Turn Your Weekly Programming Meeting Into Better Radio
Programming meetings are important. They bring the entire department together, generate ideas, reinforce station strategy, and help personalities understand what’s happening in the market. Unfortunately, some programming meetings also accomplish something else: They make an hour disappear.
A successful programming meeting shouldn’t merely produce conversation. It should produce better content, stronger promotions, more localism, consensus, and specific ideas that actually get on the air.
Here are some topics to put on your Fall programming meeting agenda.
- Remind Everyone Where We Live.
Invite someone from the Chamber of Commerce, tourism bureau, local newspaper or another community organization to talk about what’s new, changing or unique in your market. What’s opening? What’s closing? What’s everybody talking about? What events are coming? What local issues affect your target listener?
Radio’s great advantage is localism. Unfortunately, you can’t sound local if your personalities don’t know what’s happening locally.
- Build Your Listener—Literally.
Create a detailed profile of your typical target listener. How old are they? Where do they live? What do they drive? Do they have children? Where do they shop? What restaurants do they frequent? What concerts do they attend? What sports do they follow? What do they stream? What are they talking about at work?
Give your listener a name if necessary. Before preparing a break, ask: “Would Jennifer care about this?” If Jennifer wouldn’t care, there’s a decent chance 40,000 other Jennifers won’t either.
- Know What’s Hot on TV—and Streaming.
What shows are your target listeners watching? What series are generating buzz? What programs are fading? What’s trending on Netflix and the other streaming services? What local TV newscast leads the market? Don’t simply discuss ratings. Discuss content opportunities.
What happened last night that listeners may be talking about this morning? You don’t need your morning show to become Entertainment Tonight. But it shouldn’t sound like everyone went to bed in 1997, either.
- Plan the Next Holiday Before It Arrives.
Brainstorm Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s promotions early. What can we do on-air? What can sales sponsor? What can personalities own? What can become a station tradition? What can generate social content? What can create an additional occasion of listening? The best Halloween promotion is rarely invented at 4 PM on October 30.
- Experience the Listener’s Lifestyle.
People live for their leisure time. Make sure your personalities understand how listeners spend theirs. What are the popular local attractions, restaurants, parks, festivals, sporting events, museums, theaters and family destinations? When possible, get tickets and send personalities out to experience them.
It’s difficult to enthusiastically recommend the local zoo when your last visit involved a third-grade field trip and a juice box.
- Review the Rules Before Somebody Breaks Them.
When can listener phone calls be aired? What requires permission? What are the station’s policies regarding contests, endorsements, social media, profanity, political content, emergencies and potentially defamatory comments?
Review company policy and applicable legal requirements periodically. “I didn’t know” is rarely an impressive defense during a meeting with the GM.
- Settle the Christmas Question.
When should the station begin playing Christmas music? If you’re an AC or Classic Hits station, that can be a multimillion-dollar programming question. For other formats, determine when seasonal music, imaging, features and promotions begin. Don’t wait until Thanksgiving morning to discover that nobody recorded the Christmas sweepers.
- Build the Holiday Roadmap.
Thanksgiving. Black Friday. At-work listening. Christmas shopping. Holiday parties. Christmas. New Year’s Eve. Create a calendar showing what the station will do on-air, online, socially, promotionally, and in the community. Then determine who owns each project. “Somebody should do something with this” is not a promotional strategy.
- Study the Competition.
Spend part of a meeting listening to competitors. What are they doing well? What are they promoting? How frequently do they brand?
How do their personalities execute breaks? What local content are they using? What can we do better? This isn’t about copying them. It’s about making sure they aren’t out-programming you while you’re busy having meetings about programming.
- Coach One Programming Fundamental.
Don’t try to reteach the entire Programming Stylebook in one meeting. Pick one fundamental each week and spend 10 minutes on it:
Teasing ahead.
Localism.
Station branding.
Listener names.
Storytelling.
Back-announcing.
Speed breaks.
Appointment listening.
Promoting tomorrow’s show.
Turning features into listener benefits.
Provide a simple one-page handout with examples that specifically apply to your station. Then listen for improvement during the following week.
- Play Great Audio.
Bring examples of outstanding breaks from your own station. Let the room hear what good sounds like. Why did the break work? Was it concise? Funny? Local? Emotional? Did it have a strong payoff? Did the personality tease ahead? Recognition reinforces the behavior you want repeated.
And occasionally play a break that didn’t work—but coach the technique, not embarrass the talent. Programming meetings should build confidence, not create witnesses for the prosecution.
- Ask: “What Are Listeners Talking About?”
Go around the room. Every personality should bring one or two topics that people in the target audience are discussing right now. Not necessarily national headlines. Maybe it’s road construction, school starting, outrageous grocery prices, the local team’s quarterback, a new restaurant, concert tickets or why everybody suddenly owns the same giant water bottle. Great radio begins with understanding what matters in the listener’s life.
Now Comes the Important Part: Resolution
Here’s where most meetings fail. Everybody talks. Everybody brainstorms. Everybody nods enthusiastically. Then everybody goes back to work. Every programming meeting should end with a five-minute Resolution Round.
Review every worthwhile idea and determine:
WHAT are we doing?
WHO owns it?
WHEN is it due?
WHERE will it appear—on-air, digital, social or promotion?
HOW will we know it worked?
Write down the assignments. At the beginning of the next meeting, spend five minutes reviewing the previous commitments. Done. In progress. Dropped. Suddenly, the programming meeting becomes accountable—and productive.
Keep the Meeting Moving
A good programming meeting doesn’t need to consume half the day. Consider a simple 45-minute clock:
5 minutes: What wins and what’s working
10 minutes: What’s happening locally
10 minutes: Programming/coaching topic
10 minutes: Upcoming promotions and opportunities
5 minutes: Brainstorm
5 minutes: Resolution Round—who does what by when?
Then end it. If the meeting lasts longer than Titanic, somebody needs to tighten the format.
The Lund Lesson
A programming meeting should change the programming. If everyone leaves with exactly the same ideas, habits and assignments they had when they entered, you didn’t hold a programming meeting. You held a gathering.
The Lund Challenge
At your next programming meeting, put this question at the top of the agenda: “What will sound better or different on our station because we had this meeting?” Before anyone leaves, identify at least three specific improvements, assign an owner and establish a deadline.
Then listen for them on the air. Because the ultimate measure of a great programming meeting isn’t what was said in the conference room. It’s what the listener hears afterward.
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.