky about when and how they alter that structure. Their measuring stick for when and where to do so is simple, ‘What’s in it for the listener?’ i.e. ‘Is what we’re doing of value to our core listeners?’ If not, it’s not worth altering the show structure for. Even if it is of value, it’s still typically in the best interest of everyone involved, sponsor/charity and station, that we weave it into the fabric of our show and station instead of altering the structure. Because that’s likely to attract the most attention. If it’s so valuable to the listener that it’s worth altering the structure for, then start by doing so in non-prime hours and outside of the book (if possible).

To be clear, I’m not saying that stations shouldn’t do Radiothons, on-site broadcasts, auctions, sports programming on music stations, big promotions or major station events. There are ways to do all of those things without damaging the radio station. Some of those ways actually increase the impressions and therefore the effectiveness for everyone involved. Here’s an example. Instead of doing a Radiothon where we blow off the normal structure of our programming, putting all our daily content/features/benchmarks/contests on hold, and asking our on-air talent to manage a bunch of live radio interviews with people who aren’t normally on the radio. Put cameras in the studio and bring everyone in ahead of time to pre-record all the interviews audio/video. Schedule the full-length interviews to post on the station website, use AI to turn those long-form interviews into :60 reels for social media (boosted and targeted if there’s sponsor revenue attached) and on the day of play a couple of minutes of the highlights of those interviews (could even use the audio from the reels outside of mornings). Instead of just reaching our station’s AQH (which would no doubt be down that day if we do it the old way), this will reach everyone who visits the website that week (or two since it’ll likely be up there for a while), thousands and thousands of listeners/non-listeners on social media and our normal unaffected AQH. Plus, it allows us to do a really impressive recap for the client who, by the way, also gets all these audio/video assets to use in their own marketing.

What do you think? How important is it to protect the station or shows’ structural integrity and when is it worth altering?

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