RadioInsight welcomes programmer and personality Robby Bridges as a recurring guest columnist. Bridges currently serves as Program Director for Connoisseur Media’s “103.1 The Wolf” WWWF Long Island NY and AC “WEBE 108” Westport CT. He also hosts Compass Media Networks’ weekly “Robby’s Top 20 Countdown” and afternoons on Scott Shannon’s “True Oldies Channel“.
Radio programmers sometimes reduce “strategy” to music architecture, clocks and research. Those matter. But the listener experiences a brand, not a Selector log. Further, it’s what we do beyond the music that sticks and in today’s audio ecosystem it matters more than ever.
Every little piece of a station’s presentation potentially either reinforces or weakens the station’s identity
Music: rotations aren’t strategy by themselves. What emotional/product position are the rotations creating? A snapshot of what a station’s musical gumbo is each quarter hour is like a consumer looking over a menu at the door in choosing a restaurant to enjoy.
Talent: don’t simply hire the technically cleanest jock. Hire people whose worldview/personality makes the station more distinctive. Part of that is what they say, part of it is how they say it. Hire people who challenge you and don’t do things on the exactly as you want them done. They’ll usually be the most creative, conscientious and engaging.
Imaging: It cannot be wallpaper between songs. It should tell the listener what station they are hearing without even having to give the frequency. Have imaging that’s varied but stylistically coherent, it should have a voice and pov just like an air talent even if it’s clean and minimalist.
Promotions: Another pair of concert tickets isn’t inherently an event. Eventize ordinary inventory. Contesting, remotes, events, features, are show business. They’re Hollywood premiers, grand openings, the consistency of big events always happening creates forward momentum both literally on the air and in listener expectation.
Digital/Social: It’s a direct extension of the radio stationality on the air, look like it.
Details: Contest phones, liners, clocks, transitions, appearances, what talent talks about — individually trivial, collectively the brand.
Localism: Local doesn’t mean saying street names. It means demonstrating familiarity with the audience’s actual lifestyle. Be topical, locally.
Consistency: Experimentation is good, randomness isn’t. You can take chances inside a clearly defined brand.
A station should have a point of view. And a programmer should know it instinctively. They should know instantly whether it’s a song, a jock, a promotion:
What belongs?
What doesn’t?
What are we enthusiastic about?
What would this station never do?
Who is the listener we’re trying to delight even if that means turning off others?
The devil is in the details. Giving a damn is a competitive advantage. And people make the difference to execute it all.
For Robby Bridges? My grand programming strategy isn’t especially sophisticated: Give a damn. I mean that more seriously than it sounds.
All the consolidation, syndication, automation, shrinking staffs, etc. make it incredibly easy for acceptable radio to emerge. Nothing is horribly wrong with it. The songs test. The clocks work. The imaging fires. And nobody would notice if it disappeared tomorrow, it gets just a less special, less interesting, less focused, less disciplined than it was the day before. And the day after that…go out drinking and be on your laptop before bed to check a log. Put personality on every daypart. Market yourself. Fix things sometimes even when they aren’t broken
Indifference has never been a winning programming strategy, now more than ever, it can’t be,
