Let The Chef Do The Cooking

You have a widget for sale. You're in a competitive business, so you have to keep that widget fresh and innovative and adapting to a changing market.

Who are you going to use to design that widget? The sales manager?

No, of course not; you'll keep the sales manager informed and you'll listen to what the sales manager says about the market demand and what buyers are looking for in a widget, but you wouldn't let the sales manager actually create a new widget. Sure, the sales manager THINKS anyone can design a widget, but we all know that you want an ace widget engineer, or, better yet, a maverick widget creator. You want the Jony Ive of widgets.

Radio's product is entertainment. Decisions about what to put on the air are often made by management. Sometimes, they get it right. But usually, they get it... the same. A lack of creativity and a thick streak of risk aversion will do that. Got an underperforming station? Maybe there's room for a third Country station. Maybe we can load up on whatever syndicated stuff hasn't been cleared in the market. See what they're doing in other markets and do that, and have the corporate programmer set it up. Let the program director -- wait, we're calling them brand managers now, right? -- load it into NexGen and we're good.

Here's another way to do it: Give the most creative person in the building a chance, even if -- especially if -- it's a successful host. Even better, throw them the keys to a station and let them go wild. And if that seems crazy, it's being done, in a fashion, right now, by the biggest companies in the business.

Did you see the news earlier this week about iHeartMedia launching a podcast network headed by Charlamagne Tha God? Did you see how the huge roster of podcasts already in the works are not all spinoffs of "The Breakfast Club" but are original ideas with new talent? To iHeart's credit, they're tossing the keys to a podcast network to one of their biggest talents, and to Charlamagne's credit, he's taking the opportunity to create something different and fresh. Not all shows will work, but this is how you not only take advantage of a built-in audience -- you know many "Breakfast Club" fans will check out the new shows based on the Charlamagne imprimatur alone -- but find those elusive new ideas and new talent. You're letting the widget creator design new widgets.

There are other examples, like Dan Le Batard's "Le Batard and Friends" podcast network at ESPN. It's more than doing a bunch of podcasts with members of the morning show cast; it's finding people whose sensibilities fit with the show and host in question, and letting them create. Podcasting is one way to do that, and, as Charlamagne said at the IAB Podcast Upfront, it's a way to develop hosts who could someday be on the radio, too.

And that's another way to do it. Wouldn't it be interesting, instead of a cookie-cutter format with liner card readers, to let a popular host take the wheel and find and hire talent and, if it's a music station, determine the musical direction? I suppose the brief Bubba 98.7 experiment was something like that, but that situation was an awkward fit from the start. The right combination of host, station, management, and sensibility could lead to some interesting radio. It could always be tested on an HD channel, because you're not doing anything with those anyway unless they're feeding an analog translator.

Look, I may be way off here, but I've long been tired of getting press release after press release about programming changes that quote the Market Manager and even the General Sales Manager but don't quote the Program Director or the talent. That speaks volumes about how radio sees the creative process. I'm encouraged by things like the Charlamagne podcast network, and I hope we'll see more of that, both in podcasting and on the air. If the industry needs to, and I agree with you that this phrase is hack and clichÈ and should be banned, "think outside the box" (sorry), it needs to let some outside-the-box thinkers do the thinking.

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Need outside-the-box (sorry) ideas for your show? Try Talk Topics. No box there. Click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And this week, we have "10 Questions With..." none other than Geraldo Rivera, talking about his 50 years (!) in the media, his work at Fox News, and his show at WTAM/Cleveland. I mean, Geraldo Rivera.. You gotta read it.

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After 19 years, I still have a hard time putting 9/11 into words, so I'll defer to those more eloquent about it than I. Haven't forgotten, won't forget.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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