A Trail Of Bread Crumbs Back To 1973: Let Them WIN!

I got a call from a PD at one of my client stations, which I have been consulting for about 15 years. For purposes of this story, we'll call him Joe, and we'll call his station WAAA. Joe is a good and thorough program manager. He gives his on-air staff considerable latitude to use their best judgment both on and off the air when doing their jobs. In most ways, WAAA would be a great example of excellence in management, music and marketing. It is rare for Joe to call a jock meeting for any other purpose than to congratulate and motivate his team.

Last week was a fairly normal week at WAAA with the usual news, music and on-air giveaways. That is, until Friday morning. That's when Joe, who is both PD and morning guy, received a message from an unhappy listener. When Joe returned the listener's call, Mary was surprised to hear from him. Joe said to her, "I call everyone back, especially our listeners. How can I help you?" Mary told him she was thrilled to have won tickets on Monday to a Jason Aldean show. Then on Thursday, she was listening to WAAA at work when she heard the announcer giving away tickets to see a NASCAR star and his car at a local event. She was overjoyed when she won that prize, too! She wanted that prize for her husband and couldn't believe the magic of winning two prizes in one week!

Then, to Mary's disappointment, the afternoon announcer informed her that she wasn't going to get the prize after all. He had just discovered in the computer that she had won a prize earlier in the week and that the station's policy is one winner per family per 30 days. Adding to her unhappiness was the less-than-friendly manner in which the announcer informed her of the rules. Joe apologized to Mary and told her, "You listen to our station. We love you for that, and we want you happy. Enjoy both prizes. We do have policies, and the only time I want you to really sit out a contest is when you have already won that same contest. If you win Jason Aldean tickets, then please sit out other plays of Jason Aldean ticket giveaways. If you should win our big $1,000 prize game, we'd ask you sit out the remainder of that game." Mary said she understood and Joe hung up thanking her for listening and for calling him to chat.

Later when Mary came to pick up her prize tickets at the radio station, she told the receptionist that she had won two contests. The receptionist informed her, "Company policy, in fact, corporate policy, is that you can only have one winner per family per 30 days." Imagine Mary's unhappiness at being told once again that she was breaking the rules. The receptionist grudgingly handed over the prizes and went back to her spider solitaire game. But then Joe found out about this episode and called a staff meeting.

At the staff meeting, Joe told the air and front desk staff at WAAA that he wanted all listeners to be treated like gold. The only time we would enforce the rules was when a listener had won the same contest twice. Otherwise, we would congratulate them and thank them for listening. The receptionist asked, "But what about corporate policy?" Joe, never big on being told what to do by the corporate suits, told the crew at WAAA, "While I respect the good intentions and policies of our company, as far as I'm concerned, we all should do our best by the listeners. As long as I'm PD of WAAA, that's the policy here."

Joe called to ask me if he had made a mistake, and I yelled at him for having any doubts. I told him he had handled the situation exactly right. What happened to remembering who we really work for? Look how, in 30 years, we have gone from treating listeners like gold to treating them like cattle. What happened to celebrating the winners of our contests? Now they just get handed tickets by a busy and disinterested receptionist.

Joe has been in radio even longer than I have. Like me, he remembers cue burning 45 rpm records and weekly jock meetings. Way back, I began my career inauspiciously at WSUX in Seaford, Delaware. We never thought of it as "sucks radio." Instead we were the proud voice of Sussex County, Delaware. At about the same time, Joe was beginning his career at a small station in a very big state. At that station and at WSUX, we were taught that the listeners were the reason why we were in business. Joe and I both remember the spectacle that took place when a listener would come to pick up a prize. We would go greet the winner, then bring them in to the studio and show them where we broadcast from. We'd give them their prize and have a picture taken with them. We handed them a Polaroid and kept one for our hall bulletin board.

Now that our offices house multiple radio stations, we need, now more than ever, to greet our winners and treat them right. If your prize is handed out by a receptionist in a lobby festooned with the call letters and logos of five different stations, then shame on you!

I walk into somewhere between 100 and 150 radio stations every year. My old boss, George Francis at WMYI in Greenville, South Carolina, told me he could tell the most about a radio station by sitting in the lobby for 20 minutes. I know what he means. If the station was tight, you could tell it. If it was fun, yet still professional, you could tell that too. Remember, that is where the listeners show up for their prizes. We had a policy at WMYI that no prize was passed out by anyone other than an on-air personality.

Joe's call woke me up. These days, when drawing the BIG flow chart of radio stations, we start with GM, DOS, PD, Business Manager, Chief Engineer, and then draw lines all the way down to part-time air, production folks and the janitor. What a flow chart! Elegant, thoughtful and often just plain WRONG! Where is the listener in your station's flow chart? At Joe's station he wakes up early and does a morning show, plus music and promos, and gives guidance to his air folks -- all to serve the listener.

Everyone at Joe's station loves him ... even his manager, though he wishes that Joe would err a little more on the side of revenue generation. Joe thinks about that. We often talk about small compromises and blemishes on our product for the sake of making money. Yes, we market all kinds of products for all kinds of folks in our town. We love our advertisers, too. But Joe has always seen his job as that of building audience. Leave the revenue generation to the folks who can take the quantification of our audience and turn it into dollars. Joe's job is listener happiness. To be blunt, Joe is a good guy, but if rules get in the way of the right and sensible treatment of a listener, Joe says "to heck with the rules." Rule #1 at WAAA ... is that the listeners are #1.

It's not about the prize; it's about winning! Another PD of mine told me the story of a bus trip from Wausau to Green Bay to go to a Packers game. Half of the folks on the bus were listeners, and the other half were sponsors. My friend passed the time by playing "Let's Make a Deal" and raffling off small prizes. One of the sponsors on the bus was a guy who owned three car dealerships in the area. He probably had a net worth of more than $20 million. But there he was, sitting in his bus seat wearing a Packers jersey and hat, looking at his raffle ticket when my friend drew a number to give away a pen with the station's call letters. This man, who had enough money to buy the radio station, the bus and the pen company, said "Damn!" under his breath when his number wasn't called. It wasn't about the pen; the guy just wanted to win!

When I was back home in Seaford earlier this year, we were looking through some old family photo albums. There was a picture from 1973 of my dad winning a push lawn mower from a local hardware store. He'd won the lawn mower in a raffle at a home show in the high school's gymnasium. Was it about the lawn mower? No, it was about winning! The event was important enough to make it into the family photo album.

I learned in 1973 at WSUX that radio was about two things: listeners and sales. These two constituencies, if served correctly, will make any station grow and be successful. I also learned that listeners were the most important part of radio. Some stations today would do well to follow my trail of breadcrumbs back to 1973.