We Need More Silence – Part 2

Think about this: Your listener has an average of seven short-term slots of memory. And her mind, heart, and spirit are busy with things important to her: family, health, work, friends, appearance, not having enough time to juggle all she has to do, more month than paycheck. 

When we play or say something on the radio or online, we’re hoping she will lend us one of those short-term slots of memory. That she will lean in, pay attention and remember what we played or said. Your effectiveness in doing this is going to be dependent on:  

• her interest level in what you are playing or saying
• how much you engage her heart
• and how concise and obvious you make your message

Each of us has important stuff coming at us that we need to talk about on the air – that new promotion or offer, that new fundraising appeal, that new contest, that upcoming concert . . All good ideas. 

Here’s the challenge: throwing more different ideas, promotions, and appeals at your listener just makes it more likely she hears you as Charlie Brown’s teacher (“wah, wah, wah…wah, wah, wah!”) or even worse, that she tunes away or even turns you off.  

We don’t want this to happen. The goal is helping her stay and to come back. 

So, here’s the question: For each new item you’re adding to your station or program, what will you stop doing?  

More is not more effective. More concise, more obvious and fewer messages. Now that’s more effective!  

The CMB Momentum Conference 2022 was a special week with amazing worship music and outstanding speakers. For us at Finney Media, there was one speaker who made some great points in ways we’ve never said, but we thought you should hear.

Brant Hansen (of Brant & Sherri on-air and the Brant & Sherri Oddcast) gave a sobering and very hopeful talk on our role as Christian media.

Our world has “OD’d on freedom” and that has resulted in an unsatisfying, unhappy culture. Epidemics of depression, anxiety, lack of purpose and suicide. And that’s where we come in.

Many secular voices are giving advice on how to get through this . . . but few of them talk about forgiveness.

A culture that’s all about anger and despair, and we’re often the only non-anxious media voice, who will tell them the truth about…

We couldn’t have said it better. And we’re thankful Brant did! For such a time as this . . .

If you have the opportunity, we recommend you WATCH Brant’s entire half hour talk.* Sobering…hopeful…and worth it!

*A valid CMB membership and password required

If you get to know your listener, and you gear your program or station or podcast more toward your listener, you’ll have more listeners. 

Said a different way, those of us who think about our program or station or podcast all day are not good at judging what our listeners want, unless we better understand who’s listening, where they’re listening, and what’s on their mind and heart when they’re listening. This means we have to take our personal opinion out and listen to them. 

How do we know this? We’ve asked. In research. And we’ve observed what results in more listeners. After  organizing and advising programs, stations and podcasts for over 40 years, and observing what the highest performing entities do, I’m  convinced more than ever that listening to your listeners and acting on that information really is the secret sauce. 

The following “Four A’s” are how we recommend you think about this: 

1. Attitude. Listening to your listener is an attitude . . . of putting your personal opinion aside and pursuing what your listener thinks, what preferences she has, how and where she listens, and what will cause her to stay or come back more often. 
2. Ask. The Right Questions of The Right People. True story. I once was the Program Director of an NFL team’s radio flagship station. There was a change in the team’s front office leadership and along with new people, they brought in a new song to play at home games to celebrate the team scoring. Problem – fans loved the old song they had played for years when the team scored! And were very vocal about it. After the team scored in their first home game they played the new song, fans booed! The team decided quickly to go back to the original celebration song. When we asked team leadership how this could have happened, they said they’d done research and the new song was more popular. We then asked where they had done the research. They said they’d researched people in a town . . . 500 miles away, where likely no one knew the song or cared about the team. In fact, there’s a rival NFL team in that city! That’s a story of researching the wrong people.   
3. Acknowledge. You will be surprised. Often, what we discovered from listeners is different from what we expected. We’ve been surprised by Christian radio listeners’ appetite for worship music (it’s huge) and their interest in humor (it’s big) as part of a Christian station or program. And surprised by that same audience’s rejection of chatter about pop culture being a part of a Christian station’s programming recipe. Chances are when you listen to your listeners, you too will be surprised!  
4. Act. On the information. It doesn’t count if it’s not coming out of the earbuds. Listen to your listeners, then focus on how you’re going to make the sound they want happen. 

…anD pick the best version

In LAST MONTH’S BLOG, we considered crafting your audio content to be better edited for an audience who will leave if you don’t get to the point quickly.

This month, let’s look at the same topic from a different angle. How should we craft our audio so listeners turn it up and not off? So our short-attention-span-theater listener is glued to your sound?

Here’s a thought. Give yourself some choices by editing the same creative content multiple ways.

Often, when we produce a piece of audio, we have only one version of the audio. But we have the technology now to more easily do different edits. Different reads, different beginnings or endings, different voices.

I know. You have limited staff and time. I’m not suggesting that this can be done for every piece of audio. But when you do focus on something, especially creative, give yourself options.

And then choose the version or versions that best fit your purposes. Giving yourself these choices will help hone your material to its best edit. To find the one most likely to bust through the busyness and chaos of her noisy life and actually be heard.

Or you may discover that using several versions really keeps your listener on their toes!

To help illustrate this, we had an image idea using Nicole C. Mullen’s version of Because He Lives and combining it with Scripture. Knowing that high anxiety seems to be the state of the world right now, perhaps an image with music and words about less fear might help.

Take a minute and listen to the different versions our production folks developed:

How to Use this Sound for Creative Heart Connection

Just guessing but you likely preferred some versions more than others. You might have even heard edits you would have made for even stronger impact.

And that’s the point.

We need to hone our production – particularly the pieces that could have biggest emotional impact – to the strongest version(s). In our crowded media environment, it’s one more step toward not being Charlie Brown’s teacher!