The Programming Foundation: Part 1 – Music and Talent

To program a great radio station, you must have many different components working together harmoniously. These components, when executed flawlessly, lead to success. The phrase “the sum of the parts” comes to mind.

That phrase can refer to a few different concepts. Generally, it refers to the total value or quantity of something when its individual components are combined. So it is with programming. It is possible to succeed by having overwhelming dominance in one content area, but that success is due to the weakness of your competitors more than your strength.

Much of the rhetoric around building a Programming Foundation is obvious. It should be common sense that you have to play the best music and more of it, have great on-air talent, great imaging, a dynamic presentation, fun contests, and targeted marketing that overwhelms the competition. It isn’t obvious. It’s talked about, referred to, considered and debated, and then executed at a level that is commensurate with the support received by those in leadership positions.

There aren’t a lot of secrets today, and the playing field is fairly equal radio station-to-radio station, but what’s rare is having the stomach to do what it takes to perform at a level that brings success.

There are many intangibles that play a role in achieving that success. The desire to win. The ability to lead and guide a team. A tireless commitment to the execution of the strategy or plan. Creating an environment that encourages talent to perform at their peak. Ingenuity in maximizing your resources when it comes to marketing and audience building. Remembering that content creation when supported with positive reinforcement leads to compelling attractive entertainment and information. These attributes should be commonplace. They aren’t. That’s one reason why those who employ companywide policies see varying results. Execution is critical.

MUSIC

Music selected for the station should be made with the sound and brand of your station in mind. Your music choices should be based on local callout (if you have it), the national picture that comes from following streaming airplay. That’s the 2025 equivalent of tracking sales decades ago. It means something. It is consumption. Look at Monday Morning Intel for regional research, and Mediabase for the monitoring of stations similar to your station. Music should be scheduled so that each quarter hour is representative of the format. Apply the theory of instant gratification. That is playing peoples favorite songs frequently.  No one ever complains that you’re playing their favorite song too much. They complain about the songs that they do not like.

Variety is important. Platoon your library every 6 weeks. That is that your Power category songs stay on-air all the time, but regular and tertiary songs move in and out. That creates the illusion of variety. It freshens the station’s sound. Be sure to have an odd number of clocks that rotate songs so that the audience isn’t hearing the same songs every other day on their ride to or from work.

I’m a believer in having a consistent clock for an entire day, but change it up on each of the next two days. That way, you’re not putting a weaker quarter hour next to a similarly weak quarter hour.

The radio is no longer a place for music discovery by the masses. Some people hear songs for the first time on the radio, but that’s the exception these days and not the rule. Radio doesn’t expose hits, but it makes hits. Those hits come from repetition. There’s the conundrum of creating the feeling of Variety while delivering instant gratification. When you do play new music (new to your audience), identify the artist and mention the song title. That familiarity satisfies the audience’s curiosity. The identification of a song you’re playing for the 500th time doesn’t need the same level or frequency of identification, especially given the Smart Dash in most cars. The RDS or Quu does the heavy lifting for you.

I’ve always been a fan of using a tactic called “boxcar” when you segue two songs together. That is that you speak over the intro of the next song, and not over both the outro of the last song and the intro of the next. Talk over an outro when you are going into a commercial break. That’s how the audience has been trained for years. When a listener hears an air talent speak over an outro, it means “commercials are coming,” and they may leave. Speaking over the intro only is an unspoken message to the audience that you’re not stopping for commercials. That forward momentum tends to expand Time Spent Listening (TSL).

Music Specials (weekend programming or a one-time feature) are aired for two reasons: to move an audience to a specific time/daypart or to remind the audience that you’re still on-air in the fringe times.

You may not believe that it is worth it to promote a special or a weekend show by using valuable promo time, but smart marketers do exactly that. It makes the station multidimensional. The station may target At-Work listening Monday-Friday. All the more reason to promote what happens during the weekend. It signals that you’re on the air during the weekend, too.

Music Quantity is important. Long music sweeps. Fewer stopsets. The objective is to build time spent listening, but being known for long music sweeps can build your cume numbers, too. If a listener knows that you play the most music day-in-and-day-out, they’ll come back more frequently. We know that TSL (Time Spent Listening) is built by repeat tune-in. It’s not so much about sticking around, but coming back over and over again.

Where and when to schedule a long music sweep should be based on when you have the most listeners. Research shows us that the first and third quarter hours are usually the most listened to time windows. People start their activities at :00 and :30. In a diary market, the best place for a commercial break to start is :18 and :38. That ensures that you receive five (5) continuous minutes in a quarter hour. You want to cover the two biggest quarter-hours with music.

PPM markets are treated differently. You need only to have three (3) individual minutes of listening within a quarter hour in a PPM market. That’s why we stop across the quarter hours in PPM markets. Preferably :12-18 and :42-48. Although one can argue that being “the other guy” and moving across the top of the hour has value. Nielsen provides PPM and Diary Markets with tools to search for which hours have the most listening.

ON-AIR PERSONALITIES

Developing an emotional connection between your on-air personalities and listeners (without increasing the amount of talk) is an effective way of ingraining the station’s brand into the listener’s memory.  On-air personalities need to be disciplined hosts who are providing relatable content to the target audience while keeping the music (or News/Talk – Sports/Talk conversation) moving. The more real you are, the better connection you’ll have with your audience. The very best talents are efficient in how much they talk. Efficiency is an important word. Efficiency is different than brevity. Brevity is “Weather today … Nice.” It doesn’t tell the listener anything. Efficiency is using only the number of words necessary to completely explain the thought in question. 

The very best talent are amazing storytellers. They tell strong descriptive stories using visual words that paint a picture. They look for common experiences that they and their listeners have had, which makes them relatable, and should engage the listener’s interest. To tell a story in an efficient fashion, the talent needs to understand where they’re going with their story and how it ends. Meaning, before you start the journey, you need to plug the destination into your mental GPS. If you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will take you there. 

We use a show prep system that is referred to as the Key Area System. The acronym is E/I/A/A/A. The letters stand for Emotion, Image, Area, Activity, and Artist. 

• Emotion is what’s going on in the listener’s world while you’re on the air.
• Image is about the image of the radio station. Sell it to the listener in your own words and not as some trite slogan.
• Area is for what’s happening in your listening area.
• Activity is about the station’s activities.
• Artist is an element of artist information. For spoken word stations that element is about a newsmaker. Newsmakers are the Artist for News/Talk radio.

Watch this space next week for Part 2, where I’ll share secrets of imaging, syndication, and community involvement, with extra guidance for Talk formats.