If you’ve been around the radio business for any length of time, you’ve likely built up quite the archive. Rubbermaid containers full of tapes, CDs, pictures, memos, staff phone lists, etc. I recently went through my archives in an attempt to reduce clutter.
I found this from The Radio Consultants, Inc., a Minneapolis-based radio consulting firm. The article, “A Great Program Director,” was previously published in Radio Ink (October 30, 1995). It is reproduced here for historical and educational purposes.
A Great Program Director understands that radio is a ratings-driven business and delivers winning numbers to the sales department.
A Great Program Director is an advocate for target listeners, a champion for P-1 listener wants and needs.
A Great Program Director puts research to work to stay in touch with his/her target.
A Great Program Director understands the incredible powers of imagination, knowledge, creativity, attitude, and focus. “The play’s the thing,” so said Shakespeare, and A Great Program Director knows that great radio is great theater.
A Great Program Director is a leader, a coach, a director, and a business person.
A Great Program Director values “people skills” and is devoted to being a good and fair person with a reputation for creating a stimulating, positive, and challenging environment for creative individuals.
A Great Program Director knows building a great radio station is a marathon with no finish line; the price of success is always more competition.
A Great Program Director is decisive, a strategic thinker, an excellent listener, a person who “hears” ideal radio playing in his/her head and strives to put that station on the air every set, every quarter-hour, every day.
A Great Program Director is a competent fiduciary and accepts responsibility for diligent planning and prudent allocation and care of the company’s most precious resources — talent, time, and cash.
A Great Program Director demands, and works to sustain, a “no surprises” environment, keeping the GM and GSM aware of what’s happening — on the air, in the programming department, and in the market.
A Great Program Director understands that every programmer has the same sixty minutes to “program” each hour and uses every minute to full advantage in the battle for listeners’ time, mind, loyalty, and recall.
A Great Program Director keeps his/her station fresh, compelling, entertaining, informative, topical, local, relatable, memorable, and “on strategy” every hour of every day.
A Great Program Director knows where his/her time goes.
A Great Program Director is focused on taking positive, proactive action to change the reality in which they live and work.
A Great Program Director puts integrity first and always under-promises and over-delivers, especially when the GM, clients, and listeners are involved.
A Great Program Director knows he/she can never execute a plan alone and must inspire, motivate, direct, and lead a team to consistently win.
A Great Program Director realizes that the studio is a stage and not an office. The single most important activity in the entire radio station (where every hope, wish, plan, promise, strategy, and tactic come into sharp focus) happens in a room where performers talk to themselves and push buttons.
A Great Program Director focuses his/her efforts on results rather than on his/her work.
A Great Program Director builds on strengths — his/her own strengths, the strengths of his/her superiors, colleagues, and subordinates.
A Great Program Director “under-programs” his/her radio station, always knowing what he/she keeps off the air is often of more strategic value than what is put on.
A Great Program Director constantly stays in touch with cutting-edge developments and concepts in his/her format and has developed a network of gifted minds; a speed dial of world-class thinkers.
A Great Program Director ensures that the most effective, best written, best produced, most engaging and entertaining creative on his/her air is the latest station promo involving a client.
A Great Program Director protects the license because, without it, there is no radio station.
A Great Program Director is always giving listeners reasons to listen longer and to listen again.
A Great Program Director knows there is never an excuse for bad manners and understands the most effective way to deal with vendors, record people, and others who are paid to get their attention is to let them do their jobs (always aware that some day these folks may be of value to the radio station).
A Great Program Director realizes that jingles, promotions, contesting, promos, and station advertising are first, tools to get and keep the staff excited and enthusiastic; and secondly, tools to accomplish the station’s audience goals.
A Great Program Director welcomes objective, outside opinions and counsel because he/she is always open to new ideas.
A Great Program Director never underestimates the competition.
A Great Program Director genuinely enjoys what he/she is doing, has fun doing it, and customarily wins as a result.
A Great Program Director is enthusiastic about sharing what he/she knows and is committed to a lifetime of learning, reading, observing, and growing.
A Great Program Director possesses boundless curiosity and an almost childlike, contagious exuberance: he/she dares to be naive.
A Great Program Director stays impassioned about creating, reinventing, and staging great radio every day.
Whether you’re a Program Director, Operations Manager, Content Director, or whatever new titles have been ginned up, these words still ring true today. Yes, we have more competition, responsibilities, and pressures than ever before. But the above piece still remains a useful roadmap to creating great radio. Regardless of the platforms, the magic always begins in the studio.
I used to have this posted in my office to remind me of my responsibilities, requirements, and opportunities. I urge you to do the same. Creating radio is a gift. Cherish the process.
Feel free to tell me I’m full of it: [email protected]
