Raining In My Heart

10/14/1994

“It’s raining so hard…I wish it would rain all night. (Do-dah.) This is the time, I’d love to be holding you tight. (Do-do-de-de.)I guess I’ll have to accept…the fact that you are not here. (Do-do-diddley-do.) I wish this rain would hurry up and clear…my dear.”

Oh, baby, baby.

I wax poetic…with a reason, I guess…and you hope. I woke up this morning and it was raining. For those of you reading this Editorial, you’re probably saying, “What’s the big deal?” And it probably isn’t a big deal where you live. But here in the land of the instant sunshine, rain is a surprise to most, a blessing to some and a downright shock to others.

When it rains in Los Angeles, drivers go completely insane. Nobody here has a clue how to drive when the pavement is wet. Get real. It never rains in Southern California. (I wonder if I’ll hear that today?) The only thing that drips on our streets is blood. And we know how to drive through that…hit the gas, duck down in the seat and swerve from side-to-side to make a hard target.

No so water. Especially water mixed with the oil that has accumulated on the asphalt all summer. We average about one wreck per mile. It makes for a slow commute.

Which brings me to the convoluted point I was trying to make when I began. I think.

Relatability. As it relates to radio. More specifically, how it relates to how your audience relates to your station.

Did I lose you? Or can you relate?

I make this point because I’m one of the few people in Los Angeles who can drive in the rain while listening to the radio (at the same time chewing gum and maybe even making a mobile phone call). And while I was doing all those things on the way to work this morning (while singing the lyrics that began this muse), I noticed that not one deejay was relating to what I was having to relate to. Given the fact that Howard Stern is on satellite out of New York, I could understand why he wasn’t talking about the weather. But the rest of my favorite stations had no excuse.

In today’s programming world of computer-generated music lists, quarter-hour liner cards and force-fed slogans, most deejays have lost contact with their audience. Feel free to check me if I’m wrong, but if you lose contact with your audience, you’re in a world of trouble. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t expect the guy I’ve got tuned it to know I spilled coffee in my lap, but it is raining outside, fella, something that hasn’t happened in almost a year. The raid does affect my drive and the rest of my day. Am I asking too much that you at least acknowledge the fact? I know you’ve got to pimp that slogan and give away those concert tickets and read those stupid jokes you heard on last night’s Letterman show, but damn it, “Can’t You Feel The Rain?” I can.

In our haste to cut costs please the internal audience (managers and sales people for the most part) of the radio station, it is easy to lose focus on what we as programmers are paid to do: Increase the audience share. You often we paint broad strokes and forget about the fine brushes that make our radio station a favorite with the listeners.

In today’s radio world, it’s almost impossible to set yourself apart from your competition simply with the music mix. Unless you’re extremely lucky, or in a tiny market, you are competing directly with other stations in your format and indirectly with many that sample the same music mix.

One of the elements that can’t be duplicated by other stations in your market is your air talent. A good personality can rise above the mathematics of the format and edge your ratings higher. Of course, the converse is true…bad personalities can also tube it. So it is imperative that you take the time to make your deejays be more than automatons. They must relate. And to relate, they must cover the basics.

The simple things are the most obvious…the most important…and the most often overlooked.

Listening.

A program director must listen to the radio station. Not in the office. Not just on the way home…but the way the audience listens. A good programmer should take off one weekday each month and drive around the market with the radio playing loud. How can you expect the audience to listen to you don’t? How can you expect the audience to relate if you can’t? One day each month spent listening…and nothing else…can make a big difference.

But it shouldn’t stop there. The air staff should also be forced to listen. It’s not enough that a personality cuts to a traffic report. The deejay has to be able to relate to traffic problems…or weather problems…or whatever to make a connection with the audience. Every month, each deejay should spend his shift in the car driving to work…or driving home…or visiting the malls…or wherever the audience is when the deejay is usually on the air. The personality must know what his listeners are going through…not just guess or assume.

Time spent with your air talent, one-on-one, is also extremely important. Don’t expect them just to do their job. Demand it. Take the time to let them know what you want and explain it in a way they can understand.

In this business of communication, we too often fail to communicate with those who can make our station a success. Or maybe we don’t know how.

Lorna Ozmon of Ozmon Media is one of the industry’s leaders in developing talent. She’s developed techniques based on theater arts and psychology disciplines. She has seven keys that she considers important in coaching air personality development. Next week, in this column, you can share her ideas and maybe translate them to your staff in a way that could give you immediate results in the sound and relatability of your station.

I can’t listen them now, because I hear Slim Harpo singing, “Raining In My Heart” on the radio. I don’t know what station because I just can’t relate.

Maybe next week.