David G. Hall achieved legendary programming status in 1991 when he reinvented news and talk radio at KFI, Los Angeles. Now he’s an international programming consultant for radio stations and talent on four continents, in five languages, in both music and spoken word formats across all platforms: on-air, online, and on demand.
“A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life.” – John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood
I met David in 1985. He was a cub news reporter at KFBK, Sacramento, when I had just been hired to do the morning show and soon became program director. I liked him immensely and gave him the wisdom of my experience. Eighteen years later DGH was the PD who hired me to do mornings at KNX, Los Angeles. The student had become the master and our friendship has flourished with age.
We talked recently about coaching talent. Everybody who’s worked for him will tell you the same thing: he’s insightful and inspiring. He doesn’t big-time you. He talks like he’s your best friend or brother and notices things most radio people don’t. Those insights came to him naturally from the beginning:
DGH: I was an avid, I mean, like obsessive, listener to radio before I started working in radio. In my case, mostly Top 40 and some AOR, KFRC in San Francisco, and KZAP in Sacramento, which were two pretty diverse radio stations, but that’s what I listened to growing up. And so when I started to actually work in radio, even in my earliest jobs, I was fascinated by the difference between the experience when you’re in the studio and when you’re listening in the car and I’ve never forgotten that.
I think one of the most important points for me when I’m coaching people is to always consider the experience of the person in the car. I can’t tell you how many times I’m in a meeting with somebody, even just yesterday, I remind the people on the radio that the people in the car, in the case of the example yesterday, a woman in her mid-30s, in the car, in traffic, maybe a screaming kid in the backseat, an idiot for a husband that she’s on her way home to, you know… She just wants to escape, man.
And she just wants to smile. And I think if you start with that and then kind of think about everything you’re gonna say and how you’re gonna say it, thinking of her is super important. I think a lot of people in radio forget that because it’s a very different experience when you’re in a small studio.
BNM: It’s not all about you, the on-air talent.
DGH: That’s right. It’s not about you at all. It’s about the listener. Another thing that’s really important to me, and this goes back to my being on the radio myself, is catching people doing something right. A lot of people in radio have experiences with program directors or managers who only ever talk about what’s wrong. ‘Why didn’t you do this?’ and, ‘I heard you do that. What were you thinking?’ And worst of all, ‘My buddy at the country club said that he heard you saying, blah, blah, blah, don’t do that’.
Like the buddy at the country club or the wife of the market manager is now programming the radio station. So I try really hard to catch people doing stuff right. I’m a big believer in if you did it once, even if there’s a glimpse, I know you can do it again, and I know you’ve got the talent, or you wouldn’t have even done it the first time.
And so when I’m listening, and I listen to hours and hours of shows, all these people that I work with all over the world these days, I listen for that glimpse. I listen for where they nailed it. And then I play that audio and say, okay, how do we get here again?
And how do we get here more consistently? I find in that process I end up helping reinforce the positive. So it’s not like I’m talking about things that they can’t do or haven’t done. I have audio examples where they actually nailed it. They actually hit it out of the park and I can start with that. And then the other side of that is not focusing on the negative, I think of it as I help people not shoot themselves in the foot, because we all shoot ourselves in the foot all the time. I did when I was on the radio, you know, you have, everybody has.”
BNM: Do you have a coach’s list of five or ten commandments?
DGH: No. I’ve worked with consultants who do two things. One, they’re cookie-cutter. So, ‘Hey, this worked at X market, so we’re going to do it here.’ I never do that. Never do that. ‘Hey, I did this at KFI, so we’re going to do it here.’ Never.
I try really hard not to be cookie-cutter. It’s all about that person’s talent and strengths and matching that with the audience expectations and where the audience is, where the listener is, as I talked about a minute ago. So I don’t really have a list, but things like that do come up all the time. Like, I find myself saying, you wanna say something that’s so engaging that people actually look at the radio or stay in their car.
They get to work, they park, they’re gonna be late for work, but you’re so engaging and this is so funny or so interesting or so informative or whatever, that they sit there for a few minutes and they make the investment because that’s the kind of behavior that makes people come back often and drives that horizontal TSL, that across time TSL.
BNM: On-air people have sensitive egos. How do you deal with different people by
pushing different buttons?
DGH: I try to work with everybody on their own basis. For example, when I was programming
KFI, there was one show that I met with in the office every day after the show, every single day.
That’s just what he needed. There was another show where it was never in the office, it was
always a hamburger somewhere to kind of take the desk and the office and the corporate feel
out of the conversation completely.
There was another show I worked with where it could only be positive, only ever be positive. And so I was always looking for positive examples to be able to say, ‘more of this’. And I didn’t have the other side to be able to say, hey, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot here.
Because when I would do that, they would just, they would obsess with that. And it’s kind of like that even today. You know, there’s a big guy, a big show I work with in Spain, for example, where our meeting is a meal at his house that he prepares. He cooks a paella, we talk in the kitchen, and he’s like a laser. So we’ll be talking about, you know, whatever things going on in culture and things going on in Spain or whatever. And then he’ll like lock in on, ‘Okay, this thing I’m doing at 7:30, it doesn’t feel like it’s working for me, I need you to help me with that.’
And then we’re like in the zone and then we go pour some more wine, have some more paella. So it’s all, it’s all different, you know.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
NEXT FRIDAY, PART TWO: DGH talks about coaching producers and shows with
multiple hosts.
