I Want to Learn How To Program

[cc333]

I don't know if this is an appropriate place for this topic, but here goes...

I've been working on teaching myself via trial and error, studying playlists and reading through this forum, but I feel like I could benefit form some guidance from someone who actually has some experience.

I have been wanting to do this for as long as I can remember, and it would be really fun to someday do it at a real station, so maybe even some sort of apprenticeship opportunity can happen in time? I know broadcast radio is pretty much a dead end, but I don't want to give up on it completely, if only as a side hustle while I figure out what I want my main career to be. I'm currently between schools, and not really wanting to go back, but I probably will eventually, if only part time, because it seems like a good idea.

Maybe someone like @K.M. Richards , whose free time can probably be measured in negative time because of his responsibilities, can offer some useful input?

Thank you!

c

 

[K.M. Richards]

Wow. How do I answer this honestly without sounding too negative?

I have had this topic come up in conversations with other programmers I know. Allow me to quote a couple of them so you can appreciate my dilemma:

Chuck Southcott (Music of Your Life, KGIL, KMPC): "You cannot teach someone how to program a radio station. It is largely instinctive."
Jhani Kaye (KRTH, KOST, KTWV): "A programmer can hear the station in his head before he starts to create it. The trick is making what goes on the air match what's in your head."

I actually did not realize I had the instincts until the first station I programmed in 1978-81, went from no-show to #5 in 12+ in the first book. I only realized I had them all along only about five years ago, when I was looking back on my career instinctively knew how the Classical format should sound on my part-time weekend shift during my senior year of high school (which itself was five years before I was ever a PD).

There are parts of programming that can be taught, such as looking at airplay monitors and other research to see what the most likely candidates for airplay are, and even making educated guesses based on that as to rotation frequency. But sometimes the instinct will sway you one way or another on the songs that could go either way. The real instinct is, as Jhani said, knowing how it should sound on the air. And sometimes that is so strong -- so embedded in your psyche -- that it manifests no matter what format you're doing. KRKE's owner asked me to create a graphic of the "hot clock" so that he could better understand how I have the format constructed ... and when I did, I realized that some of what I'm doing is identical to what I did 47 years ago at that first station. And then as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I have been using bits and pieces of my "toolbox" over and over again.

The best advice I can give anyone who believes they may be qualified to do this is: Divorce yourself from the perspective of the average listener. Does what you hear make sense? Are the song choices the right ones for what you're trying to do? Is what you hear in your head going to attract listeners so that the station can successfully sell spots? (A common fallacy is that we're in the entertainment business; we're not ... we're in the advertising business.)

A good self-test is: Can you listen to a station playing a genre of music you are familiar with and be able, after a few hours, to reconstruct their hot clock? I knew how to do that before I even heard the term "hot clock" ... much to my amusement.

I encourage the kind of trial and error you describe, because that's a great way to see how much of an instinct you have. Every time you feel something is "off" you get closer to knowing without thinking what's right.

I'm off to bed now (it's almost 11:30 in L.A.) but I hope that's at least a start.

 

[cc333]

That's a huge start, thank you!

I also replied to your PM, so I won't repeat myself here.

I'll think long and hard about what you said about instinct, as it seems like it resonates well with me.

Good night!

c

 

[davideduardo]

That's a huge start, thank you!

I also replied to your PM, so I won't repeat myself here.

I'll think long and hard about what you said about instinct, as it seems like it resonates well with me.

Good night!

c

Remember also that a PD does a lot more than just pick and rotate music..

In the music, you need to know expertly how to use Selector or Music Master. You need to understand the demographic appeal of each song so that you don't cluster songs that have lower appeal to one segment of your audience. You need to understand horizontal and vertical rotations. Understand audience research including Nielsen but mostly music testing and perceptuals. Know the difference between wobbles and trends. Be able to write promos and liners and create contests. Train talent and manage voice tracking. Know how to check weekly time sheets or shift assignments. Understand the basics of FCC rules, labor laws and union rules if you are a union shop. Be ready to find vacation fills and sick day fills. Have a deep understanding of how to make the internet work for you. Work with sales people on sales promotions and commercial production.

And that is just a little bit of it.

It's half instinct and half experience, intelligence and knowledge. One part you feel, the other part you know.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Work with sales people on sales promotions and commercial production.

That's an important point ... as I said in my original reply, we are actually in the advertising business. I have seen a lot of PDs go down in flames when the commercial load "destroyed their format". A good PD designs a format so that the songs dropped to accommodate fluctuations in the length of stopsets does not hurt the overall sound.

I make my droppables the "lower appeal" songs David reference, and protect my Powers at practically all costs. At KRKE, for example, the only time a scheduled Power fails to play is an automation glitch.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

It's a hard thing to be... taught....like one can be taught proper formatics, when to talk, how to talk, etc.. and one can easily learn to be an expert in/excel in a particular format or two by becoming familiar with core, secondary and gold artists.. and keeping an eye on the charts and trends with friends, the public and music trends on social media...

But you kinda have to do it awhile and draw on that expierience to get better. Its taken me many years to really get a grasp on certain parts of my job, grasp formats.. not just cookie cutter stuff, but the nuances of things

I know my audience wants/needs/likes/dislikes better than almost any PD in America because I legit know most of my audience. Every single thing I do, take off air, put on air, program i add, program I move.. is because of my gut with knowledge of my audience.

As an example in a bigger place... I was doing a contest on KLMI at 445 every day... we moved it to 515. Why? We figured out fairly easily that 445 was right before people were getting off work, etc.... so we moved it to 515 and had more success

Radio programming is a combination of knowledge/research of some kind... be it actual research, talking to peopel casually, gut instinct and what you just pick up over time.

 

[TheBigA]

I've been working on teaching myself via trial and error, studying playlists and reading through this forum, but I feel like I could benefit form some guidance from someone who actually has some experience.

Following up on the previous posts, it's not something that can be self taught. You can't learn unless there are consequences for bad decisions. Those consequences are bad ratings or loss of a sponsor or getting fired for whatever reasons. And on the other side of the spectrum, you're not an actual programmer until someone else says you are. It's about achieving a level of credibility. That means getting a lot of other people to accept what you do.

So you can't do it in your bedroom. You have to get out in the field and get your ass kicked a lot. I liken it to being a singer. You can be a great singer in your own shower. But until you take what you do and put it in front of a lot of other people, you're just another singer in the shower.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Following up on the previous posts, it's not something that can be self taught. You can't learn unless there are consequences for bad decisions. Those consequences are bad ratings or loss of a sponsor or getting fired for whatever reasons. And on the other side of the spectrum, you're not an actual programmer until someone else says you are. It's about achieving a level of credibility. That means getting a lot of other people to accept what you do.

So you can't do it in your bedroom. You have to get out in the field and get your ass kicked a lot. I liken it to being a singer. You can be a great singer in your own shower. But until you take what you do and put it in front of a lot of other people, you're just another singer in the shower.

i dont think one has to have consequences for their bad decisions... moreso.. simply, just reacitons to what they do here. ive taught people here and there really isnt many consequences here for bad decisions save of swearing on air or showing up drunk.

Id call it "to be a programming, you can learn unless you see the reaction to your action" under the guise for every action theres an equal and opposite reaction type of thinking

 

[TheBigA]

i dont think one has to have consequences for their bad decisions... moreso.. simply, just reacitons to what they do here.

You can get that by being a wedding DJ. I was at a wedding a few weeks ago and spent some time in the booth watching the DJ. He gets instant reactions to his song choice. He can see what's working and what isn't. He adjusts what he's doing to how people respond. But he's the only person in the process. He's not responsible for a staff of people. Consequences don't all have to be bad, such as getting fired. There can be good consequences too. But I think it's the bad consequences are the ones you remember and are more apt to learn from.

That's another career choice. If someone just wants to play music for others, become an event DJ. Then you don't have to deal with all the regulations and office politics.

 

[michael hagerty]

What everyone here said, plus:

You can be a subpar programmer, but if you're the only one in town with a format the market wants, you'll be fine. For a while.

You can be a brilliant programmer, but if your station is signal-impaired or out of touch with the market, you'll fail. Until and unless you figure it out and fix it.

And figuring it out and fixing it doesn't come in a vacuum. It comes from real-world experience of working in the business.

The late Bill Pearl had a great line that I've used since he said it to me: It's about understanding how people use the medium.

I was going to say that every programmer (including some very successful ones) I can think of has had failures---not just early in his or her career, but big ones, when everyone was watching---but K.M. brought up Chuck Southcott and Jhani Kaye and I think their programming careers were exemplary.

 

[davideduardo]

It's a hard thing to be... taught....like one can be taught proper formatics, when to talk, how to talk, etc.. and one can easily learn to be an expert in/excel in a particular format or two by becoming familiar with core, secondary and gold artists.. and keeping an eye on the charts and trends with friends, the public and music trends on social media...

I'd recommend Steve Warren's book... available at eBay for under $15 now.

Radio: The Book By Steve Warren
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3967378818...9filqJee5utpCMGxHVXFA70A==|tkp:Bk9SR9Tn3cL2ZQ
While it is over 30 years old, it has all the basics about rotations and promotions and the mechanics of programming. While it does not teach much about all the computer stuff, for around $20 including shipping, it is a good start.

And the book was written by an accomplished programmer, not some Ph. D. at a university with no real-world-of-sales-and-ratings experience.

 

[davideduardo]

That's another career choice. If someone just wants to play music for others, become an event DJ. Then you don't have to deal with all the regulations and office politics.

And in those cases, you have the assistance of booze, sex and hormones. After a while, you could play songs backwards and still get them dancing (yeah, I owned the first disco in Ecuador. Never again.)

 

[K.M. Richards]

You can be a subpar programmer, but if you're the only one in town with a format the market wants, you'll be fine. For a while.

And that is where I got lucky. When I took KAAP from MOR to AC in 1978, I was up against not only the local Oxnard-Ventura stations, but also Santa Barbara. The closest thing to AC then was KIIS-AM/FM; the rest of the competition was a half-dozen Beautiful Music stations, two Country stations, a couple of top-40s, a few Spanish language stations, and most of the rest were still MOR.

By the time I left in 1981, AC was just starting to catch on, but we were still a year away from KOST going in that direction and I had made just enough errors in judgment to know I was a pretty solid programmer. From then until the end of the decade, even when I had only on-air gigs, my experience as a PD was a factor in my being hired; the late Steve Smith said as much when he hired me at Y97 in Santa Barbara for weekends and utility and on more than one occasion came to me to get my opinion "because you've been a programmer". When he moved on, I moved to afternoon drive and got the most freedom of any of the airstaff, because the new PD and I spoke a common language. And that was where I got an unheard-of 23 share in 12+ in 1988.

None of that would have happened if any of the circumstances had been different. Thankfully, by the time I wasn't "the only one in town" I was past subpar.

 

[cc333]

And in those cases, you have the assistance of booze, sex and hormones. After a while, you could play songs backwards and still get them dancing (yeah, I owned the first disco in Ecuador. Never again.)

Nope, I avoid all that stuff. I've witnessed what it can do to people, so I've vowed to never drink, take drugs of any kind, smoke, or mess around with hormones. I like to think I'm about as clean as they get as a result.

c

 

[michael hagerty]

And that is where I got lucky. When I took KAAP from MOR to AC in 1978, I was up against not only the local Oxnard-Ventura stations, but also Santa Barbara. The closest thing to AC then was KIIS-AM/FM; the rest of the competition was a half-dozen Beautiful Music stations, two Country stations, a couple of top-40s, a few Spanish language stations, and most of the rest were still MOR.

By the time I left in 1981, AC was just starting to catch on, but we were still a year away from KOST going in that direction and I had made just enough errors in judgment to know I was a pretty solid programmer. From then until the end of the decade, even when I had only on-air gigs, my experience as a PD was a factor in my being hired; the late Steve Smith said as much when he hired me at Y97 in Santa Barbara for weekends and utility and on more than one occasion came to me to get my opinion "because you've been a programmer". When he moved on, I moved to afternoon drive and got the most freedom of any of the airstaff, because the new PD and I spoke a common language. And that was where I got an unheard-of 23 share in 12+ in 1988.

None of that would have happened if any of the circumstances had been different. Thankfully, by the time I wasn't "the only one in town" I was past subpar.

Competition improves the breed.

When I started at KIBS in Bishop in 1971 at age 15, one way to look at it was that I was on the only radio station in town.

The real way to look at it was that, because I was on at night and out-of-market signals came in like locals, over the three years I was there, I was up against Bob Foster, Joe Conrad, J.J. Johnson, Eric Chase, Mike Novak, Tom Kennedy, Kevin McCarthy and Beau Weaver at KFRC; Jerry Butler, Pete McNeal, Walt "Baby" Love, Jimmy Rabbitt and Cat Simon at KHJ and Wolfman Jack at XEPRS and later KDAY. And everyone on every L.A. FM station with its stick on Mt. Wilson (all of which came up on the cable).

My main motivation, knowing that all that talent was a dial turn or a button push away, was simply to be able to walk down the hall at Bishop High the next day and not hear "Hey, Mike! You sucked last night!" A great motivator.

And at KUKI in Ukiah, as you and I have talked about, I got to town and found I was up against strong signals from San Francisco, including KSFO, KFRC and KNBR.

What happens in those situations is that you very quickly understand why the major leaguers do what they do and how little there is standing in the way of you doing it (apart from $5,000 "Don't Say Hello" calls).

 

[michael hagerty]

Nope, I avoid all that stuff. I've witnessed what it can do to people, so I've vowed to never drink, take drugs of any kind, smoke, or mess around with hormones. I like to think I'm about as clean as they get as a result.

c

We might be able to get you a PD gig at Bonneville.








(I have six lines for the "mess around with hormones" thing and every one of 'em would get me in some kinda trouble or other)

 

[K.M. Richards]

What happens in those situations is that you very quickly understand why the major leaguers do what they do and how little there is standing in the way of you doing it (apart from $5,000 "Don't Say Hello" calls).

Truth, my friend. When the Wallaces hired me at KAAP in 1978, I immediately decided that we were going to sound as good as the Los Angeles stations ... or die trying. Everything I did, every decision I made, every song we played ... that was the mantra: "Do we sound as good as L.A.?"

One of the absolute smartest decisions I made, and (again) I was lucky that it came at a time when I was honing my programming skills.

 

[cc333]

We might be able to get you a PD gig at Bonneville.

Hahaha!

(I have six lines for the "mess around with hormones" thing and every one of 'em would get me in some kinda trouble or other)

I guess everyone's got some kind of "unmentionable" experience in that area.

Except me, of course. I've lived an incredibly sheltered life, for which I'm grateful.

I'm enjoying the comments so far. Let's keep them coming!

I'm going to think about what's been said so far. It's a lot to consider!

c

 

[michael hagerty]

I guess everyone's got some kind of "unmentionable" experience in that area.

A lot of us mention it every chance we get.













Some standup comedian whose name I've forgotten: "The commercials say 'if you experience an erection lasting longer than four hours, tell your doctor. Screw that---I'm tellin' EVERYBODY!"

(If you want to be a programmer, this is good practice, because this is exactly what disc jockeys---especially morning talent---are like)

 

[michael hagerty]

Hahaha!


I guess everyone's got some kind of "unmentionable" experience in that area.

Except me, of course. I've lived an incredibly sheltered life, for which I'm grateful.

I'm enjoying the comments so far. Let's keep them coming!

I'm going to think about what's been said so far. It's a lot to consider!

c

Also, I'm not sure I'm the right guy to give you any advice going forward, because the biggest reason I got into radio was to get girls.