If I Really Can't Say No Then I Really Can't Say Yes

By John Frost,
Goodratings Strategic Service

It's tough to juggle all the demands for time on your radio station. Whether it be a record company vying for a spot on your playlist, a salesperson lobbying for a promotion, or just a burst of creativity from the wacky, zany morning show your station has only so much time.

It's all about shelf space.

One of the simplest ways of managing this process is what I call the One-One rule. For every ONE thing you add to your station considering taking ONE thing away.

If you add one song, take another off. If you activate one promotion, then rest another.

Mr. Clutter is a sneak. The creative process itself tends to be about addition not subtraction. We don't like removing things from the station any more than we like cleaning out the closet and throwing away the shirts we wore in high school. The guys in the white lab coats refer to this as loss aversion.

Dan and Cheap Heath in their book "Decisive" describe loss aversion this way. "Imagine that we offer you the chance to play a game. We'll flip a coin; if it turns up heads, you'll win $100, and if it lands on tails, you owe us $50. Would you play? Most people wouldn't, because....losing $50 is so painful that even a potential gain twice as large doesn't seem sufficient to compensate."

The One-One rule helps you understand the value of time. The more you're able to understand its value the more purposeful you'll likely be in using that time.

If I really can't say no then I really can't say yes. Perhaps even more importantly by saying 'no' to clutter, you put yourself in the position to 'yes' to concepts that can help transform your station.