Blow Up The Playbook

5

(By Ken Benson) Radio guru, Lee Abrams, has spent 5 decades in the trenches reinventing Radio, TV News and Print. What advice does the creator of the Album Rock format, the designer of XM satellite programming, and a Grammy award winning producer have for Radio in 2021? “Blow Up the Playbook, Get on Creative Steroids and Completely Reimagine Radio.”

Lee Abrams

Reimaging radio sounds so simple, yet AFDI, “Actually F——-g Doing It”, an acronym Lee coined during his tenure at XM Radio, is so, so hard. Lee Abrams is a firm believer the brilliantly executed Radio experience can prevail in the age of the growingly competitive Streaming market but only with radical AFDI. Imagine if Spotify, Apple, or Amazon created amazing experiences…they haven’t…yet.

Lee’s 10 Tips for Making Creative Radio (which also happen to be the characteristics of Timeless Rock Bands)

  1. Attitude – Create a culture that encourages and rewards evolution and change.
  2. Eccentricity – Hire eccentric people. They are essential in the entertainment business.
  3. Innovation – The driver of everything you do.
  4. Swagger – Do it with a sense of confidence.
  5. Newness – Struggle to be the first.
  6. Create Fans, Not Users – Passionate fans come from connections.
  7. Competitiveness – Fight for success.
  8. Artful – Great art, creates commerce.
  9. Rebellious – Fight the Status Quo.
  10. Mass Appeal Intelligence – Don’t lie to the listener. Listener’s BS meters are on high.

Lee Abrams’ has a lot more advice for today’s radio programmers:

  • Study great stations from the past and consider how you can re-create that magic on today’s terms.
  • Reclaim Core Artists and celebrate the music.
  • Lose the big voices and outdated Star Wars SFX and use production to transport you listeners employing Theater of the Mind.
  • Up your creative batting average – in baseball a 300 hitter is star. Take more swings, listeners will only remember the good ideas.
  • Cleanse your station of all the outdated clichés like “Twofer Tuesday” and “Block Party Weekends” and replace with new ideas and features.
  • Targeting young audiences; stop what you are doing and create new and mind-blowing experiences.
  • “Create amazing stations in sync with now, and young people will follow” Lee Abrams, on attracting young people to radio.

For those worried about the “Radio” versus “Audio” debate, Abrams says “Video” never replaced “Movie.” Hollywood made bigger and better films and “Movies’ are still cool today.

Abrams insists “All Radio has to do is create magic and it will be cool again.” Now, please “AFDI.”

Ken Benson is an award-winning contemporary radio programmer. He is a co-founder and partner in P1 Media Group, providing insights and strategies to leading media companies around the world. He can be reached at [email protected]

5 COMMENTS

  1. Remarkable! Lee lays it out..concise, clear, easy to understand. The advice in this simple piece is worth more revenue than many stations are totally generating today. SO, how many station owners will read it? (Likely, LOTS!) And how many will nod, “Yes” while reading it? (Fewer, but still, a respectable number.) And, how many will implement the instructions for which they paid NOTHING? (Likely, very few, if any.) Instead, the most likely scenario for station owners and managers will be to dismiss a sales manager or a GM, and begin the search for someone who will need 3 years or more to even understand their surroundings.
    Than you, Lee, for priceless information from someone who has done it over and over.

  2. This is GREAT. It is getting very unnerving to read what needs to be done since we all seem to know yet Audacy and others take the same girl and put her on from nights to AM’s for 4 months to CHI to syndication and now even an ALT afternoon show? It’s not her fault but she probably isn’t getting paid more then a few hundred bucks a month meanwhile they are taking dozens of jobs. I just try to remain hopeful but to see if anyone anywhere follows this advice but what’s happening is disheartening and scary. We all seem afraid to say it for fear of not getting a job that the same 2 ppl are just adding to VT duties while those who love it are all left out like the nerds in a HS football pep rally.

  3. You make some excellent points and we agree most stations and companies will do nothing but continue to try and stay on the air spending as little as possible. I’m optimistic there’s a few stations and owners that will seize this opportunity to create amazing radio and will reap the rewards as a result.

  4. Most PD’s just read this, then checked their email. Then started VT’ing their show. Then worried if they were gonna get fired. Repeat.
    AFDI isn’t something that will come over lazy, intelligently-lethargic people. You need new talent.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here