Radio Is Tough

“Radio is tough.” 

Those are the words of a celebrity I was coaching recently as they attempted to make a transition from Sports Talk TV to Music Radio.  It’s true, but I had not really thought about it.  This individual had been a part of a television ensemble show, hosted their own morning drive music show for 12 months on a top 10 market radio station and had been interviewed on countless TV and Radio shows.  He has hosted awards shows, appeared in movies and was a key character on a reality show. He is a true talent and an entertainer as well as an athlete of the highest level. In other words … this man can do just about anything that he wants to do. He found radio to be “tough.”

He brought up something that I deep down knew, but had not really thought about until he articulated it.  So many of us who are (or have been) on-air personalities like myself, have done nothing but radio. Performing on the radio since we could drive ourselves to a radio station is the norm for many broadcasters. I started at age 15 working in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. When I worked there, it was “the sticks.” Today those stations are Pittsburgh stations. Many of my friends had similar stories. We grew up in the business. Just like this athlete who can’t remember when he didn’t have a basketball in his hands, many of us started when radio “needed” someone to operate the controls while the “Church tapes” played.

This individual is a celebrity, because he is a former athlete, and because he was coached his entire life, was the easiest talent that I’ve ever coached. He listened. He asked questions. He tried what I suggested and together we talked about how he could improve that performance. He rehearsed in a studio for five hours a day Monday-Friday for six weeks. He wanted the repetitions that equate to what an athlete does to improve their performance.  He took the coaching well, but he found it to be harder than any play or move that he made as an athlete, because “doing radio” isn’t natural for anyone.   

We’ve been involved lately in coaching and consulting talent with similar show biz experience and guiding them into their own nationally syndicated radio shows.  Some of these programs are music driven and others are talk laden.  The one thing that remains the same is that these talents love to be coached. They want to excel at whatever it is they do.  I love people who are never happy with “good enough.” The talent who excel cannot accept anything less that “The Best.” There is nothing better than “The Best.”

The toughest thing about this tough job is the ability to sound natural. Regardless of being down-tempo or up-tempo … sounding natural is the toughest of the tough things we do. There is something very tangible and real about having a “real and natural” voice.  The “radio” voice is different than the voice that talents use when they talk on television, on a stage or in the theater.  Radio communication requires the ability to tell-a-story in a manner that is relatable to the audience-at-large. Listeners want to listen to air talents that are their friends.  Radio requires the ability to utilize words to create a visual that’s so real the audience sees it in their mind. There is nothing stronger or more powerful than the mind’s eye. Use your voice to create the audio visual. The picture that I see in my head is more vivid than the biggest and brightest HD-TV ever invented.

Radio is sometimes a background medium. That as such means that the air talent must fit into whatever environment the listener is in while listening to the radio. This has to happen without irritating the listener or being so intrusive that the radio is turned off.  The audience is selfish. They want you to relate to them, entertain and inform them. They want you to do it in as few-words-as-possible. That’s another thing that makes radio tough. Be natural and satisfy the audience while using as few sentences as possible.  Radio requires practice and repetition, something I’ve learned from working with athletes, to be able to master the art of our craft. What we do looks easy. It’s tough.

We’re working now with a lead singer of a popular band. His communicative skills are excellent.  He’s a good story teller and he’s learning to focus.   The toughest thing for this individual is learning how to handle station basics.  Let’s face it no one sounds natural when they’re saying the name of a radio station or frequency, let alone some two sentence positioning statement that no one in the real world would ever say.  To that extent air talent must understand their role as an actor. They have to sell the station’s positioner and benefit and then say it as if it was in their own words.  They need to sell it as if it means a lot to them. They need to do it in a fashion that the audience can always remember what was said. 

This is the year of the People Meter. The new PPM markets mean that more of the North American population is within the earshot of a people Meter than ever before. More than at any previous time, everything we do on the air comes down to entertainment or information.  You have to create reasons for repeat tune-in and simply mirroring a music delivery device eliminates the advantages of radio. That is localization, entertainment, service features and making one’s life easier. Say something on the air that will make me talk with others about what you said. Make me be afraid to NOT listen. If I don’t listen, I might miss something. Make me fear that I’ll miss something if I don’t listen.

I have the ability to remember on-air stories that I’ve heard over the years from great air talent.  In the early 1970s I heard Jack Bogut on KDKA/Pittsburgh tell the story about losing a vitamin under his refrigerator.  Bogut said “there I am at 3:50am this morning in my kitchen …in my underwear … I open a bottle of vitamins and one vitamin rolls out of the bottle, out of my hand and bounces onto the floor and it went under the refrigerator.  There I am in my underwear looking under my refrigerator trying to figure out … is there enough good stuff in the vitamin to kill the bad stuff in the gunk under the refrigerator?”  I went to a session anchored by talent coach Valerie Geller. She shared with us a story that one of her morning talent told.  The story, delivered by the male air-talent, started with the statement “women have strange rules!” He then continued “There I am last night after supper, at the kitchen sink, washing out a tin can before I throw it in the garbage.  And it dawns on me, here I am washing out the garbage before I throw it away … and I didn’t even take a shower today.” That’s a great story. I visualize it every time I hear it.

The very best air talents go beyond story telling.  Truly they are great story tellers, but they also hear a party in their head that no one else has been invited to. When they click on the microphone, all the things they have seen, heard, enjoyed or created pleasure in their lives, come pouring forth in a relatable fashion. They are relevant to the audience and can talk about those things the audience cares about most. 

I have never sat with a great air talent who said to me, “I don’t watch American Idol. It’s beneath me.” I’ve had talent say that to me. Not the great talent, though. The great air talent suck-it-up and they make their personal wants and desires the same as those of their audience. That’s true even if they’re “faking it” they are part of the audiences lives.  The very best air talent understands where to draw a line between what’s happening in their lives and what’s important to the audience in regard to what’s happening in their lives.  There is a filter, but it’s a very thin filter.  Relating to an audience, and sharing the same thing with them that they enjoy or dislike, creates day-to-day tune-in.  Day-to-day tune-in is how you build Time Spent Listening.  The more times I come back to the radio station the more successful the radio show will be on any radio station.

The greatest similarities among those talent who succeed is simply this … their radio program is their priority. If you don’t make it your priority then you’ll never be able to perform at the mandatory 100% level.  Radio isn’t an “add on” to the other things that you do in your life and career. It can be a lifelong venture if you work hard at it and want it to be your core career. Your radio performance can be something that continues to improve through all of your life.  It’s just like working your abdominal muscles. That area of the body is one where the muscles continue to be strengthened with exercise through the normal life expectancy of an individual. 

The same is how it goes with radio.  Often we see air talent who are significantly advanced in years, who are now hitting their stride and making the biggest amount of money they’ve ever made in their lives. They’re doing it in large part because they’re generating the largest ratings they’ve ever generated. They do it while continuing to make radio look easy, but we all know it’s really hard.