Programming Archives - Lyles Media | #1 For Urban

Programming To Inspire, One Listener at a Time

October 28, 2021 by Harry Lyles

Programming, Harry Lyles, President Lyles Media

With all the competition radio has today, your station must sound as if you want to win. Listeners know if you are serious or not. With more competition than ever, you need to do much more to stand out.

Your programming values must be at the core. All the elements and individual parts of the station must play together and connect with the audience.

When you create a format that challenges the status quo and creates a culture of warmth, dignity and belonging, the listener has a safe and familiar feeling and responds. This is especially true when your mission is to respect one listener at a time. A listener is not an accident. The word is singular because you only talk to one person at a time.

When format decisions are made through the lens of the listening experience for the consumer, they come back day after day.

To score in the game of radio, the performance of your best elements matters when you hold yourself accountable for the end result. Radio, more so today, must be performance driven for the local audience to maintain their attention on you. In short, if you’re warm, positive, having fun with class, you’ll win listeners.

As we’ve said before, a ratings problem is the gap between where you are today and where you want to be. Low ratings represent a time for change. The right change or adjustment can be a huge opportunity for improvement for a different result. To understand a ratings problem, it is important to go where the problem is occurring, collect the facts and address the problem with a clear, concise description of the issue that needs to be addressed. Oftentimes, there are more than just one problem.

We wouldn’t be a good radio partner if we didn’t end with a call to action to work together. We’re always looking for incredible stations to partner with. Reach out if that’s you.

Lyles Media is not your typical radio adviser. Before we get started, we like to get to know you and your objective. Tested in all size markets, we will always have your back by giving you our absolute best. For a confidential conversation, call Harry Lyles at (404)403.0091 or email at hlyles@urbanradio.com.

Filed Under: Press, Programming

Ratings Issues And Problems Are New Opportunities in 2017

April 12, 2017 by Harry Lyles

Harry Lyles

Low radio ratings in any size market are often the result of misguided programming. It happens in all formats that do not generate ratings needed for station sales success.

Often, management does not even know or see the issues or problems. They are hidden in the programming work done every day. Consistently low ratings showcase problems that represent where you are right now, and where you could be with either an evolution or a revolution of change. The good news, in 2017 low ratings can create a new opportunity for improvement and success for your station.

The new opportunity starts with a conversation about your vision and meeting your market objective. In the New Year, the Lyles Media Group stands ready to help you increase your ratings and revenue. If it is time to break through the market clutter of today’s competitive radio environment and stick out and score ratings, we are here to help. Say hello @ (404)403.0091.

Have a Happy and Successful 2017!

Filed Under: Programming

Sales & Programming Working Together

January 20, 2015 by Harry Lyles

Everyone has an important role in the success of a radio station. Programming provides the manufacturing of the product, and the sales department sells the product. This is a vital relationship. All parties must understand exactly what that product is. All aspects of the station’s format should reflect what that image is. That becomes “the plan.”

Inside successful stations the attitude should never be us against them, sales against programming, or programming against sales. The basis of the relationship should be an easy one-to-one. Working together on the same “plan.” Sure, there will always be some tension, but the question is, are you on the team to protect the station? Or are you in this for personal gain?

Programming has goals just as sales people do, but you can’t let your personal goals effect the “plan” of the station. Having your own plan and vision is OK, but what’s more important, is the station’s plan.

The station “plan” has to have support from sales and programming. As sales people, you are an extension of the plan that is set forth by a creative programming department. To create success, any radio station today must stick to the “plan.” When you stick to the “plan” more money is created for the station. There isn’t a programmer or consultant in the business that wants to kick dollars out of the door. If programming has the right plan, the numbers go up, sales dollars will happen, and management is happy.

A lot of people think radio is show business, and that’s not the case. It’s a business with a “plan” supported by sales, as well as programming. Understanding the “plan” is where employees either make or break the station. Never take something personal when it is turned down by programming. The plan has a line, and that line is protected by the programmer and the consultant. Sales must understand that if you degrade or defame the “plan”, it won’t work.

Sales should not be on the street making promises, and bring things back to the station, and dictating what the client wants. In some cases, you are asking for embarrassment in doing so. Remember, the programming door should always be open to help sales to answer the why and when questions for contest and promotions.

The station has a position, and an image to protect. If everyone in the station doesn’t protect it together, it will fail, and fail fast. Understand who you are, what you are, and where you are going with the station programming “plan.”

Programming can’t let certain contests and promotions that are on-air get in the way of station’s “plan.” Understanding the station’s programming “plan” when it comes to the demo, lifestyles, and your market is where you win. Create success collectively as a team and the dollars will roll-in, and all is well!

Filed Under: Programming, Sales

3 Axioms of Urban Radio News That Can Score Points

October 12, 2005 by Harry Lyles

Filed Under: News, Programming

Black Talk Radio – The New Programming Future

January 1, 2003 by Harry Lyles

The Black Talk Radio Network Programming Objective

To build a new syndication radio network that fills a massive need in the urban radio industry. The time is right to create, design, and implement new programming concepts outside of the existing network offerings available to Black broadcasters. The BTRN will develop new products and services over a wide spectrum, and utilize the latest concepts of producing, marketing, clearing, and fulfilling network programs.

The New Rationale

The radio industry is rapidly changing, and along with these changes come new challenges for all companies. It is a new day for network providers and syndicators that provide products and services to the industry, especially to Black Radio and its listeners. Syndication and Network programming, once thought to be a dying industry, has suddenly become extremely important to radio stations across America. Black broadcasting companies are feeling the need to stay competitive, and find new ways of doing business in an extremely competitive environment. This sudden demand for high quality and relevant programs has revitalized the syndication business, and that means more talented competition is popping up daily.

In order for BTRN to become competitive, it is essential that we develop new strategies and techniques. Also new and vibrant talk programs, with fresh new talk perceptions for Black radio to embrace.

The New Challenges

The challenge in today’s new business environment is to create new and exciting talk programs that can attract affiliates, are efficient to produce, and capable of financially standing on their own two feet. Meaning, that these new talk shows build an impressive affiliate base, with strong quarter hour audiences that help generate sufficient revenue individually and collectively, and become new cash flow sources for The Black Talk Radio Network.

We live in a new world of accountability. We clearly understand that it is imperative to demonstrate a substantial ROI (Return on Investment) for any new talk program that we create. The building blocks of any project must work in harmony to achieve our primary objective.

The New BTRN Solutions

It is time to develop a new talk syndication/network company that proliferates the Black Listener perspective, which includes programs that reflect the needs of both AM and FM radio listeners in all size markets.
It’s time for a new talk radio syndication/network to provide programs to Black radio stations that do for them what Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Dean Odell and Laura Schlesinger have done for mainstream radio stations.

Much of this will mean that BTRN will have to find and develop the talent to compete in this sometimes aggressive, and emotional world. We can do it. Let’s face it, we are charting relatively new territory, and we may be challenged to invent and develop new ways of doing business that will help us achieve our goals.

We need to design 3 or 4 new program concepts that can be aired on many Black radio stations in both major, and secondary markets. We need to develop programming that will fill a void, and generate enough ratings that advertisers will see the need, and hear the need to be involved. These talk shows should be new, cutting edge concepts, and programs that the radio stations will want and need, and that does not exist in syndication today. These talk programs will be designed to battle with other major syndicators for positions of prominence on leading radio stations in all size markets.

We must also develop new and compelling targeted marketing concepts for station recruitment that incorporate all of the latest database marketing and recruitment techniques being used by syndicators today.

Simultaneously we want to develop new revenue opportunities that will help make each of these new programs a profit center for The Black Talk Network.

Finally, we want to establish a dynamic perception of BTNR in the eyes of America’s radio community, especially among Black Broadcasters. We clearly have an opportunity to establish a foothold in the Black radio community that is currently owned exclusively by no one.