Most radio stations do not lose because the staff is lazy, because it’s too competitive, or because they are underfunded. They lose because the team is built wrong.
I have worked with winning teams and losing teams, and the biggest separator was not effort, intelligence, or budget. It was team composition. Over time, across hundreds of stations, in multiple countries, I built a team infrastructure simple enough to fit on an index card and powerful enough to change your cluster. Plus, I used to read liners off index cards, so I’ve always had a soft spot for them.
Every winning brand needs three types of people. The Creative. The Executor. The Culturalist.
If you have all three, you can build something people remember. If you are missing one, your station can still function, but it will underperform (unless you go with Function 104.3, “your home for the hits-ish”).
The Creative Makes It Interesting
The Creative is the person who makes the station interesting. This is the person who gives your brand shape, tone, surprise, energy, and texture. They know how to take the same songs, the same clock, the same assets, the same contests everybody else has, and turn them into something bigger. They create the little sparks that separate a station people have heard of from a station people talk about.
Right now, this is the most undervalued person in radio. Why? Because creativity is one part of the business data cannot immediately validate, and radio, like most industries, now treats data as currency. We trust what we can count. We lean on dashboards and KPIs. But even the best data only tells you what already happened. Creativity is what makes people notice you, remember you, and care about you in the first place. Only then is there something to measure. That is the order.
Without a Creative, you get a station that checks all the boxes and wins none of the heart. It is nobody’s favorite. And nobody’s favorite is not a strategy (unless you go with Nobody’s Favorite 104.3, “your home…for now”).
The Executor Makes It Real
The Executor is the one who makes sure it happens. This is the person who turns the Creative’s intent into action. They make sure the promo gets dubbed in, the weekly meter report is generated, the webpage gets built, the stop sets hit on time, and the talent and sales teams get what they need. They are the person who makes sure a concept does not die in a text chain after someone writes “great idea” or drops a flame emoji.
Every great station needs this person because great ideas without execution are just better-looking disappointments — which, ironically, is also how I’m described in my dad’s contact list.
Because execution is visible, it often gets elevated above everything else. It feels managerial. It feels measurable. But execution alone does not create relevance (unless you go with Relevance 104.3, “your home”).
When the Executor is missing, the station may sound fun, but things fall through the cracks. Deadlines slip. Details get missed.
Creatives need Executors, and Executors need Creatives.
Like Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. One had vision. One knew how to turn that vision into something timeless. Separate, both brilliant. Together, dangerous. Ironically, Quincy did not work on Dangerous. Michael in theaters April 24. Not an ad. Just a reminder.
The Culturalist Makes It Matter
Then there is the Culturalist, which may be the most misunderstood role in the building. The Culturalist is the person who knows the event of the moment. Bieber doing small sets at the Troubadour. Ye doing back-to-back nights at SoFi. Thinking about how to use OutKast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad” on the air, depending on how tonight goes.
They understand how the audience feels, what is about to pop in culture before others catch it, and how to take a market’s temperature. They know the difference between what is happening somewhere and what matters here. Not every national story belongs on every station. Not every TikTok trend means something in your town. And not every viral meme deserves airtime.
The Culturalist knows what fits your audience and your market. They are the person who knows you have one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything your station ever wanted in one moment. They answer the question of whether you capture it or let it slip.
When that person is missing, stations sound late (unless you go with Late 104.3, “you’re not home”). Late to the things that form fandom in the first place. And when you get late enough, you find yourself doing what another station already did simply because it now feels okay. That is how brands stop leading. It is also how you end up using throwback hip-hop references to close your last two paragraphs and listening to your own station thinking “today was a good day.”
When Leadership Dives Too Deep Into the Data
Businesses overhire for data. They overhire for reporting, process, recaps, and all the things that are easy to defend in a meeting full of non-creatives.
Meanwhile, they underhire creatives because hiring managers often are not creatives themselves, so they have a kind of creativity blindness. Then they overlook Culturalists because culture is subjective. So they fill the building with responsible adults who wear their company lanyards, like the boss’s LinkedIn posts, and dress in the unofficial company uniform — expensive jeans, a blazer, and dress sneakers — then wonder why the station feels beige.
Although, to be fair, beige does pair nicely with a keycard hanging from a lanyard.
If you are a leader reading this, you know the answer now. Hire for function, but let people fly. Search for competence, but remember it also has to be compelling. Make sure it exists, but make sure that, to the audience, it matters.
Now, every once in a while, you find a unicorn — someone who can create, execute, and read culture at a high level. If you find one, hire them immediately. Pay them well. Keep them close. Let them work. They are rare, and one of them is still cheaper than the combined cost of the other three.
The Fix Is Simpler Than People Think
So if your station is underperforming, do not start with the corporate phrase about transformation. Start with the people.
Ask the hard questions: Who on this team makes us interesting? Who makes sure it happens? Who makes sure it matters to the audience in this market, in this moment? Get the mix right, and your station can be memorable. Get it wrong, and it is nuthin’ but a beige thang, baby.
—Phil “Unicorn” Becker [don’t ask about the horn]
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. Sign up for our newsletters to stay updated and get the latest information right in your inbox.
Phil Becker is a weekly music columnist for Barrett Media who has built his career at the intersection of creativity, strategy, and operations leading brands, marketing, and content teams across more than 200 radio stations worldwide.
Known for being ahead of the curve, he was the first to integrate social influencers into broadcast brands, launch station apps years before his peers, and pioneer AI air personalities before anyone else in the world.
With leadership roles at Clear Channel, Citadel, Cox Media Group, Alpha Media, and international ventures—as well as owning and operating stations—Phil blends entrepreneurial vision with operational discipline in the messaging and marketing space. He also hosts the Phil-Osophy podcast.
