LISTENING to the Radio – plan it in

The Talent Coach: Craig Bruce

If you’re a content director the only way you can really improve your radio station is by listening to it.
 
Genius!
 
I wonder how many of you are committed to monitoring your radio station?
 
Are you doing it once a month?
 
Once a fortnight?
 
The most successful CDs I’ve worked with would plan a minimum 4 hour monitoring session into their calendars every week.
 
I spent a year working with Brian Ford as his assistant content director at FoxFm in 2001, (talk about getting a 12 month crash course in everything-you-need-to know-about-radio.) Brian was running the Fox and also managing the Today network, so he had a fair bit on his plate, but every Wednesday without fail we’d be at his house for a monitoring session.

Wife Julie would bring out a seemingly endless supply of Nescafe blend 43 and those God-awful Arnotts Sultana flavoured biscuits which I would eat begrudgingly for fear of starving.
 
We’d have the radio on the Fox, then we’d listen to one of our competitors, then back to the Fox when the arvo jock was on the air.
 
Working with Brian showed me the difference between casual listening which most of us do and listening with genuine intent. Every message, every talk break, every song segue way was analysed and then discussed. Brian was obsessed with the design of the product, he wanted everything on the station to make sense for the listener and all of it to be as close to perfect as possible.
 
This sort of professionalism and attention to detail filtered through to every single member of the Fox product team as Brian created a high performance culture that still exists to this day and is one of the reasons why FoxFM is still a powerhouse brand.
 
I know it can feel weird working from home listening to the station once a week. Yes, you’ll need to convince your GM that it’s a good use of your time and yes there’ll be people at the station who will think you’re down at the shops smoking ciggies and playing Space Invaders (I’ve just had a flashback to 1982).
 
However the improvements you can make in those few hours of focusing on your station are worth it.
 
Here’s another type of listening you could try.
 
Every fortnight I would listen to my breakfast show in the kitchen as I was getting the kids ready for school without the usual notepad and headphones to block out distractions. I was trying to consume the show like the average listener does with it playing in the background and competing for the attention of a normal morning at home.
 
If I didn’t notice the hottest story of the day being talked about on the show, then as far as I was concerned, it didn’t happen.
 
If I didn’t get a sense of the workday tactic or music position in our promos then I would check to make sure we were rotating them often enough or revisit the scripts to look for a better creative that would give the message cut through.
 
If I noticed the show sounding messy and hard to follow then it would give me a chance to address possible over-talk and practise better listening during the breaks.
 
As you can see there are different types of listening sessions you can do.
 
There’s the planned “listening with intent” monitoring which can help you improve the station incrementally every week, whilst also sending a clear message to your product team that execution matters.
 
Then there’s the listening sessions where you’re trying to replicate what happens when the breakfast show is competing for the attention of your listeners.
 
Both will give you a good sense of where your station is at and if you’re genuinely interested in making your station better, you’ll commit to this sort of listening every week.
 
 

 

About the Author

Craig is the former Head of Content at Southern Cross Austereo. Responsible for getting some of Australia’s best talent on radio, his true passion has always been the development and mentoring of young talent. He now works as a talent coach and radio consultant.
 

craigbrucecoaching.com

 

 

Tags: