Jock In The Box

I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm not pretending to have any answers at all - just thoughts to consider.

Frankly, I've never had much respect for people with all of the answers. I think it's much better to have questions than answers. Radio is constantly changing because the audience is constantly changing. Thus, the answers should be constantly changing too.

For example: Is "The Voice Of God" imaging still the best way? I think not, and I suspect more stations will figure out that personality is the way to go. There will always be a place for guys with huge voices, but I'd rather have a stand up comic character-actor type of guy do promos and sweepers. I'm talking about a real person with a real personality rather than big guy sayin' stuff with lots of exclamation points (!!!!). That's a thought for another day since the challenge of convincing out of touch PDs and VPs that their great copy misses the mark is a post unto itself.

Today's Question: Does Jack need jocks?

In some markets, the answer is clearly yes. No offense Chicago, but the goal is to get the numbers to go up. I'd say the same to Dallas, but that ship may have sailed already. Down river. Then again, Jockless Jack in L.A. seems strong. Charlie in Portland appears to be doing even better. Take a look at a Jocked-Jack named Ben in Philly. What a difference the format has made there, jocks and all.

Whether or not Jack needs jocks seems to depend on which station we're referring to. That makes sense, because radio is a local medium (knock knock! Free FM, I'm talking to YOU!). The answer absolutely should vary from market to market (knock knock! Infinity! You guys renamed a station in Dallas to match a station in Detroit WHY? That's another rant for another day).

What if...

I find myself wondering if Jack can have it both ways. Can he have air talent while running jockless? Are many of these stations going to hire jocks because... well... because that's what radio stations do?

I think it's time to try a new approach to air talent for Jack.

What if, instead of hiring air talent around the clock, they hire entertainers who do as much off the air as they do on - if not more - and then back up the air talent with a promotions department that more closely resembles an events planner than a marketer.

I used to date a lawyer in a major law firm. The firm she worked for was very competitive when it came to recruiting the best of the best of young lawyers. They had staff positions dedicated to events planning. One day, they might be setting up a Vegas style poker party for a few hundred people. The next, they might be planning an afternoon at the races. Or who knows what else. The point was to go beyond wining and dining out of town recruits. They wanted to form personal connections between recruits and lawyers, not to mention between recruits and recruits.

I used to end up attending those events with my then girlfriend, and I often found myself thinking "why isn't radio marketing more like this? Why aren't we trying to bring listeners together?"

Why indeed.

So here's what I'm thinking: What if Jack had a traditional morning drive show, plus three other non-traditional mostly off-air dayparts.

Morning drive would be a high-personality show. Outside of morning drive, the day would be jockless, excluding a total of three one-hour live shows. There would be an hour long live show jocked at lunch, another hour long live show jocked at 5pm, and another hourlong live show jocked at 9pm. The real job of the air talent would actually be off-air - attending events.

Remember the days of mobile billboarding, where you'd have interns driving around station vehicles? I'm talking about an idea like that - on steroids.

When Sam Malone was at KRBE, one of the things he did that I thought was very effective was his "Sammy's Singles Sections." He'd take a bunch of single listeners to cooking school for a night. Or take a ton of them to a baseball game. Or a grocery store meet and greet, complete with numbers and a chalk-board, where you'd see notes like "Hey number 132! You're cute! Care to meet me in frozen foods? I'm blond and blue, #42!"

Have you seen what's going on at MeetIn.org? Here's a quote from their site: "MEETin.org is a word-of-mouth effort to bring people together from all over for fun, low-key events without paying membership fee's. MEETin Groups is an example on how the internet can be used as a powerful tool to help make new friends without cost."

Tomorrow night in Minneapolis, a group of Meet -Ins are meeting for dancing to reggae at The Cabooze. In Dallas, it's beer and trivia at The Flying Saucer. In NYC, it's a night of Home Groan sketch comedy. These are just everyday people finding an already planned event and meeting for the sake of making new friends.

Let's face it: radio stations aren't doing a good job of getting involved in the communities they serve. The industry is still stuck in the days of putting stuff on the air and waiting for trends to see how many people listened. Not the most effective strategy in my opinion. We need to be bringing people together. Real people - in person. I'm talking about starting book clubs and chess clubs. Poker games and dogdge-ball games. Movie nights and ski nights. Single-parent brunches for after they've dropped the kids off at school and after work singles mixers. Crossword puzzle get togethers and Sudoku tournaments. And a million other things. Three events a day, each hosted by a jock and chronicled on a quality user-interactive station website where listeners who met can get in touch with each other - a place where people can go to find out what events are coming up as well as seeing pictures of events they attended (or missed)..

The idea is to build a passionate following by bringing listeners together.

Match.com proved you could make money by helping single people find dates. Go there. Surf the site. They've got an idea that works. Friendster proved you could become an international phenomenon by helping people find friends. Go there. Surf. See. From law firms to tech firms, they've realized that competitive recruiting means creating friendships in entertaining out-of-office settings. It's time to steal a page from their game-plan.

The on-air signal of a radio station is only a piece of the puzzle. Rather than waiting for people to come to us, we need to do a much better job of going to them.

I welcome your thoughts at: thatguy@thisisthebox.com