By Jon Holiday
My friend Ken Sutherland is a retired radio man. Now an author, he was a jock, newsman, PD, salesman, sales manager, general manager, network executive and eventually owner of 10 radio stations. Here is a true story he told me:
“In 1971, I was doing overnights at Top 40 KELI, Tulsa, Oklahoma, learning my craft. A letter came from a teenage girl in Houston who had been in a car accident the previous Sunday. She suffered minor injuries, but her boyfriend was killed. Beside herself with grief, she didn’t want to go on. She was considering suicide when her parents picked her up from the emergency room.
“Their car radio was set to 1430 AM, a local Houston station. But it was after midnight, and the Houston station had signed off for maintenance. On her way home, she heard me, riding in on 5,000 watts of AM power from 450 miles away. Her letter read,
“Ken, the encouraging words you spoke over the introduction to that song gave me hope to continue living. You saved my life.”
“I still have the letter,” Ken said. “The song was ‘I Am A Rock’ by Simon & Garfunkel. The intro timeis four seconds. Four.
“What could I possibly have said to give that girl hope in only four seconds? I don’t remember. But it was concise. Four seconds is hardly enough time for a rambling monologue.
“Some might think of it as a miracle, others would call it happenstance. I don’t know. I was just bumbling along trying to learn my chops. The benefits were accidental.
“I had to think hard about it before I understood the lesson of radio’s greatest power: The true, one-on-one emotional connection of a live, human voice, speaking directly to you. No other medium can do it. Whether you’re relating to a song, raising money for charity, or promoting a tire sale, radio is a person-to-person medium. True in 1971, true now.”
It’s evident that while Ken was working at a tightly formatted top 40 station he learned the power of “”word economy”. Having a solid on-air staff is one of our client station’s biggest strengths. We’re aware that today’s Program Directors have time pressures on them which mean less time for coaching. That’s why we stress the importance of our coaching, mentoring and talent development with client stations.
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