The Importance of Having Great On-Air Personalities

There seems to be a greater realization of the value of on-air talent of late. It’s not like air talent haven’t always been critical to the success of a radio station, but until the industry recognized music streaming services as a competitor, talent were on a slippery slope to being undervalued.

I’m not talking specifically about their salaries, but rather the part talent play in building and keeping an audience, which leads to success. Talent are the differentiating factor between radio and a music service. The importance of talent should be obvious, and it’s disappointing that there are some who refuse to acknowledge it. Talent can be the saving grace for radio.

The use of high-profile on-air personalities isn’t a new trend to radio. The glory years of radio from the 1960s through the 1990s had many big names on-air. Talent who were known for generating big ratings. It is fair to note that the erosion of audience levels began in the mid-90s following deregulation, but it was the rapid consolidation of the early 2000s that found many air talent being eliminated. One would think that the best of the best would have been retained, but that wasn’t necessarily what happened.

The decision was often about eliminating the most expensive talent regardless of their contribution to revenue or ratings. It was the fastest way to bring costs in at a desired number.

Twenty years ago, radio competed with other radio stations (and sometimes television). That was about it. Napster launched in June 1999. The iPod debuted in 2001. The precursor to podcasting, audiobooks, became big business when Simply Audio Books launched in 2003. MTV was already filtering in non-music video content by 2010 and stopped airing music videos in 2015. Those competitors were an important contributor to the drip-drip-drip of the time spent listening erosion radio has been suffering over the last few decades.

The arrival of Digital Service Providers (DSPs) like Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, brought a new level of competition to the battle for ears. Music lovers can turn on the “radio” and get their favorites with or without commercials. SiriusXM has been leaning back into its “Radio” connection. Apple markets “Apple Music Radio.” There are talent on these DSPs, both human and AI.

Radio has to focus on specific attributes that lead listeners to a specific station versus a pay service. Being “Free” isn’t enough. Radio has had many opportunities to lower its commercial load in an effort to attract bigger ratings. That… hasn’t happened. So, the pressure is on to create content that’s so great that someone will sit through long commercial breaks to hear what’s next. Which leads us back to talent. Be they local or syndicated, live or voice-tracked, they need to be great.

What’s more, it’s not enough to have one great talent in the morning and “wing it” the rest of the day. Listening habits have changed. Afternoon drive, in many markets, has a significantly large available audience. Some stations have a greater opportunity in non-AM Drive dayparts, especially where there’s a major heritage show on a competitor. The pandemic also accelerated these changes.

One of the consistent traits of successful stations is employing high-profile, engaging, entertaining, and enjoyable personalities. The anchor or co-hosts are intelligent, topical, understanding of their audience’s lifestyle, and connected to the community in which they broadcast. They’re local-sounding regardless of where their show originates from. Smart Program Directors take advantage of the availability of syndicated or voice-tracked talent to update and localize the station identifiers and promotional messages. The technology exists that localizing a national show is easy.

The best performing shows are informative, fun, funny, positive, encouraging, and overall entertaining. The shows are fast-paced and provide audio adrenaline to the audience. It should be obvious that there are many moods that radio tries to set for an audience. If yours is a “relaxing” station, then the on-air talents approach should be more subdued, but it doesn’t mean that it cannot be pleasant.

Great talents stand for “something” and they’re true to that “something.” One of my favorite tactics is to play for talent the scene from Bull Durham when Kevin Costner’s character explains to Susan Sarandon’s character what he believes to be truths.

What do your talent believe in? Are those beliefs genuine? Social media has eliminated the ability to portray an on-air role that isn’t real. Talent need to be genuine. Filtered, perhaps, but genuine nonetheless.

The very best talent are continually doing show prep. Everything that they see and/or hear comes back to an evaluation of “Does this fit with what we do on the air, and should we air it?” They see the forest for the trees. Meaning that they aren’t so close to the everyday chores that all they see are those chores. They understand that the basics and formatics are important to marketing to an audience and brand building, but they don’t focus on those at the expense of the show’s content. They don’t allow the basics to stifle the element of creativity.

The very best talent map their shows. There are categories that the talent use when developing content for their show. These categories contain Hot Topics and ColdTopics. Hot Topics are perishable. Cold Topics are non-perishable. Hot topics are to be used today, or it’s old news. Cold topics can be used today or in the future. They don’t quickly become old news. Lock-in where these categories will air. It enables you to know that you need 6-8 great segments across a three or four-hour show.

The very best talent, and their producers if they have them, track social media to determine what’s trending. That allows them to be able to follow what their local community is talking about on any specific day. There are various tools and show prep services that can provide similar content and thought starters. None of it replaces the research that the talent or producers do for their programs.

The very best talent are always thinking of their audience. They’re focused on creating a good mood for the listener, as one of the reasons for the audience to listen daily. They’re driven. They’re focused on the goal. They’re always looking for ways to accomplish that goal. They’re focused on continually working to evolve their program. Smart broadcasters will not only look for and hire great talent, but they’ll also provide them with the tools they need to be ever evolving and improving their performance.

The value of entertaining, informative, engaging, and personable talent should be obvious.