Tony Lorino is celebrating his 25th anniversary in radio, and seventh year in syndication as the CEO of Throwback Brands. Its shows —Throwback Nation Radio, Throwback 2K With Chris Cruise, and Retro Pop Reunion in partnership with Joe Cortese — serve more than 200 stations and are distributed by Skyview Networks. He is based in Milwaukee, and is probably wishing you a happy early birthday on Facebook as we speak.
When I took the plunge into syndication after leaving day-to-day programming seven years ago this month, I knew I’d be learning new facets of the business. Coming from very familiar surroundings, with 12 years at Entercom Communications over three different markets, meant that there was a standard of quality, an expectation for execution, and a growing need for radio content beyond your airshift. And I knew the radio business would change.
I didn’t know that 18 months later, a global pandemic would accelerate the rate of that change tenfold. Suddenly, the need for our content, distributed quickly, easily updated, and still topical and entertaining, grew fast. And we’ve done our best to adapt.
Through all that change, however, many radio brands have continued to thrive. It’s been said for many years, there are “no big markets, no medium markets, and no small markets – just big-market, medium-market, and small-market mindsets.” Dealing with every type of broadcaster — big groups and local owners, time-starved PDs trying to keep the plates spinning, the producers and board ops who get our content on the air — has reinforced that for me.
So, as I enter year seven of Throwback Brands, I wanted to share my “Seven Habits of Highly Successful Stations,” in hopes you might find a few tips for continued growth.
- Successful stations have great personalities who connect with the audience, because they actually care about the audience. Great personalities can be local to your market, based in another city or state, or even another country. What matters is that they enjoy interacting with the audience. Simple things like answering emails and social media messages from listeners go such a long way. And, of course, personal appearances are still so important. Gone are the days where a talent can speak to the masses from on high. The audience gives us their time, and their usage helps translate that into revenue. We owe it to them to care about them in return.
- Managers get the staff what they need to succeed, and if they can’t do it instantaneously, they’re at least trying. Green Bay-based Midwest Communications is a great example of this. During the pandemic, it didn’t wait – it immediately ordered remote equipment that enabled dozens of its people to stay on the air from home. While many operators in bigger markets wouldn’t fill the bill for Cleanfeed’s “PRO” package to produce shows or wouldn’t make processors available to make microphones at home sound professional, Jeff McCarthy’s team stepped up and attempted to operate business as usual. Now, five years post-pandemic, remote home access and video-equipped studios are not optional tools; they’re usually necessities. Managers hear their talent and programmers trying to make more content at all hours of the day, and help the company invest in the right tools to make their jobs easier. They make the simple tasks simple: logs are ready a day early for weekend voice-tracking, contests are explained, and answers are delivered with expediency and decisiveness when it comes to on-air content.
- They know what their audience wants musically, and they stick to it, with the option to divert strategically. More than ever, selecting our music is the “easy part” of this equation. We can see from traditional music research, Spotify, YouTube, and so many other metrics, what songs to play. In the classic-based formats we provide on Throwback Brands, we also know that if Ozzy Osbourne passes away, we need to move quickly. Creative features without topicality or a real listener payoff “just because we should do a specialty weekend” don’t lead to more engagement. That said, the chances we do take are great calculated risks. A great example is 99.7 WDJX Louisville’s “New Year’s Tay,” which Ben Davis introduced there on a whim two years ago. At a traditionally under-listened time, Ben decided to play all Taylor Swift on New Year’s Day, and it paid off in listening, streaming, and social interactivity. On both Throwback 2K and Retro Pop Reunion, Chris Cruise and Joe Cortese add weekly features that always bring topicality to stations, without going too much off the beaten path.
- They know that great content doesn’t come just from inside the studio. Our phones are the greatest content-production tool ever. From video to voice memos, to simple notes on content ideas, if we aren’t using our phones once a day to create content for our show after we’ve left the studio, we’re missing the mark. I’ve recently started filming social-media content for our shows at the Public Market at our home base in Milwaukee, just going up to people eating lunch and asking them simple questions, handing out simple swag as a thank-you. The videos we get are incredibly good – and enhance what we do. Having your staff out and about at local places is also great street marketing. When listeners see your morning host at a market, restaurant, store, or wherever, it reinforces that you’re out and about in the community, just like them.
- They use their remote and syndicated talent to their advantage. You can look at remote and syndicated talent as a burden – “I have to carry this show and don’t have someone local” – or you can use us. At Throwback Brands, we never scoff at cutting extra promos or liners for a show or a local sponsorship. That’s what we’re here to do. Programmers like Dick Daniels at WSLQ (Q99) Roanoke, Va., and Mark Knight at WKOL (Kool 105) Burlington, Vt., are two of the many who send plenty of custom content that makes us sound plugged in as Throwback Nation airs on their stations. I love cutting liners for festivals and concerts that are going on the weekend our show airs. It makes us sound in the moment and connected. Even the biggest syndicated talent love doing that. When I was the Assistant PD at WMYX here in Milwaukee, our imaging director, John McDonough, customized the Ryan Seacrest show so well, he became a gold standard for Ryan’s producers to share with others. Ryan gave us plenty of love and content when he came to town for American Idol auditions.
- They see sales opportunities to co-brand and build partnerships, not just “junk up” the programming. I was a programming purist – “don’t let sales touch the product” – for decades, but my views have tempered. If the “sales versus programming” battle still exists in your building, it’s time to put down the boxing gloves. The battle isn’t in your building, or even with another radio station. The existence of the “infinite dial” means the battle is everywhere. If we want radio to get more marketing dollars, we need to find fun and inventive ways of integrating products into our content. A lot of that can happen on social and digital. And a lot has to happen on the airwaves. If the sales team isn’t bringing the “right thing,” think of all the items in our toolkit – social, podcast, even public-affairs interviews on your Sunday morning show – and find a way to make it work.
- They remember this is show business. We’re always performing. While filming some videos a few weeks ago in our home base of Milwaukee, I met some visitors from Cleveland. When I told them I was on WDOK (Star 102), they immediately recalled, remarking, “Oh, they do the big switch! At Christmas, Jen and Tim have a big switch, and they light it, and the Christmas music comes on, and the lights, and all of it! It’s so much fun.” Knowing that the in-demo listener I met could recall (1) the station, (2) the name of the morning show, and (3) the concept of “The Big Switch” reinforced the need to think multimedia. Our medium may be theater of the mind in audio form for 80-90 percent of the time, but when we have big events like “the big switch to Christmas,” or a big station promotion, we need to find ways of making it feel big on the air, and in video form too.
There certainly could have been another seven characteristics of great radio stations here. Maybe I’ll save that for another seven years. When we meet again in these pages, I hope both Throwback Brands and your station are flourishing. For now, I hope you’ll find one of these useful in ramping up your game, your station’s awareness, your ratings and revenue and our industry.
Nice job – On point.