There have been several attempts to do “listener controlled radio” over the past few years. Most have involved using some type of app to vote on what song should be next, and allowing listeners to somewhat program the radio station. Of course, there were always controls put on to prevent too much listener manipulation of the product.<\/p>\n
While I applaud the attempt at something new, I don’t believe anybody has the guts to REALLY do it – let the listeners take control of your radio station.<\/p>\n
I remember a feature that we started in Detroit a few years back called “MyPod” – where listeners would send in their 10 song playlist, and we would play their 10 songs, and let them tell the story of why the song was on their playlist. I thought this was somewhat innovative at the time, and it really stemmed from a book that I was reading at the time called “Lovemarks” by Kevin Roberts. In it, he talked about letting your biggest fans – those who love your product the most – help design the next generation of your product. Traditional radio stations like to THINK that they do this by conducting lots of research and focus groups – but I didn’t think that was unique enough, so we literally let listeners pick 10 songs they wanted to hear in the order that they wanted to hear them.<\/p>\n
Now imagine a format that allowed everyday listeners off of the street to do precisely that? And then you let them tell a story about why they like that song… 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How interesting and diverse would those playlists be? And how interesting would the content be? Listeners sharing their memories of a certain song, or what they were doing when they first heard it, or why it reminds them of a time that they miss.<\/p>\n
This may be crazy, but we need a little crazy right now. Broadcast radio is boring listeners to death. It has become predictable and stale at a time when it needs to be a laboratory to try new things. Not everything will work, but you don’t know unless you try. Innovation has to start somewhere – with somebody taking a risk. Will it be you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There have been several attempts to do “listener controlled radio” over the past few years. Most have involved using some type of app to vote on what song should be next, and allowing listeners to somewhat program the radio station. Of course, there were always controls put on to prevent too much listener manipulation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5i4nE-l","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":104,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=104","url_meta":{"origin":21,"position":0},"title":"A Living, Breathing Thing…","author":"admin","date":"December 31, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Early into my time in New York, I met someone who would become one of my closest friends. Mike Erickson was the Chief Engineer of WCBS-FM, and quickly impressed me because he's one of the most passionate people I've ever met in radio. We both share a passion for great\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=104#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=25","url_meta":{"origin":21,"position":1},"title":"Announcers versus Personalities","author":"admin","date":"November 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In all the years I've programmed radio, I'm not sure that I ever hired an on-air \"announcer\" - I'm not even sure what that title means or why ANYBODY would have the need for one. I've always searched for personalities. Even when I've hired a station imaging voice, I never\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"disrupt\"","block_context":{"text":"disrupt","link":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?tag=disrupt"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":64,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=64","url_meta":{"origin":21,"position":2},"title":"What makes you special?","author":"admin","date":"January 6, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"One of my favorite questions to ask a talent in an interview is \"what makes your show special?\" This is a basic question that shouldn't catch talent off-guard, but nine times out of ten, it does. Then I watch them reach for the \"stock\" answers - \"I work really hard\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=71","url_meta":{"origin":21,"position":3},"title":"The Disease Killing Radio","author":"admin","date":"May 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The moment that I heard the answer, I knew we were doomed. I remember asking a GM at a brand new CHR station that I was working with to define what ratings success looked like... what would be a good rank P 18-34 to define success. The GM said \"I'd\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=71#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=11","url_meta":{"origin":21,"position":4},"title":"The Fall of the Suits","author":"admin","date":"November 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Even though I've had fancy VP titles through the years, I've never identified well with the \"suits\"... you know, the people from the corporate office who think they know your market and your product better than you do. \u00a0Even though I was enlisted to be one of them, I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":86,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=86","url_meta":{"origin":21,"position":5},"title":"Killing Radio – In Their Own Words","author":"admin","date":"August 31, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend of mine was being \"courted\" by one of the big companies, and as is typically the case, he was told that in addition to hosting a show on one station, he would also be voice-tracking several other stations. They proceeded to give him a memo of instructions entitled\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=86#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}