As a consultant I program in all the major formats and a few niche ones as well. To do this I have to keep track of a ridiculous amount of new music. So, to make that manageable, and most importantly…

Most on-air talent that have ever cracked a mic on a music station have one goal, to out-perform the music. They may not ever verbalize that goal, or even be cognizant of it, but the ambition is there none-the-less. We…

If you’re working harder than ever right now you’re probably doing it right. I’ve always been an advocate for finding a healthy work/life balance and working smarter not harder so we’re not spending twelve-hour days at the office multiple times…

One of the reasons I’m so adamant about on-air personalities creating digital content on a regular basis is because they start out with a huge advantage over everyone else. The terrestrial platform they’ve been given have helped them build up…

When most of us start out on-air, and once we’ve cleared the hurdles of being able to handle the basics, we typically default to choosing the content that we think everyone is supposed to talk about. By that I mean…

Radio is over a hundred-year-old media and through that century of growth and development we’ve gotten really good at doing one thing well, providing professional, high quality audio entertainment to the masses. So, it’s not surprising that its taking our…

There’s a documentary on Paramount + called Bring Your Own Brigade by filmmaker Lucy Walker. Its an excellent piece of investigative journalism that looks at the many reasons for the recent increase in deadly California wildfires. She chronicles the well-known…

When I’m throwing out content and engagement ideas to programming people the feedback I often get is ‘We love all of this, but we don’t have time to do half of them and if we did all of that, it…

With the push in recent years to keep air talent ‘out of the way of the music’ we’ve tightened and shortened on air breaks across the board on all formats. I understand the rationale for this and, in most cases…

Virtually every radio group I’ve talked to over the past few years wants their on-air staff to create more digital content. Which is understandable, creating digital content is simply part of the job for today’s on-air personalities and it has…

Over the years I’ve consistently attempted to come up with ways to make the stations I worked with the most engaging, interactive stations within their individual markets. On one hand that’s allowed me to come up with some creative innovations…

As a life-long Cowboys fan who’s been let down every season since 1996, I was just as ready as the next guy to see Jason Garrett move on. Despite having the best O-line in football for several years and a…

I say this with love and reverence for the industry I’ve spent my entire life in, lately radio seems to be the last to know when an artist breaks or their career begins to decline. That’s because many of us…

As a consultant who coaches air talent on creating better airchecks, and previously as a programmer who hired talent for twenty years, I’ve gone through literally tens of thousands of airchecks. Going through that many airchecks there are multiple takeaways…

A decade or two ago the major record labels began doing what are called 360 deals to make up for lost revenue from declining CD sales. A 360 deal basically means they take a cut of everything an artist does…

We’ve all seen the headlines about the ‘Great Resignation’ and stories quoting stats like ‘40% of workers say they’ll quit if they’re forced to go back to the office.’ None of which is all that surprising…

The ideal size of a station’s active music database is an age-old debate between programmers. Those that figure out that sweet spot number that’s just big enough to keep TSL high, but small and mass appeal enough to reach a…

One of the big misconceptions I see with radio groups across the country is a feeling that its unnecessary for them to regularly spend money advertising on social media. I understand the thought process behind this, after all we have…

Despite the overwhelming growth of podcasting in recent years, especially during the pandemic, many radio broadcasters are still reluctant to take the leap. I still hear a lot of comments like, ‘Why would I want to talk to a handful…

Today’s music industry looks vastly different than it did just ten years ago. So, why are so many radio programmers across formats still using databases and categories that are structured exactly as they were a decade ago? Labels and artists…

Role assignment issues are the fastest way to doom a team show, regardless of the talent level of the participants. I can’t count the amount of shows I’ve seen fail because either the roles weren’t clearly defined, understood and followed…

The hardest part about coaching talent when you’re an on-air talent yourself, current or former, is not forcing your process, or routine, on others. We’re all drastically different people, with varying personalities, strengths and weaknesses, and all of our brains…

Even before the rise of Instagram and TikTok, social media had become a visual media. We all realized that text and audio alone wasn’t enough, so we began adding pictures to everything. But standing out in a crowded feed with…

We’ve all been guilty of it. Falling into the ‘That was…”, ‘This is…” trap to use as filler content either because we were too busy to prep or we’re still adjusting to a new format/demo and we simply don’t know…