If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, you can bet that he would pay attention to every detail of his radio station. Every sweeper, every segue, every break would be meticulously designed. He would hire interesting and unusual people that actually had something to say. Not mindless drones that recite contest times and bark for the website, but real communicators who would have a story to tell.<\/p>\n
If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, he would protect the product and fight against adding units just to hit budget. He would limit spot loads to a reasonable and tolerable level. And when NBC wants to buy a “jock chatter” break over a song intro forcing the jock to talk about some lame TV show as part of their spot buy, Steve would say no – because \u00a0he knows it’s terrible radio and not authentic.<\/p>\n
If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, he would take risks on songs that he really believed in, while paying careful attention to giving the audience what they want… even if they didn’t know that they wanted it until he made it available to them. He would balance art and science to his liking. And his ratings would be amazing because he wouldn’t stop until he succeeded in building a massive brand.<\/p>\n
If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, his SVP of Programming would be constantly pissed that he’s not “following the corporate initiatives”. And his Sales Manager would be constantly complaining about him to the GM that he’s “too difficult to work with”.<\/p>\n
If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, his GM – after hearing all of the complaints from the sales manager – and after talking with the SVPP behind closed doors – would fire him, even though the ratings were really good.<\/p>\n
If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, he would be quickly fed up with the radio industry because of all of this, and take his genius to new media where it will actually be appreciated.<\/p>\n
In other words… if Steve Jobs were a Program Director, radio would quickly do what it has done to so many other creative types… push him out….<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If Steve Jobs were a Program Director, you can bet that he would pay attention to every detail of his radio station. Every sweeper, every segue, every break would be meticulously designed. He would hire interesting and unusual people that actually had something to say. Not mindless drones that recite contest times and bark for […]<\/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-27","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-r","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=39","url_meta":{"origin":27,"position":0},"title":"Finding Radio’s “Why?”","author":"admin","date":"November 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a huge fan of Simon Sinek. In his book \"Start With Why,\" Sinek proposes that the best and most innovative companies and leaders have a strong sense of purpose, or \"why\". And much of the success of the most innovative companies is due to their leaders abilities to inspire\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=15","url_meta":{"origin":27,"position":1},"title":"Quality versus Quantity","author":"admin","date":"November 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Money shouldn't be the goal - money is the reward you get for ACHIEVEMENT OF the goal. When you stop to think about how many successful companies understand this - big brands like Apple, \u00a0Google, Jet Blue, etc, you also quickly recognize how few radio companies understand this principle. \u00a0It's\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":64,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=64","url_meta":{"origin":27,"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":104,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=104","url_meta":{"origin":27,"position":3},"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":137,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=137","url_meta":{"origin":27,"position":4},"title":"Radio’s Greatest Era, or the Last Chapter?","author":"admin","date":"August 28, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Not a day goes by lately without more bad news for the radio industry. From major layoffs, more voice-tracking, eliminated positions, major heritage brands disappearing, to wild ratings swings, and bad quarterly revenue reports, it feels like the end of our industry is inevitable. Many of those who still have\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=137#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.domtheodore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/DomTheodore-e1725206995694.jpg?fit=619%2C625&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.domtheodore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/DomTheodore-e1725206995694.jpg?fit=619%2C625&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.domtheodore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/DomTheodore-e1725206995694.jpg?fit=619%2C625&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18,"url":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/?p=18","url_meta":{"origin":27,"position":5},"title":"Budget Season","author":"admin","date":"November 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to dread budget season when I was a RVP of Programming at one of the big companies... mostly because it never made sense to me. The process would usually start with corporate sending out a spreadsheet asking me to outline the on-air lineup station-by-station, and whether or not\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","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=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.domtheodore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}