Talent Coaches Tell All At All Access Audio Summit Panel

Top: Lane, Johnson Bottom: Geller, McVay

Four of the top talent coaches in radio -- MIKE McVAY, RANDY LANE, TRACY JOHNSON, and VALERIE GELLER -- gathered for an ALL ACCESS AUDIO SUMMIT 2021 session THURSDAY (4/22), telling stories, offering tips, and discussing the future of talent coaching.

GELLER advised radio PDs never to discuss content without the audio playing in the background to take the conversation away from subjectivity ("This is what the listeners heard"). She also counseled that liking the talent is critical, because hosts can tell if a PD doesn't like them, but if they sense the PD does indeed like them, "They'll do anything for you."

McVAY remembered hosting mornings and having the PD telling him only what he did wrong, and LANE recalled the same experience as a host in PHOENIX. GELLER added that PDs should never hotline talent on the air "unless you're going to lose the license or the building's on fire." McVAY said he only hotlined talent to tell them something good.

While JOHNSON said he didn't have a similar experience, he had to come to the realization himself that he wasn't cut out to be an on-air talent, prompting his shift to programming. But he did have a story about a host at a client station who seemed nervous, and who explained that he had been with a station for four years and was only called in by the GM to be told that the only reason he was at the station was to read live spots to make the station more money, and that if he didn't like the contract in front of him, the GM could "go down to WALGREENS and find 12 guys on the corner who could come in here and do the job that I'm doing." Advocating positive reinforcement, JOHNSON defined coaching as finding "the things they do well and make them great at those things."

"If you as a program director secretly think that the guy or a woman is an idiot and you could do it better," GELLER said, "you're never going to be a good coach. So I think you have to really have to have that 'come to JESUS' talk with yourself. There's a reason that some people are actors and some people are directors. Not a lot of people can do both."

LANE cited the influence of "The Inner Game of Golf" and "The Inner Game Of Tennis" author TIM GALLWEY, who used a Socratic approach to coaching that asked questions rather than issued instructions, and advised setting up a relationship based on trust and a willingness to fail.

Programmers, JOHNSON said, need to have a vision of what the station represents emotionally to the audience, making evaluating talent easier. Taking the station mission further, and referencing LEE ABRAMS' advice, JOHNSON advised that a station needs to go "all in" serving its targeted audience quadrant, which, if done properly, will generate complaints from outside the target.

GELLER added that "normal people don't call radio stations," and never to let "one or three nasty letters" affect anything. She also suggested that humor is one way to smooth over complaints. But she added that some managers are inclined to hire a less controversial and easier to work with talent than someone perceived as a "wild horse that can't always be tamed," and that her inclination is to "go with the wild horse."

LANE said that listeners want to hear hosts give their points of view and stories about them but that he would steer clear of politics, because that talk will alienate part of the audience and challenge their beliefs while "not changing anyone's mind." JOHNSON said politics are not off the table with his client hosts as long as the talent does the topics the right way, depending on the host's relationship with the audience. GELLER noted that controversial topics work when they arise organically, but not when they seem forced.

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