Radio's #1 Challenge

Paul Kaye, VP of Music Brands and In House TV Productions at Rogers Sports and Media in Canada, and one of North America’s top programmers and talent coaches, will be a featured speaker at next month’s All Access Audio Summit.

Here are some highlights from our conversation about the importance of expanding radio personalities into other dayparts, and why coaching talent is a smart investment. Talent has become the driver of radio.

Talent has become the driver of radio.

Personalities are now the number one reason listeners tune in, and while personalities have always been a much-needed ingredient to build a successful audio brand, personalities are an even bigger driver than music. Sadly, the industry doesn’t spend enough time educating our content directors to effectively coach personalities.

Around the world, businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating coaching cultures. Not in radio. Programmers generally learn along the way from the programmers that came before them, attending conventions, and hopefully being exposed to talent coaches."

Rather than specialists, we’ve created generalists who are fairly good at several skills.

"Content directors' and programmers' time is divided in so many directions. Rather than specialists, we’ve created generalists who are fairly good at several skills.

One minute programmers are expected to be adept at scheduling music, building the perfect clocks, and devising brilliant promotions. The next minute they’re expected to keep the audio processing balanced, write imaging, conjure up creative ideas for clients and only then evaluate the morning show. Programmers get very little time to focus on the most important part of their job, working with the on-air talent."

When we do get the time to coach talent, we focus on the wrong things.

"When programmers do get the time to coach talent, they often end up focusing on the wrong things. Programmers tend to focus on quick fixes, like technical adjustments and formatics.

An effective coach highlights a show’s strengths and growth areas. An effective coach helps to develop a talent’s character in a way that connects emotionally with the audience. Those kinds of skills help a show transcend the competition and the market.

Once you get to that level, all the technical stuff doesn’t matter."

RL: Since the cume in most markets is the same or higher in afternoon drive as mornings, do you see an opportunity to build personality brands in the afternoon?

If I could wave a magic wand, I would put personalities in every daypart.

"It’s a powerful way to deepen the connection with your audience, expand your brand and boost ratings. Listener expectations are different in the afternoon, than they are in the morning, however, so it may make sense to play a bit more music, but we need to find ways to move personalities and content to the foreground in this daypart. Again, if personality compels audiences to seek out your brand, why wouldn’t you do that? Adding more personality to afternoons works across all formats too.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would put personalities in every daypart. Just like scheduling music, I’d program each time slot a bit differently, but I’d be fixated on casting entertaining and interesting characters across the entire schedule. In the 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s every daypart was a performance. There were air talents who could deliver personality over an eight-second song intro or in a 60-second content segment. Interesting characters are more important than music jocks today.

At Rogers, we have personality benchmarks in afternoon drive like Daryn Jones on Kiss-FM Toronto. Daryn is a stand-up comedian and hosted MTV Live. We just hired Marc and Millions from a competitor to do afternoons at Jack in Calgary. Rogers has personality afternoon shows in Vancouver, Edmonton, and other markets as well. And more to come!

As a programmer, I’d be less worried about music rotations and how great the imaging sounds and be more concerned about having an entertaining morning show and an afternoon drive show with personality.

Then after casting those two dayparts, you could start filling in the rest of the schedule with personality. Companies are going to have to find a way to help programmers achieve that and put the focus back on talent and their development if we want to satisfy the needs of the audience.

Radio’s number one challenge is to train content directors to effectively coach talent and develop personalities who distinguish our brands in the audio space."