John Lund
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If your listeners are reaching for coffee at 5:00 AM and your morning show doesn’t start until 6:00, you’ve just surrendered an hour of habit-building, companionship, and quarter-hours to someone else. Or worse, to a podcast.
Successful radio managers don’t rely on luck, instinct, or caffeine alone. They build a toolbox filled with habits, disciplines, and perspectives that help them lead people, solve problems, and keep stations moving forward.
Most radio liners die before they ever reach the air. They’re too long. Too predictable. Too full of clichés. And they sound like they were written by a committee that met immediately after a root canal.
As Nielsen diary markets begin releasing Spring ratings in July, now is the perfect time to get your station ready—not just for the numbers themselves, but for what comes next.
It’s summer – a time when many take their family to Disneyland or Disney World. Most Americans admire the extraordinary worlds built by Walt Disney—theme parks, films, and experiences that somehow make grown adults wait an hour in humidity to hug a six-foot mouse and call it magical. But Disney’s real genius was not simply attractions. It was people.
Once your station has achieved a viable cume level, building a core of heavy users should be a top priority.
There is one highly contagious radio disease we continue to hear in stations across the country. We call it: Formatus Interruptus. It is the sound of a radio station constantly disrupting its own momentum.
A few additional minutes of listening per day can work wonders for ratings performance. For example, if your station enjoys an average quarter-hour share of 8.0 with a cume of 75,000, extending listening by just 16 extra minutes a day could potentially move that share to roughly 10.2.
Ask someone to name a running shoe and you’ll hear familiar winners: Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Brooks, or New Balance. Ask someone to name a radio station and, more often than not, they’ll mention the stations with the strongest visibility, clearest identity, and most consistent image. But not necessarily the best station; they name the best-known station. That distinction matters.
A strong Strategic Plan provides management, programming, sales, and marketing with a shared roadmap, measurable goals, accountability, and direction. Think of it as GPS for your station—because “let’s just see what happens” is not a management strategy. Here are practical steps to create and implement a winning station strategic plan.
