Today I’m glad to bring in a local pinch-hitter, Tom Bender, Regional Manager and Sr. VP for Greater Media Detroit:
If I hear the term "outside the box" one more time, I think I’ll go nuts. Someone is always encouraging managers and programmers to think outside it, yet managers are intensely uncomfortable with the results.
The need is completely clear: as an industry, we need….and our listeners crave….innovative, stimulating programming. Either they’re going to get it from us broadcasters, or without any fanfare, they’ll just depart to a medium that will provide it.
Our response is far less adventurous. We spend hours fighting over the last 20 songs on a 300 song playlist and whether or not the audience is up for them. We write and re-write liners to make sure that we get every product attribute we want them to remember like a mantra. We listen to the "other guy" on a song by song basis and laugh when they play a bad-testing track.
So….where’s the entertainment? Where’s the stimulation? Where’s the compelling reason to remember to tune in your station tomorrow? How’d we get stuck in this rut?
After all the software, statistics, Arbitron analysis, and competitive crises, let’s remind each other what the objective has always been:
We’re here to entertain people. Audio wallpaper just doesn’t cut it anymore.
–Tom Bender
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