Get Rid Of The Garbage

Clinging To Clutter Can Cause Cume Problems

As we approach the diminishing moments of the Fall Arbitron sweeps, now it's time to look at the problems caused by the garbage on the radio. The problem for some programmers is that they may not know exactly what is clutter or trash and what is not.

Here are few thoughts on wrapping the garbage that offends those listeners who are fond of our frequencies. If we don't toss out the trash soon, the U-Haul will appear in our driveway. You see our listeners want our format to be funky, but they don't want it to stink. When it does, the garbage has got to go.

Should we spray it with disinfectant chemicals or cover it with "strong songs"? Where and how can we store it until the tainted trash is removed? It's a question of answers.

Auditorium tests and focus group studies constantly reveal music freaks especially are irritated by anything that is not fresh new music. They are not only less tolerant of trash, they also don't care that the station needs commercials to survive and that you have to take time out now and then to inform them. They're not empathic to your needs to serve the community, if it means stopping the music. You'd better be either funny or jamming.

Let's face it -- today's listeners are selfish and spoiled. Most just want to be entertained. "Just make me laugh and play my favorite songs" is how most listeners feel. They want to hear just their personal favorite songs over and over again and to have fun. Anything else is strictly trash -- a tune-out. When we run for the ratings, cleaning up the clutter should be an important part of what Urban stations that want to win must do. First we've got to clean up the kitchen and then we have to get down to some serious cookin'.

Cleaning Out The Clutter & Horizontal Recycling

One of the best places to begin getting rid of the garbage is with regular air checks with the jock staff. How may of them still attempt to be funny or informative, but only end up being boring and silly? An air talent who adds clutter to the format is a liability who must be eliminated. Otherwise, the whole station's format is in jeopardy.

Dealing with talent is always a major issue, and it takes a different approach for each personality. In spite of having huge egos, talent usually want everyone to listen to and like them. The key is to get their egos to work for them. Don't criticize them directly; find their strengths and focus on those. If you can make them understand and show them where they're shooting themselves in the foot, they'll take out some of the trash for you.

As a consultant, one of my pet peeves and one of the areas that I always find sorely lacking is how personalities handle the phones. Many still put callers on live. That is an absolute no-no. Listener calls should always be recorded and edited. That way, bad or risky calls never get on the air and long callers get edited down. This is just one more effective way of "taking out the trash."

Personalities should be made aware that callers exist only to set up the talent and make them look good. They are essentially props. If Tom Joyner, Steve Harvey, Russ Parr, Doug Banks or Skip Murphy never took callers, the audience wouldn't notice. Callers are such a very small percentage of the audience that they are not a critical response factor, providing the other elements are in place.

Once you have taken out the trash, you have to replace that garbage with compelling programming. Just what is compelling programming? Compelling programming is when the air personality tells the listeners something they don't know, when they speak very frankly about it -- and it better be something they already care about. And then, it they can do with a touch of humor, and do that consistently, you've won the game.

Another thing new programmers need to recognize is the value of horizontal recycling. It works better when you use it to promote tomorrow at the same time, rather than trying to promote the rest of the show, even though both are important. Even the most loyal listeners (hopefully those with a diary) are only listening to one of five hours of a show. Morning shows have a tendency to come on the air with guns blazing, doing the passionate, personal stuff they're excited about at six o'clock. But the power hour doesn't begin until seven. If you structure and schedule the content on the morning show with this in mind, that can make a huge difference.

This whole concept of editing and eliminating the "trash" is a special problem. It often involves a lack of training. It's a known fact that the demand for qualified air talent, particularly in the mornings, far exceeds the supply. Today's programmers and consultants have to spend more time listening to air checks (and music) and less time in front of their computers. The reason is obvious. If we can't find talented on-air personalities, we have to train them, and nobody wants to do that. We want someone else to find them, just like we want someone else to find our hits. Research can't find them. It can help to sort out those titles that are burned or don't achieve high passion scores, but it can't find them. And a consultant whose forte is not Urban really can't find them.

We all want to play it safe. But you can't put the station on automatic and expect ratings to rise. That's simply not going to happen. There are reasons why training and talent development continue to be major problems for Urban radio. The reasons go far beyond the basics of just getting the music right.

Some of today's decision-makers have problems training others because they weren't really trained themselves. Many came from stations where the PD was on the air, moved up and never knew how to use talent development to remove the trash. If that's your situation, you can't ignore the problem and wait for it to bite you. At least once a week sit down with your air talent and really listen. Listen critically for one hour a week. Transcribe the show in detail, catching the missed formatics, wrong sequences, lack of meaningful content, poor voice transitions etc. It you note just one little thing that you can tell your air talent, they'll think you listen all the time.

Adding Air Pressure

After we've taken care of the air talent trash, we have to look at the overall sound of the station. Even if you've got the perfect playlist, if the station sounds like it's being filtered through a wind tunnel, you've still got big problems. If your engineer can't tell that the sound of the station is flat, shallow and "muddy" compared to your competition, you've got a tough fight. It will be noticed right away by your listeners, who constantly make comparisons, even subconscious ones, between you and your direct (or indirect) format competitors. So you've got to take care of it. You must convince your chief engineer, GM, owner, consultant or group PD that there is a need for some new audio processing equipment -- an area that is all too often overlooked in Urban radio.

Now let's check out the signal itself. Whether you are AM or FM, you want to sound as clean and crisp as possible. One of the ways Urban stations often lose, especially with the blurring of formats and music lately, is when your competition plays the same song, often at the same time you are playing it, and it sounds better over there. All of a sudden, it doesn't matter who plays 10 songs in a row, because all that hum, hiss, cross talk, vibration and distortion in your audio signal is going to take its toll. It affects and causes something called audience fatigue.

Let's face it, tuners and other audio equipment in homes, cars and portable versions are now digital and getting better, cheaper and smaller all the time. This is making even the younger members of your audience somewhat purist, if only by comparison.

If you're skilled, persistent or fortunate enough to get rid of the garbage and get your station lean and on top, naturally, you are then expected to keep it there. Your GM may even add more commercial units and promos, remotes and garbage and ask you to understand. They've got pressure too. The problem is when those Arbitron digits drop, so will you. So invite them to read this editorial, and don't let them do that to you.

Getting pumped up over "air pressure" or "garbage" can be either healthy or dangerous once you understand it. Remember when we once settled our problems over coffee and cigarettes? Now, they're part of our problems.

Word.