Chris Thompson “The Show Where Everything’s Made Up..”

The Show Where Everything’s Made Up, And the Artists Don’t Matter

My family and I had the opportunity to attend a taping of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” in Los Angeles in 2018. From the studio audience, we watched as Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, and Laura Hall taped enough content for five TV show episodes over the next three hours. As the opening catchphrase states, all the bits were made up, and there was no hint that points mattered. “Whose Line is it Anyway?” is the show where everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter.

The show itself has nothing to do with points. After every skit, the host might award a comedian 10,000 points for creating a memorable moment or for absolutely no reason. The giving of points is a joke or the hook that was set. Even though they had absolutely no relevance, audience members and viewers alike expected some mention of meaningless points at the end of each game.

I wonder if the artists in our CCM format are like a pile of points. Our artists and songwriters have lives, talents, cares, families, hope, love for Jesus, dreams, and stories, and yet, spend time flipping channels nationwide throughout our format, and you might question whether the artists actually matter. Are their songs just a hook between the five or six breaks per hour that direct audiences back to our air talent? Are the results of music testing and category maintenance the definitive conclusion of who an artist is and what they bring to their craft and our radio stations? Is Christian radio simply a partnership with a secret wink that asks the artist to bait the hook with their music so our listeners will tune in to hear our air talent and imaging? Are artists in our format equivalent to points that don’t matter?

It’s not uncommon to read best practice commentary on CCM programming and take notes to our air-staff meetings that script our air talent breaks (or, in some cases, de-script their breaks) and continually disconnect our air-talent from our main product. Instead of linking our programming holistically, our modern programmer seems to target our music for one medium (radio) and our air talent for another (podcast). Suppose our air talent can create content that can become its own performance after we strip the show of its meat and potatoes. In that case, we have programmed a fantastic presentation of two uses in our show! It’s as if we continually bring the focus back to ourselves with the assumption that our listeners are tuning in to our stations to hear us first.

CCM isn’t the only format that falls victim to this puzzle, and I understand the many reasons. Some stations, like mine, are small, automated, and reliant upon out-of-market multi-station voice trackers. This struggle results from a void of local manpower and maintenance resources. It creates a vacuum and distance between the music, the artist, and our listeners. I’m embarrassed to say that even on my own station if it weren’t for the RDS (Radio Data System) that embeds metadata that leaves the transmitter with the music and arrives on the FM receiver, stream, phone, or vehicle display in digital format, a listener could go years without hearing the name of a song and artist.

Many stations, however, are not like mine. Many can hold direct conversations with their on-air or voice-tracking talent and give direction with the hope of a unified projected voice that creates continuity between a station’s imaging, music, and personalities. This coaching of your station’s “voice” to the voices is essential. If you are a voice tracker, please don’t wait for a Program Director to come to you with requests; be proactive and ask what your show can bring that shares a voice with the station’s voice. If provided with a music log for your show, at least ask your PD if he or she would appreciate a mention of the music or artists every now and then.

Is there no show prep built into the music log for our 4-hour shift? Is mentioning and telling stories about a song and artist too easy and uncreative? Does it come across as a wasted break?

I don’t write this to criticize but rather to highlight a void and distance between the songs we use as the hook of hope and the listener who must go elsewhere to learn anything about the artists we rely on to paint our encouragement. We all aim to gather as many listeners as possible and keep them listening as long as possible. Still, we send listeners to YouTube and TicTok to connect with our artists when we have our own microphone and broadcast medium. How often do we fail to use our own tools to connect our main product to our main audience?

I will leave it to others to discuss the argument that artists receive “advertising” for their songs and are making their royalties, so why does it matter? I will leave it to others to discuss the argument that smaller stations need to be more creative with their imaging and promotions if they want to connect their listeners with the music. I’ll leave it to others to argue that you can get this music anywhere, so the nation’s best air talent needs to be your primary focus that sets your station apart. Please, small station, understand that your voice trackers are very busy, and their tracks are airing on numerous frequencies. Remember that you are small, and with the research, we know it’s all about personal connection. Remember when you started in radio, and your PD told you in aircheck sessions that people don’t tune in to listen to you; they tune in for the music? Well, that was then.

We rely on the music to connect, and it does. All CCMs have listeners who care about who is singing the songs that speak into their lives. The testing may indicate that the artists and their stories aren’t important, and the research might show that nobody cares. Still, I would bet a pile of points that the artists themselves, who devote their lives to prayer, practicing their craft, countless late-night concerts, repetitive early-morning radio studio appearances, and standing with our listeners for photos at your station’s listener appreciation event, would value even a mention of their name from our stations.

Whether our artists and their stories matter, they are the hook we use to connect listeners to hope and encouragement. The fact that these artists and their music have reached above all the hurdles and testing to find a place on our playlists should be reason enough to connect the song, the artist, their stories, AND our air talent to our listeners. It should be enough to show us that if the song is good enough to be played, we should recognize out loud and on-air that our entire hour isn’t all made up and the artists we play do actually matter.

Chris Thompson is the General Manager of 102.5 The Vine FM in Southern California. Contact Chris chris@1025thevine.org