Mike Couchman is a radio programmer and Operations Manager whose career has taken him from Lansing, Michigan, to markets including Las Vegas, Denver, Grand Rapids, and St. Louis. He’s worked across Christian, Christian Hip Hop, Urban, CHR, Country and Jazz formats, with past stops at iHeart and the WAY-FM Network. Today, he is Operations Manager for Gateway Creative Broadcasting in St. Louis, home to BOOST Radio, 99.1 JOY FM, and WorshipOne. He will soon be joining Pillar Media as Chief Programming Officer.
If you’re not alternating your clocks, I hope you’ll rethink that today. Your consistency could be doing more damage than your competitors ever could.
Doug Weaver and his son listened to the radio daily. They used to bond over their favorite St. Louis morning show, but…
“My son’s school went and changed their start time… it’s just a little bit earlier, but it’s enough that it completely ruins our whole routine. Usually our morning radio program has trivia on the way to school, and now we’re too early for the trivia. Instead, it’s just commercials for Frank Leta Toyota. At the time we go to school, it’s commercials on every station.”
@dougweaverart He loves some good morning music! #music #routine #parent #tt
Doug went on to share the heartbreaking part: “Instead of listening to the radio, I pick a song for us to listen to. And then we discuss the song…”
Doug is a local influencer with almost 1 million followers on TikTok, and yet he still embraced good old FM. Until September of 2026.
It sounded like he and his son repeatedly tried to keep radio in their routine. They didn’t give up at the first sound of a commercial. They kept returning until they concluded the same stopset was never going to move.
And even then, radio had a chance to keep them. They scanned around trying to find a new favorite show. But we blew it by playing the PPM stopset placement game.
It’s not just Doug and his kiddo, though. Watch this painful dial scan, where Rebecca says, “I want all local radio stations to see the problem here.”
By her count, she didn’t catch something worth listening to until the 13th station on her dial tour.
“When does it stop? Hey radio stations, you want to know why so many people use alternative ways to listen to music?”
Doug didn’t ask those legions of followers if he possibly missed any good radio stations. He instead invited them to share their favorite songs and artists he could introduce his son to.
When I last checked, there were 309 comments for Doug to explore. Only one invited him back to the radio. (It was me. I’m shameless!)
Thanks to his son’s new school routine, they were likely never going to get that trivia benchmark back.
- But that station could still alternate where stopsets fall so that Doug and his son would have at least had a chance to hear the other compelling things on that station.
- And if not that station, others on the dial could run that play and have a shot at capturing Doug and his son as new fans.
- Or! REALLY wild idea here: shorten the stopsets. (I know, I know. That’s like asking to cure hunger and end wars.)
Radio only loses to other platforms when we chase our audience away. They don’t want to leave. Doug didn’t instantly nope-out. Rebecca is hanging in there, for now.
We’re too heavily voicetracked, syndicated, and/or jockless. Yet, loyalty, or at least a desire to be loyal, remains.
Don’t squander it.
