Donald Trump is set to return to the White House on Monday after 1,461 days as the world’s most public private citizen. Despite having been in the role of President of the United States and leader of the free world once before, it will still be a time of transition for the incoming President. And in that time of transition, it lends the question: how do news/talk radio leaders handle transition and their first 100 days when they step into a new role or situation?
To find the answer to some of our questions, we approached three news/talk radio Program Directors or Brand Managers — 95.5 WSB’s Ken Charles, 830 WCCO’s Brad Lane, and 1080 KRLD’s Drew Anderssen — for their insight into stepping into new roles. Each has taken over heritage brands more than once, as Charles has led stations like KNX News in Los Angeles, Lane helmed 620 WTMJ in Milwaukee, and Anderssen piloted WSB before taking over at KRLD in Dallas, among many other stops for each of them.
When asked for their philosophies on stepping into a leadership position at a legacy brand, each had similar, but slightly differing, strategies.
“A new perspective is good,” said Charles. “An outside view of a brand that has been static or doing it the same way for a long time is good. What’s bad, though, is when you come in with preconceived notions of ‘I’ve got to make changes because I’m the new guy.’ Then you’re going to break it. So, for me, I may come in with ideas, but I need to really learn the staff. I need to learn their strengths, their weaknesses, and I need to learn some of the history of the radio station. Because you can think a brand represents one thing, but find out very, very quickly it’s another, and all of a sudden you’re breaking it.”
“The nature of any PD is going to be to tinker, and to adjust and make, make changes,” said Anderssen. “And I think the really good ones stop and say, ‘Let me make a good assessment’ … For me, personally, I try to make my own decisions about what I observe rather than paying attention to what other people have told me about the brand, or, ‘well, we’ve done it this way for that long.’ That’s the one thing that you hear everywhere you go into a new situation.”
“You have to know what you’re stepping into and the situation that is presented in front of you,” Lane added. “But I would say first and foremost, if there is something that you have to do — and this would happen if you were going into a legacy or heritage platform or broadcast outlet or not — is you have to earn the trust and the buy-in of the talent and the programming staff that’s there. Without that, you can’t do anything because they’ve heard it all. They’ve seen it all.
“It’s not like I come in and it’s ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Brad Lane.’ I mean, they need to see who I am, learn what I’m about, and experience a culture shift,” he continued. “And as I’ve told people before, in many of these instances, you can’t come in with a bulldozer to what’s already been here. You want to make subtle, yet substantive, changes without alienating the hardcore loyalists who have been listening for 50 years.”
Building trust was a common theme addressed by the three news/talk radio leaders. They all admitted the only surefire way to build trust with their new employees is to show that they have their best interests at heart.
“That’s the most important thing,” Charles said. “Management is achieving your goals through other people. So if they don’t feel confident in me, if they don’t trust me, newsrooms and talk show hosts, they’re tough audiences. They spend all of their time asking hard questions, they have strong personalities, and they have strong beliefs. You need to, very quickly, get them to believe in you and trust you, because they’re not an easy audience. But once they do, they’re great partners.
“And so it is, by far, absolutely the most important thing you can do. I can come in and share my vision, but they’ve got to trust me before they help execute my vision,” he concluded.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all thing,” admitted Lane. “I can tell you that even being here at WCCO different shows and hosts have their own timetable for how long it took for them to really trust that I had their best interest at heart. Sometimes it’s just the case of of sitting down with them and saying, ‘If you believe that I want you to succeed, then things that I tell you in terms of coaching and the direction that the station is going are going to be met with a far better outlook and attitude than if you think I’m here to disrupt what you do and change you into something that you’re not.'”
1080 KRLD Brand Manager and Audacy News/Talk Format Vice President Drew Anderssen shared his belief that the early days of any news/talk radio leader’s new role should include learning about the intricate details of the new market, as much as you’re learning about the new station and the way it operates.
“I just think what works in one market doesn’t necessarily work in another market,” he said. “A lot of times, I’ll see brand managers that say, ‘Hey, this worked where I came from, in such and such place. We’re going to implement that here.’ And it doesn’t mean it’s going to work. Markets are different.
“It’s interesting, sitting in my chair in a couple of different companies now, one of the things that kind of makes me pay close attention is when a brand manager says this — and by the way, every brand manager says this — it’s, ‘Well, my market is so unique because dot, dot, dot.’ I think that’s the local knowledge that somebody needs, and you can’t discount that, but you also have to look across the strategy to make sure whether that strategy is in that market or in the format as a whole, to say, ‘Do we have the right plan in place here?’
“I don’t know that the best thing to do for a new brand manager would be to walk in and fire your morning guy because you don’t like the way that he sounds, or fire the noon guy because you don’t like something that he said. What he said might be totally in alignment with the market. What he said could be totally off of alignment of the market.”
Anderssen added that, despite growing up in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, he still learns things about it after working his role for the past two years.
“The market is a different market now than what it was when I grew up here. I’m still learning the market, and I think every brand manager that’s worth their weight is going to probably say, ‘I learn something new about my market, month by month, year by year.’ If you think about how our industry has changed, and you think about how audience measurement has changed, and you think about how consumption for news and talk, anybody who says that the market is the same today as what it was last year or two years ago is probably not correct,” he shared.
One of the largest challenges facing anyone stepping into a new role is the adverse reaction to change so many hold. However, the news/talk radio leaders Barrett Media spoke with said that that obstacle can easily be overcome when you’ve earned the trust of your new team.
“There’s a saying that I use: ‘If you don’t like change, you’re really going to hate extinction,'” said Anderssen. “And that, to me, is foundational in nature, in the sense that you have to constantly evolve. You have to constantly change and do things differently to hit that target. It doesn’t mean you’re not consistent in what you’re doing. It means the approach that you take might need to be different.”
“It always depends on where the station is, what the changes need to be, and the strategic position of the radio station,” added Charles. “I’ve moved around a lot … I had to come in and refocus some of the imaging, the positioning, the strategy and tactics of what we were doing, but the people were incredibly talented and in many cases, in the right position and doing a great job, it would be other things, and that does make it a whole heck of a lot easier.”
“I think once you give hosts and shows the latitude, once you say ‘Ok, what we want to do, here’s who want to be, here’s where want to go,’ people are instinctive. I try to do that and give them an incredible amount of freedom. And they appreciate that. It gives them the latitude to try new things and fail. It’s ok to fail if we all admit we failed and we all come back together and carve out a new path and a new way. I think letting them know that we’re all in this together … I think it certainly helps.”
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
