Interview in Hitmakers Magazine

Interview and Intro by Chris Ruh In pro sports, its all about the haves and the have-nots. Teams in big markets - New York, L.A. and Chicago, most notably - rake in considerably higher revenues and, thus, enjoy a competitive advantage (in principle) over teams in so-called small markets such as Montreal and Charlotte. Major market teams have the playing field tipped decidedly in their advantage. By contrast, the playing field in radio has never been more level. Whatever the downside of consolidation has been, the upside (at least from a resource perspective) is that the bulk of properties are in the hands of such have owners as AMFM, Clear Channel, Infinity/CBS and ABC/Disney. As a result, the competitive battleground has shifted, with the struggle for supremacy no longer about having the most weapons, but, rather, maximizing the potency of those weapons. Like a good left-handed starter in baseball, morning personalities are the preeminent weapon in any stations arsenal. Oddly, however, so few of us - even some of the most seasoned programmers - know how to work with our morning talent to maximize its potential benefit to our stations. Thats where Morning Radio: A Guide to Developing On-Air Superstars comes in. The 281-page compendium was a collaborative effort between consultant Alan Burns and KFMB-AM&FM/San Diego VP/GM Tracy Johnson, whom I recently spoke with for this exclusive interview. TRACY, WHY DID YOU AND ALAN DECIDE TO DO A BOOK ON MORNING RADIO? A couple of reasons. First of all, we saw a tremendous need out there among management for a guide to understanding the creative process and what personalities are all about. Morning radio has taken on such a prime importance at every radio station, regardless of format, but we found that there was very little training taking place to educate managers and talent about how to maximize the impact of their morning shows, and thats ironic. We traditionally have seen extensive and ongoing training for sales managers and theres plenty of training for general managers, but not much for program directors in learning how to deal with talent. That means that our talent isnt getting the coaching it needs to get better. Chris, I hear a lot of talk about the lack of talent out there today. The truth is, there is tremendous talent in the talent pool. But our program directors and other managers simply dont know how to work with that talent and how to package it and create it to make better radio. IT IS ODD THAT WEVE COME THIS FAR INTO THE DEVELOPMENT OF RADIO PROGRAMMING AND THERE HAS BEEN ONLY A SCANT FEW MANUALS ON THE SUBJECT OF TALENT MANAGEMENT. Exactly, and that was part of the motivation behind Alan and me putting this book together. The other part was just an opportunity for us to give back to the industry and really help some of the young, developing personalities out there. We wanted to give them something that they could really get their teeth into help them with their careers and to better their skills and abilities. And youre right, there just hasnt been anything out there for them to learn from. ONE OF THE QUOTES IN THE BOOK IS IN THE TALENT TIP SECTION AND IT GOES, THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF A DOMINANT MORNING SHOW IS DIFFICULT TO MEASURE, BUT IS PROBABLY MORE VALUABLE THAN ANY COST RETURN ANALYSIS ON THE DAYPART ALONE. EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY THAT. As a general manager or an accountant or anybody who is running a radio station on a dollars and cents basis, if you take the number of spots that you can sell per hour and the average rate that you get for those spots and divide that out you can find out what a particular daypart is worth. That includes mornings shows, but its a mistake to look at morning shows that way because a morning show sets the tone for the entire radio station. It has to be looked at in a different way than other dayparts. The rest of the station will take on the same personality of the morning show and its stationality is formed by the image that the morning show portrays. So if you get any market-leading, market-dominant, difference-making morning show, its intrinsic value and the halo effect it can put over the rest of the radio station is far beyond the cost analysis you could do on the daypart by itself. Not only do morning shows bring listeners to the radio station to start the day - listeners that we hopefully convert into midday and afternoon listeners - but everything you do as a radio station will be bigger and better and more important to your listener because of the popularity and the value of your morning show. LETS DO SOME RADIO 101 HERE. WHY IS A MORNING SHOW SUCH AN INTEGRAL INGREDIENT IN A RADIO STATIONS SUCCESS? Well, what weve found in the past is that the number of people using the radio is by far greater in the morning than any other time of the day. And since more people use the radio in the morning, you put more emphasis on programming the morning show and putting your best talent on in the morning. As traditional 9-5 workdays are changing, were beginning to see signs of that changing and that other times of the day are becoming equally valuable, but, traditionally and historically, mornings has been the most important daypart. If you win the mornings you get people in the door and then you can sell them on other benefits of the radio station. Thats the Radio 101 aspect of this that you referred to in your question. ANOTHER RADIO 101 SUBJECT THAT YOU BRING IT UP IN SEVERAL PARTS OF THE BOOK IS BENCHMARKING. I DONT WANT TO GIVE AWAY TOO MUCH OF THE CONTENT OF THE BOOK BUT ILL ASK YOU TO DEFINE BENCHMARKING AND ITS IMPORTANCE. Benchmarks are anything that helps the audience to remember you. To be a successful radio station you have to become part of the listeners lifestyle. To do that you have to make them remember that theyve listened to you. Benchmarks help them do that. They make you memorable. They help you stand out in the audiences mind and remind them to come back. And making that impression on a listeners memory is important because, at least the way radio is measured right now by Arbitron, its not so much what listeners actually listen to but what they remember listening to thats important. GIVE ME TWO OR THREE EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL BENCHMARKS, SAY FROM A MORNING SHOW YOUVE WORKED WITH. Theres a lot of them. Larry Lujack made himself famous doing animal stories. Scott and Todd at WPLJ/New York do phone scams. A lot of stations will do the Battle of the Sexes on a regular basis. The key is to find the types of things that listeners will tune in for at a specific time regularly and that the morning show can become famous for doing. Kidd Kraddick at KHKS/Dallas is a terrific talent and he bases his whole show on the concept of ones, where if you can do one thing per hour that the people remember and one thing per day that people will talk about and one thing per quarter that makes you memorable and one thing in your career that makes you legendary, youll be a successful talent. When you strip it down to that it becomes pretty simple in formulating and establishing those benchmarks. His theory of ones is another way of putting it but thats what benchmarking is all about. ONE OF THE POINTS YOU STRESS IN THE BOOK, TRACY, IS THE IMPORTANCE OF SHOW PREPARATION. WHILE MOST PEOPLE, IM SURE, WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPOR-TANCE OF SHOW PREP. MY EXPERIENCE IS THAT ITS VERY OFTEN AN AFTER-THOUGHT. WHY IS MORNING SHOW PREP SO IMPORTANT AND HOW CAN A MORNING SHOW AND A PD WORK TOGETHER TO ALLOW THAT TIME TO HAPPEN AND BE CREATIVE AND PRODUCTIVE? I think everybody does show prep, but most people stop way too soon. Show prep isnt just a matter of collecting information that you want to talk about on the radio, because thats really pretty simple. The real trick in show prep is spending the time in developing that material into something that will compliment the show, compliment the radio station and turn it into something that we call localization and personalization. Youve got to make everything you do on the air create an emotional response in listeners and you can do that if you localize the material and personalize it. If you can get people to say, Hey, I listen to that show because theyre just like me, because they reach out and they speak to me, then youve got them and thats really what personality radio and morning radio is about and what all of us should be striving for. SINCE WERE TALKING ABOUT PREPARATION, LET ME ASK: HOW DID YOU AND ALAN COLLECT THE MATERIAL AND ORGANIZE THE WORK AND DECIDE WHAT WENT IN THE BOOK AND WHAT DIDNT? THAT HAD TO BE A DIFFICULT PROCESS. Well, Alan and I worked together for three years from 1989 to 1992 and spent a lot of time with talent, but the original idea for putting this all together was mine. It happened about a year and a half ago when I was working with my talent here at STAR. I wanted to put together kind of a personality handbook for them to go by and I was drawing on a lot of information that I used when I was working with Alan and that Id learned from Alan, so I called him up and I said, Hey, you know what? Im thinking about putting this book out. Lets update it. And I asked him if he had any new material that we could use. And over the course of about three or four months, from late last year until about April of this year, we polished it and cleaned it up and decided to put it out in the market. IT HAD TO BE A BIG CHALLENGE TO FIGURE OUT EXACTLY HOW TO ARRANGE AND ORGANIZE ALL OF THIS MATERIAL. WHAT WAS THE EXPERIENCE ALL ABOUT? Chris, the layout of the book was something that we spent a lot of time on and, in fact, the book was probably twice as long as the final version at one point, but theres only so much you can cover in enough detail to make it useful to the air talent and to the program directors working with that air talent. So, yes, the organizing and editing was very time-consuming and challenging. WHO WOULD YOU SAY REALLY IS THE AUDIENCE FOR THIS BOOK, MORNING TALENT OR PDs? Well, I think its about 50/50. I think that if a personality picks up the book and reads it all the way through theyre going to want to buy a copy for their program director, and vice versa, because the general thesis that goes all the way through the book is that programming and being on the air is a partnership. Theres got to be a partnership between the programmer and the talent. The programmer and, by extension, the rest of the radio station can make a talent more popular and by the talent becoming more popular and becoming a celebrity in the marketplace they can make the radio station more valuable as well. It really needs to work together and if the two arent working together to support and compliment each other, then youre not maximizing the talent and the talent isnt maximizing the radio station. So a lot of the book is directed towards program directors and understanding talent, but a good portion of it is directed at talent and understanding what role they fill on a radio station. TRACY, WHAT ARE THE ONE OR TWO MOST COMMON MISTAKES YOU HEAR BEING MADE BY MORNING SHOWS TODAY? Not knowing who they are talking to or talking merely to entertain themselves and not taking into account the context in which the audience is receiving their show. SO ITS REALLY A MATTER OF PUTTING THEMSELVES IN THE AUDIENCES PLACE AND TALKING AND LISTENING LIKE A LISTENER. Exactly. They need to learn to program their show through the ears and experiences of their target audience rather than through their own personal experience. Now that doesnt mean that you change your core personality and what you do on the air but you program it all through the ears and experiences of your listeners. WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE THAT PROGRAM DIRECTORS MAKE IN DEALING WITH MORNING SHOWS? Not allowing the talent to do what they want to do so desperately - which is to become a star. They want to be popular and to become famous because theres too many egos that are involved and a lot of times the program director actually resents the popularity that the morning show is starting to accumulate. HERE IN L.A. PEOPLE KNOW KIIS-FM NOT BECAUSE OF THE VERY TALENTED DAN KIELEY BUT BECAUSE OF RICK DEES. And thats the greatest weapon that Dan has at his disposal and he understands how to use that and he accepts that and hes doing a great job with it. And thats what you have to do to maximize both the morning show and the rest of your station, but I think a lot of times program directors just dont know how to take the talent that they have and use it to make their radio stations better all the way around. TRACY, I REALLY LEARNED A LOT - STUFF I WISHED ID KNOWN WHEN I WAS BOTH PROGRAMMING AND ON THE AIR - BUT THE BOOKS GOT A $69.95 PRICE TAG. TELL ME, HOW DID THAT NUMBER COME ABOUT? Thats kind of interesting. Once Id put together the first draft of the book I gave a copy to Jeff and Jer here and asked them, Would you read this? Tell me what you think of it and if we should even put it out in the market. If so, what price should it be? And Jer came back and, in all seriousness, said, It should be $1,000. REALLY? And I said, Well, Im not going to do that. And Jeff said that when he was a young air personality, he bought a book that cost him $125 that he keeps and uses to this day. He said its meant more to him as a manual for his career than anything else has ever meant, and the fact that he paid that much for it makes it even more valuable to him. AND FOR ANYBODY WHO DOES BUY THE BOOK, REMEMBER, ITS A WRITE-OFF. I dont know how we ended up at the final price, but theres a lot of cost in publishing a book, especially in smaller quantities. It can be pretty expensive to publish a book when youre not putting it out for mass consumption. OBVIOUSLY LIKE ANYTHING ELSE, THE MORE OF THEM YOU MAKE THE CHEAPER THE UNIT COSTS ARE. Compared to, say, a John Grisham novel, its got a very limited audience but theres a lot of tremendously valuable career information in the book. I CAN ATTEST TO THAT. So we priced it at a point where I think it is going to be meaningful for people but still at the same time affordable and the feedback weve gotten on it so far is that its well worth the price. WHAT OTHER PEOPLE BESIDES ALAN DID YOU PERHAPS CONSULT WITH OR ILLICIT INFORMATION OR ADVICE OR FEEDBACK FROM AS YOU BEGAN TO SORT OF PUT THE FINAL TOUCHES ON THE BOOK? DID YOU TALK TO SOME OF YOUR OTHER COLLEAGUES IN THE BUSINESS? Quite a bit. Not just about this book but theres been a lot of people whose work and philosophies and thoughts have really influenced the thinking and the information in the book, starting with Dan ODay, whos a terrific personality coach. A lot of the infor-mation in the book is a take-off or a direct descendant of some of his writings and some of the work that hes done. Another one is Randy Lane, who is a terrific talent coach that I respect a lot and have gotten a lot of ideas and inspiration from. Guy Zapoleon is another one. Dave Robbins, Kidd Kraddick and Jeff and Jer are others. Theres a company in Australia called ESP that works with a lot of talent throughout Australia and they gave me some original ideas. Dave Shakes, who works with Alan right now, was a big influence. Scott Shannon is another one who really provided a lot of inspiration and I owe him thanks for paying me one of the nicest compliments Ive ever recieved. I sent Scott a copy of the book and told him that Id gotten a lot of information from him and Id like for him to have this and tell me what he thought of it. Well, he called back and said that he has built most of his career exercising the principles in this but had never seen it collected in quite the same way. That probably meant more to me than anything thats ever been said about me in my career. FINAL QUESTION. DESPITE THE SPECIFIC FOCUS OF THE BOOK, THERES A LOT IN IT THAT WOULD SEEM TO APPLY TO ANY DAYPART. DO YOU THINK THERE ARE LESSONS THAT AN AIR TALENT, SAY IN MIDDAYS, AFTERNOONS, OVERNIGHTS, EVEN A WEEKENDER, CAN LEARN FROM YOUR BOOK? Yes, I think all personalities could learn a lot from the book because it all has to do with the creative process and the process of communicating with an audience and making an emotional connection with the listener. Its called Morning Radio but it could just as easily be called personality radio or talk radio or communicating on the air. OR HOW TO CONNECT WITH LISTENERS. Connecting with listeners is the ultimate goal. Thats the key to the whole thing and thats not something thats unique just to morning shows. I think its equally important in any daypart. TRACY, CONGRATS TO YOU AND ALAN ON A FINE PIECE OF WORK AND THANKS FOR TAKING TIME FOR THIS INTERVIEW.