Problem was Movin didn’t know WHAT they wanted in a morning show. You are right…they did want music intensive at first, and if the personality caught on then the game plan was to expand into a show and not just a jock. But as far as how they wanted that person to sound they couldn’t explain. “We’ll know it when we hear it,” is what they said.
Of course I’m sure you can all understand the problem with that if they couldn’t describe to talent what they wanted because they didn’t know.
Actually the only direction they gave was “Just be sure to only talk about stuff that makes people feel good. They did also want a lot of listener interaction and the jock to “keep it movin’. Actually it’s a frustrating catch 22 being an on air jock. On one hand you have to do what your bosses tell you, and as a result if your ratings suck, then you’re the one that gets fired. On the other hand if you do what you believe is the best and it’s against what your bosses tell you to do you get fired. Most shows aren’t given the freedom to fail, and as a result they can never succeed.
As far as their market position being more music in the morning that’s fine but don’t take that position just because you’re afraid of the other morning shows in the market. How wussy is that? Everyone is beatable, but if you don’t try you’ll never win. In my market the leaders in all demographics in the morning are the shows that talk and play little if any music. That’s because if people want music they have CD players and MP3’s and satellite in their car. If they want to be entertained or informed about what’s happening locally they have radio.
Ratings always come at a cost. Whether that cost is dollars marketing the hell out of a show or whether that cost is complaint calls and taking heat for something your show does once in a while or losing some advertisers before you gain new ones, there is a price. Problem is most stations don’t want to pay that price.
I’ve always admired Howard Stern because he knew how he wanted to do radio and did it his way. He knew that he might lose the station advertisers but when the ratings were there more advertisers would come. Of course he got lucky along the way in that he was able to survive at a station long enough to get ratings before he got fired. That’s the tricky part, to get in, do your thing, and get ratings before you get fired because you’re not doing something management likes. Then keep you or fire you it doesn’t matter because you generate ratings and that equals revenue.
Sorry this was a lot longer than I had planned it to be but if you made it to this point you must have found it interesting.
18andlife
