Your Radio Station Suffers When This Is Not A Priority

Football season is back. One of my favorite shows is “A Football Life” on NFL NETWORK. Through interviews, old Polaroid photos, and videos the show takes you on a journey of a football star’s personal and professional life. Gosh, it’s so riveting.

YOUR RADIO LIFE

Imagine that same show concept for your life, “A Radio Life” featuring YOU. It would tell a story of your early days of how you got into radio up until now. I'm wondering if YOUR radio life looks something like this today:

Wears many hats
Very busy
Struggling work/life balance
Available 24/7

CREATIVITY IS THE FIRST THING THAT SUFFERS

I keep finding people in radio who wear a lot of hats and are massively busy. Because of this they have a hard time prioritizing creativity. Tasks, meetings, paperwork, and other left-brained (important) duties push creativity a few spots down the ol’ priority list.

If this becomes your “normal” the impact may not be felt for months. It’s a slow, steady erosion. Creativity gets replaced by frustration and mediocre ideas. If the saying, “Whatever you say, boss” is popular at your radio station, chances are creativity has been sucked right out of the team.

HEY LEADERS…READ THIS!

The great GMs, PDs, and ODs understand that the creatives on their team need space to not only create, but to collaborate and brainstorm in order to birth great ideas.

Rushed and burdened creativity is like a looming darkness that hovers over you. It sticks around like a fog and prevents ideas from ever percolating.

HOW TO CHAMPION CREATIVITY AT YOUR STATION

So, this isn’t a free pass for the creatives in your building to get out of work. But I have a hunch that your radio station is doing too much. Here are 3 things you can do to lighten the load in order to free up some time to create:

1. Simplify your promotional calendar. Do less, but better.
2. Stop emailing after hours. Use the “send later” function to auto send tomorrow.
3. Don’t interrupt brainstorming meetings with perceived emergencies. Respect creativity.

If you’re not the boss, but have some control over your calendar and radio life, consider this quote from pastor and teacher Levi Lusko: “Elimination leads to concentration, which leads to imagination, which leads to multiplication.”

Eliminate to create.

Todd Stach is the Christian Format Editor at AllAccess.com as well as coaches and consults with his business, Beyond615.com, where he strives to build confidence with clarity and creativity.