If your DJs would rather have a root canal than attend the weekly programming meeting, it’s time for a new agenda.
A great programming meeting shouldn’t feel like detention. It should be part brainstorming session, part coaching clinic, part pep rally, and part comedy club. Your personalities should leave with new ideas, renewed enthusiasm, and a clear understanding of where the station is headed.
Here are a few topics worth putting on your agenda:
What’s everyone talking about? What local story, national headline, TV show, movie, viral video, concert, or social media trend has listeners buzzing? How can your station own the conversation without sounding like everyone else?
What’s happening on the phones and online? What are listeners texting, emailing, posting, and asking? Which comments made you laugh? Which complaints are worth fixing?
Share a winning break. Play one great aircheck from someone on your staff. Discuss why it worked. Great ideas are contagious.
Steal shamelessly. Did someone hear a terrific contest, benchmark, promotion, podcast, or social media idea while traveling? Share it. (Remember: “Borrowing one idea is inspiration. Borrowing twenty is research.”)
What’s our next “can’t-miss” moment? Brainstorm promotions, local events, holiday themes, artist birthdays, community partnerships, and reasons listeners should choose your station next week instead of another app.
How healthy is the music? Review current songs, gold rotations, listener feedback, and music research. Remember, staff members hear songs hundreds of times. Listeners don’t.
Celebrate victories. Great ratings, a successful remote, a terrific client promotion, a memorable break, positive listener feedback, or someone who knocked it out of the park deserves recognition.
Invite another department. Occasionally bring Sales, Promotions, Digital, or Engineering into the meeting. Great stations are built by teams, not departments.
Finally, keep the meeting moving. Nobody ever said, “I wish that meeting had lasted another hour.” Thirty focused minutes beat ninety wandering ones every time. Programming meetings reinforce Stationality.
Lund Lesson: Programming meetings don’t exist to distribute information; they exist to create inspiration. If your staff walks out with better ideas than they walked in with, the meeting was a success.
Lund Challenge: Start your next programming meeting by asking every staff member to share one thing another station did well and one thing your station could do better tomorrow. You’ll get more usable ideas in ten minutes than from an hour of announcements.
Pic AI generated using Gemini.
John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming, broadcast consulting, and research firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats.