If you've seen very much research, you've already noticed the following:

Music tests for adult radio stations, particularly if they ask the opinions of women, come back with something that men who program radio stations don't like very much. You see that a huge number of hits are soft. They are romantic. They are about love and love lost. Imagine that!

Men who program radio stations firmly believe, for the most part, that slow music is evil. They want their radio stations to be exciting. How are you going to do that with a lot of slow songs? Sound familiar?

What a lot of stations do to fix this is pass the problem along to Selector. They tell the scheduling system to keep the tempo of the music at a certain level, and force the songs played out of newscasts and the top of the hour to have more tempo and energy. The result: Rotations are complete nonsense. Daypart control is damaged, or else that too is maintained, but the rotations are thrown even further out of balance.

In short, programmers don't believe the research. And they do what they need to do to get their way.

There is a lot we could talk about. We could examine why the research seems to contradict the common sense or at least the desires of the programmers. We could talk about techniques to minimize the damage from trying to solve the problem with the scheduling system.

But let's back up and talk about the original goal: An exciting radio station with the pacing and energy you want.

Just to come clean about where I stand on this, I have a tendency to believe the research. And I think that music has only one job to do. It must be liked. Period. Nothing else.

The music played on your radio station doesn't have to adjust your tempo, or give you a cool "flow" coming out of the news, or provide an excuse to pump your fist in the air!

How ELSE can you create an exciting, energetic radio station?

The announcers must clearly communicate that they are passionate about the music.

The most popular songs are all about passion. They are intense. They can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to produce. Huge teams of people work on a hit album. They care. The fans care. The writers of the song care. The singer cares.

There is so much energy and passion in even the "softest" song. But if you want to take part in all of this energy, then the announcer has to care, and show the audience he/she cares.

Be, for just a few seconds, the biggest fan that artist ever had. Have empathy for the listener who is a fan. Nothing complicated about that, right? Right.

So there is ZERO excuse for that passion and caring and excitement not to be there, and to be there every break. Fire anybody who won't or can't keep up with the fans, the producer, the writer, the singer...

The station must be a cheerleader. Do you actively, frequently tell the listeners that you play the best music? You must! Communicating your overt benefit is not an option.

Don't forget, you (should) spend a lot of time, energy and money doing the research and scheduling. Not to mention, most of you have devoted many years of your life trying to become really good at just this sort of thing. So tell the listeners what you're doing that you are rightly proud of. Or, if you think they already know, REMIND THE LISTENERS.

Music montages of upcoming great music, promos, liners, sweepers, jingles... you must have all of these going, and they need to have passion and energy.

That doesn't mean you scream at the listeners if you program a station for adults. That kind of energy is the kind of energy that has meaning to a 17 year old Metallica fan. So think about what an adult in your target age group who is passionate about something sounds like when she's talking to her best friend. What words does she use? Duplicate that passion. Fake it. Hey, this is an acting job.

And how hard can it be when you're building prerecorded elements? You can go back and do it over and over until you can hear the commitment, the excitement, the credibility just jump out of the speaker (and if it is all an acting job, great. Somebody earned their pay).

If you target women, use a lot of women in your promos, liners and sweepers. Capture passion and excitement the way they express it.

And by the way, this applies to your news and other programming elements as much or more than it does to the music.

You do a lot of things on your station, right? And that means that there is a lot of opportunity to be excellent, and to be excited about it.