Brian Wright “Create Passion”

Last year Audience Development Group crisscrossed the United States hearing countless radio stations while assessing their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Along the way we continued to heard the ongoing scenario station void of created passion. This doesn’t mean they all sounded bad, it just means many were empty. Great mechanics do not lead to passion. 

If there is one thing we can learn from this past white-hot election season, which still glows red-hot, is the passion created by both sides of the political spectrum. This passion equates to a contagious-epidemic. This past week many thousands of people came to see Donald Trump get sworn in as President and then we saw many thousands of people marching in opposition to him the next day. The point is, both groups created an enormous amount of passion among their target life-group. There was so much passion on both sides that some of it evolved into irrational behavior.

Radio has spent so much time eliminating tune-outs and almost no time on creating tune-ins. Many avoid rocking the boat so much that they don’t even know they are sailing. We need to engage our audience in thought-provoking ways leading them to become passionate evangelists for your station. *This goes far beyond the music and has everything to do with your content. I have often told personalities, “Pretend that the music you are playing is bad and that it’s totally up to you to connect with your audience.”

A radio stations needs engaging, thought provoking and somewhat polarizing personalities. Another “No Talk Triple Play” or “10 Without Talk” is not going to make it happen. Your listener can abandon you in a hotel-on-fire second for other platforms that provide unlimited music quantity without any commercials and with songs of their choosing! We must give the audience many ways to remember you that will pull them in like the force of gravity.

Let’s get to work. It will be fun!   

Brian is a 30 year radio veteran who has successfully served many companies over the years as Program Director, Operations Manger and VP of programming. After many years of success working for individual radio stations and clusters, Brian Joined one of the most trusted consulting firms in the country, Audience Development Group. For the last 15 years Wright has enjoyed building alliances with scores of stations in the US & Canada helping them grow in ratings and revenue.  Contact Brian at brian@audiencedevelopmentgroup.com