Mark Elliott Media, LLC

 PERMANENT VACATION 

Hello my fellow Radio Pros, 

After 44 plus years of being a mad scientist in the radio business, where I worked with over 100 stations in multiple formats in all market sizes as a programmer, morning personality and consultant, I decided enough was enough at the end of 2023 and exited stage right. 

It's been two years and the best way I can explain exiting the biz is it was difficult to go from working at 150 mph down to about 10. The people I had relationships with began to fade because they still had busy careers. In short, life gets extremely quiet and I have to say, I enjoy the quiet. Time has become my most valuable commodity and I choose to spend it wisely with a very small circle of family and friends. 

Those of you who remain in the radio world have your work cut out for you. I hear the stories from the people I continue to stay in touch with and I gather it's a real challenge. The best advice I can give you is radio has always been a challenge. The challenges are just different. As radio evolves, the challenges will be many, but If you choose to remain in radio, then it's up to you to make it a better business for yourself and others. It has to come from the bottom up and not the top down. Your attitude must be outrageous and contagious in order to inspire others. Be proactive and not reactive. Spend time in thought every day and continue to educate yourself on the business. Finally, surround yourself with people you trust and admire. If you do this, I promise you'll improve your surroundings and have tremendous success. 

I wish you all the best of luck. - ME 

About my website.- I have not updated my website since December of 2023, so the information you see is mostly outdated but you might find something that will spark an idea or help you find your way out of a creative block. 

THE DREAM SCHEME 

Every now and then, someone will call or email me about a master strategy I developed years ago called The Dream Scheme, that outlines how to plan for an upcoming year. I've decided to post a condensed version of The Dream Scheme, to help those of you who have been left to figure things out on your own with little to no guidance from your leadership. 

This will get you started...

I'm sure you've heard the expression "management doesn't plan to fail, they just fail to plan". This is something I learned very early in my career, and it still holds true today. While It's important to have a plan, it's also equally important to give yourself enough time to develop one. Everyone is different but I've found July 1st is the best time to start the planning process for an upcoming year. It depends on how detailed of a plan you want to create. 

The reason I start the process on July 1st is there are seven key planning stages that require the entire management team to get involved. By doing this, everyone feels like they've had a say in the process so when it comes time to implement the plan, they have a vested interest. This process also helps to reinforce the chain of command through action. 

Here are the seven key stages involved, and I recommend they be executed in this order because one planning stage leads to the next. 

S1- The SWOT Plan - Identifies the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for each station in your cluster and your competition. Do one that is sales based and another one that is programming based. The SWOT is what you'll work from to develop the other six stages. 

S2- The APEC- Layout your Annual Promotions and Events Calendar. Include the promotions and events you do annually but leave room for adding others throughout the coming year. You want to plan a minimum of 6 months for each to give you time to sell them. (see my 11 Immutable Rules of Promotion on my website under services/presentations) 

S3- The LPU- Listener Profile Update. This is a tremendous exercise to get the entire staff involved. It helps everyone understand who the average listener for each format is because you’re identifying common characteristics for each station’s audience. This should be completed within two weeks after finishing the SWOT and APEC. 

S4- The SPS- The annual Sales & Programming Summit. Plan a day or a weekend to meet with the management team out of the office at a hotel or a resort. This is where you take the results from SWOT, APEC and LPU to discuss ideas on how to achieve your sales and programming objectives for the next year. SPS allows sales and programming to get on the same page by helping to understand each other’s challenges. It also improves communication between both departments. 

S5- The BIC- Brand Imaging Checklist. This is where you identify what defines your brand and outline your brand’s strengths which helps determine your audience awareness to create each station’s story. The goal is to develop what image you want to project to your audience and advertisers for each station. 

S6- The POA- Plan of Action- This lays out your entire sales, marketing, promotions, digital and programing plan for the coming year. Even though your plan is complete, you'll want to be flexible to adjust as needed and to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities that may present themselves throughout the year.  

S7- The QPT. This is a function of programming only that requires the OM and PD's to do a Quarterly Programming Tune-up at the end of every quarter. I have developed a 14-point programming checklist to make the process easier that I will provide with any initial consultation. 

Finally, make sure you utilize realistic drop-dead dates for each stage to be completed taking into consideration your staff’s current workload. This is another reason why you want to start on July 1st. I realize budgets for next year won't be approved, but you can use your current budget and adjust based on how sales are trending this year. When budgets are approved, you can make the necessary adjustments then. In fact, the advantage of creating a plan as I've laid out helps to ensure you have a more accurate budget to present for approval. 

As you can see, there is a lot that goes into planning for a new year and why it makes sense to start six months in advance. If you wait to plan during the last two to three months of the year or wait for budgets to be approved, you will find yourself behind the eight-ball when the new year begins. 

Best of luck developing your scheme. 

IMAGING CHCKLIST 

While I was looking for the The Dream Scheme, I ran across an imaging checklist of mine I'll post TFN for stations who still image locally. 

Continuous 
Station ID/s 
Quick Calls 
Jock ID's 
Main Positioning Statement 
Attitude Sweepers 
Attribute Sweepers 
Artist Sweepers 
Morning Show Sweepers 
At Work Imaging (ID's/Sweepers/Features)
In the Moment Sweepers 
Listener Testimonial Sweepers 
Local Sweepers 
Music Quantity Open/Sweepers (if you still use this method) 
Music Image Sweepers 
Social Media (Voice Activation/App/Website/Miscellaneous Digital)
Tell A Friend 
Stop-Set In's and Out's 
Weekends (Kick Off/Promos/Sweepers/Buffers/Listener Testimonials/Features)
Umbrella Branding (Ex: 99 Days of Summer) 
Seasonal Imaging (Tie In's for all monthly events and holidays) 

Morning Show 
AM Buffers (in n' out of breaks) 
AM Stagers (including main positioning statement) 
AM Show Sweepers 
AM Attitude Sweepers 
AM Listener Testimonials 
AM Attribute Sweepers (benchmark features & times) 
AM Prompts (directs listeners how to participate with the show) 
AM Bumpers (plays after bits back to music) 
AM Promos (FOMO/Conditioning/Next Day/Missed It/Generic/Weekend) 

Promos 
Stand For (Main Positioning Statement explained) 
FOMO 
Major Contest 
Winner Recap 
Major Contest Recap 
Voice Activation 
App & Website 
Social Media & Miscellaneous Digital 
Artist Image 
Music Image 
Listener Testimonial 
Listen At Work 
Attitude & Attributes 
Station Events 
Weekends 
What's Happening (Local) 

MORNING SHOW TIPS!  

Teasing is still an effective way to build time spent listening (TSL). However, there is a right way to tease and a wrong way to tease. Today, many of you give away what you're going to be  talking about in the tease which defeats the purpose of doing them. There are 5 filters associated with a proper tease. Before executing a tease on the air, it should pass one of the 5 filters to achieve the ultimate goal. FOMO, the fear of missing out 

1 Intrigue 
2 Mystery
3 Suspense 
4 Sensationalism 
5. Humor or Sarcasm 

If you're not sure about how each one of the 5 filters are different, research them so they become more sticky for you. 

THE BEST TSL CLOCK 

When it comes to format clocks, programmers have come up with all sorts of tactics over the years and while they had the best of intentions strategically, when PPM finally became a reality, we found out the thought process programmers utilized was nothing more than a shot in the dark. The bottom line is your audience doesn't listen the way you think they do. 

Over the years, the now defunct radio trades would interview me about my time spent listening (TSL) because I was able to achieve 12-14 hours a week consistently which was among the highest in the nation across all market sizes, so I must have been doing it right. The one thing I did was go against all the conventional wisdom many successful programmers shared with me over the years. I figured if all the other programmers were following their lead, it would create the sea of sameness radio still experiences, and going against the grain would allow my stations to stand out and it worked more often than not. 

Here is one of the 12 song format clocks I used to achieve the levels of TSL I did demonstrating category rotation. Based on your format, it's up to you to determine what eras go where and the positions you want to place your imaging and talk breaks. 

:00 ID> 
Power
Power
Regular 
<Break>
Power 
Regular 
Power 
Power 
Regular
<Break>
Power 
Regular 
Power
Tertiary (possible drop) 

I always ran a tight format playing on the most familiar hits because listeners never get tired of hearing their favorite music and the hits are the hits. They're not making any more of them from previous years. I looked at an hour of music like a pizza and I wanted each slice to be as consistent as the last. If the listeners were coming to me to get a standard pepperoni pizza, there better not be a few slices with anchovies and mushrooms.

 DAVE DID WHAT? 

One of the final formats I launched in 2017 was Dave FM, an Adult Hits approach designed for Montana and Utah. Why Dave and not Jack or Bob? We simply wanted our own identity. I admit when Jack and Bob first made their debut, I wasn't a fan of the format. It sounded like a bunch of different formats jammed into one and I wasn't that far off. 

It took meeting with the late Joel Folger, who explain the method behind the madness and he's the one who got me excited about creating Dave. I'm going to share the key points of the Adult Hits format Joel shared with me to help explain how Dave FM came to be. 

Coming up with the name Dave took a while because it had to be one syllable and easy to remember. I did a couple of focus groups asking for help from the local markets and nothing materialized. I was driving back from Utah to the airport in Las Vegas and somewhere between Mesquite and Las Vegas, the name Dave popped in my head and it hit me, just about everyone I've met named Dave was likeable and funny. When I mentioned the name to Joel and the powers that be, everyone immediately jumped onboard and Dave FM it was. 

Jack FM used the slogan, "playing anything we want" and Bob FM's slogan was We play everything", so naturally we wanted our own name and our own slogan to solidify our own identity so we went with "Dave plays anything". Out of the gate I wanted to pound the name Dave so I incorporated it into the main identifier and the slogan. As a programmer, I always believe in markets where ratings are determined by top of mind awareness, you can never identify your station enough. 

Since Dave FM was a DJ free format, we relied on imaging to create an image for a character named Dave, who basically hung out 24/7 playing his favorite music from his basement. We used a lot of drops from movies, TV shows, commercials, or anything we could find that listeners could relate to. Adding a female shadow voice also gave the station more depth and definition. 

The main key to understand about the Adult Hits format is it's the ultimate listen at work station Therefore, you need a powerful signal that has the ability to penetrate the walls of a business or the format can potentially die on the vine. Adult Hits is high TSL format that needs a captive audience, like people who listen at work to be successful. 

Here is a sample hour from Dave FM, to give you an idea of how it sounded when I was overseeing the corporate programming. 

Simple Minds- Don't You Forget About Me 
Daft Punk f/Pharrell Williams- Get Lucky 
B52's- Love Shack 
Smash Mouth- Walking On The Sun 
Prince- Erotic City 
After The Fire- Der Kommissar 
Electric Light Orchestra- Do Ya 
Madonna- Vogue 
Post Malone- Circles 
Duran Duran- Hungry Like A Wolf 
No Doubt- Just A Girl 
Van Halen- Jump 
Michael Jackson- Billie Jean 
KC & The Sunshine Band- Get Down Tonight 
Culture Club- Time (Click Of The Heart)

What do you notice about the music that stands out? 
 

Radio Espionage is a division of Mark Elliott Media LLC 
Los Angeles, CA 
W: markelliottmedia.com

E: mem@markelliottmedia.com 
P: (818) 259-0091
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