Practice What You Preach?
By Robby Bridges
Robby Bridges
Most of the articles I’ve written for Deane Media over the past few years have centered on the current landscape at radio and what I believe to be the best course for terrestrial radio from programming to marketing to management. In a nutshell, I believe over the air local broadcasters must be focused on personality as much or more than music, being live and local, marketing themselves, investing in the station and its resources and keeping the focus on the core business which is content creation for the AM/FM band. It’s a fair question I both ask and evaluate of myself and suspect some others might of me as well: “Ok what are you doing to make radio great every day?”
For those that don’t know what I’m up to, I program WWZY/WBHX for Press Communications which is a unique situation in many ways. First, the market is really several according to Nielsen as our signal reaches 3/5 boroughs of New York, most of central NJ (that’s what Nielsen calls Middlesex-Union-Somerset), the Jersey Shore (aka Monmouth Ocean) and Atlantic City. Second, Press is a locally owned broadcaster serving just New Jersey. Third, we’ve created what I’d describe as our own format totally unique to the station (branded on-air as 107-1 The Boss) we call it Classic Rock Hits and More and it’s not only a one of kind hybrid of classic rock and classic hits it’s also full service with a full commitment to personalities 24/7, weather, traffic and news. It goes without saying, music position and the management of the library are paramount but I want to focus on personality and stationality.
It starts with stationality as the radio station brand itself is the foundation and it needs to define itself and market itself both on the air and off. The Boss has 4 station VO announcers depending on what we are promoting: Damon Oaks and Patty Steele are our primary voices with “Mr. Movie Voice” Redd Pepper for promos and legal ID’s + Scott Shannon for major station events and concerts. We are running two custom jingle packages from TM Studios. There are major contests from cash, to trips, to experiences to format appropriate ticket giveaways in all dayparts without a break year round. Yes, we give away cash even outside “rating periods.” The last component is marketing and promotion, we deploy multiple station vehicles to every concert and event when we believe we can be in front of substantial eyeballs and of course we super serve our clients too. From tees to mugs to tote bags to pens and sunglasses we brand our station on every item imaginable and we invest in outdoor marketing on buses and billboards periodically to keep the radio station top of mind. It still works.
As stated, music library management is constant, focused and careful, regardless of format, but today music is on-demand everywhere, so while we want to offer “great food at great prices” ie vs. streamers and satellite FM is free and easy to use, our real specialty is personality, entertainment and information.
Entertainment: it’s the presentation of imaging and jingles, contests, tone of the station, the music, the energy level the talent bring the format to and the content Information: for music radio it’s not so much being the “traffic on the 3’s” but being known by the listeners as local, live and community focused with round the clock weather updates, traffic in drive times, high traffic times and whenever major issues arise, news that informs as it pertains to life in the market, and community info from events to concerts to “when does the beach parking open?”
Personality: The masters of ceremony for the radio station are its personalities and it all starts with mornings where those information elements, and some entertainment, are matched with a big show led by big voices that are memorable and have an “est” factor. In the cash of The Boss, the show I co-host “Robby and Rochelle in the Morning” is the funni-est with conversation, phone topics, bits, games, drop ins. Plus, traffic 4 times per hour, a staff meteorologist heard all day and live AM/PM drive + Saturday mornings, sports (we hired the great Mark Chernoff) and news in AM/PM and noon + weekend public affairs. We have a diverse and experienced staff from varied backgrounds and with wilding different styles and specialty features from Totally 80s Saturday night to Springsteen on Sunday mornings for a few hours (this is NJ after all).
I hope the takeaway is to invest in the radio station and its resources, to acquire/nurture/market talent on the air and give them the opportunity to create content (then supplement it on social media and the station web page) be visible and present in the community and engage the listener in part with fun contesting.
Often times it’s easy to look to reinvent the wheel but radio’s best practices to successfully build and maintain an audience really haven’t changed much so I’m proud to say we are practicing what I preach here at the Shore. The question is how many stations aren’t and how do they get there quickly?
