When you listen to sports talk radio today you’re likely to find a number of different styles in the personalities you hear on the air. That’s what makes each host unique. What shouldn’t be disputable though is the understanding and importance of giving an opinion!

Search around the country and listen to some different stations and personalities and see if you can pinpoint the following types of hosts.

• A) The caller-driven host who puts the power of the show in the audience’s hands.
• B) The guest heavy host who fills a 9 segment show with 7-8 guests.
• C) The comedic host who offers jokes, bits, parody songs and downplays the importance of a serious topic. They often sound uninformed or uninterested in sports talk.
• D) The stats/historian host who crunches numbers, shares old stories and is quick to highlight everyone else’s opinions and use them as a shield to avoid giving their own.
• E) The strong opinionated personality who speaks their mind confidently and earns praise from supporters and criticism from detractors.

The beauty of this format is that there are multiple ways to inform and entertain but of the 5 styles listed above, I find myself more drawn to E. The host who has something to say and defends their position with good sound evidence and is willing to engage in a compelling conversation with callers, guests, texts, tweets and colleagues, will always catch my attention first. I don’t have to agree with you, I just need to be moved by your opinion.

I can’t even count how many times I tune into a show somewhere across the country and hear a personality say “we’re going to talk about the Super Bowl” or “let’s chat about these coaching changes” and then spends the majority of a segment reading off the information and waiting for calls without providing their own point of view on the topic. It absolutely drives me nuts.

Of course you’re going to talk about the Super Bowl or coaching changes if they’re a timely story but why does it matter to you? What do you want me to think about? Be specific.

People are usually in a car dealing with non-stop traffic, aggravated from a long day at work and they want a mental distraction to make them laugh, help them learn or get their blood pumping. Your style, presentation and view on the relevant material is what they care about when they put you on. If the subject matter is broad and you don’t define your position, they’re going to lose interest.

Anytime you’re on the air, you’re expected to share your perspective on the news, not break the news. That’s what reporters do and what sports updates, your website and Twitter are for. What you think of the information matters more than the information itself. Your opinion is what grabs people’s attention.

20 years ago people in sports talk focused on the result of a ball game and did the typical box score breakdown segments. Today the world is much different. People care much more about what happens outside the lines than what happens inside the lines. Case in point, there’s been more talk this week about the Patriots deflating footballs than the actual game itself vs. the Colts. Last year at this time, people spent more time discussing Richard Sherman’s post-game interview than they did recapping the Seahawks-49ers game. Need any more proof?

I understand that every personality does prep work and values their credibility so being right and informed is important but rather than worry about being right, the bigger focus should be on making people think and being interesting. That starts with a strong informed opinion and having the courage to stand by it and defend it with smart rationale and great research.

What sometimes worries me about our format’s future is when I hear newer broadcasters coming up the ladder, not focused on delivering opinion and instead worried about how many guests they have booked or how many people have called their show. To this day I have never hired someone who set a record for most calls taken on a show and I’ve never hired a host based on their guest list. I care more about what they do with a guest and caller than how many they can get.

I’m not going to say guests, calls, being funny and having information doesn’t matter because of course they do. They’re all valuable parts of a show but when you step back and look at a 9-12 segment show, there should be more focus put on delivering opinion on the content/stories of the day and telling the audience why you feel the way you do than anything else. The opinion is your main course, the guests, calls, soundbytes and extra bits of entertainment are your sides and appetizers.

During my years as a PD I’ve told a number of hosts that there is no “No Fence Sitting” allowed. I recognize that the only thing we control is our words and if we don’t take positions, defend them strongly and make our audience think, then we’re just background noise and people can find that in many different places. Standing out from the clutter is not easy and it’s even harder if you don’t take strong defined positions on relevant material.

The last thing you should want to be as a personality trying to connect with an audience is the equivalent of elevator music. Our job is to be clear, concise and definitive with where we stand on various issues and confident enough in our own skin to defend them, while also being open minded to hear the other side of the discussion.

Does it matter if the listener disagrees? No. What about if a team, player or front office executive doesn’t like it? Are they paying your check or controlling your brain? No. So stand up for yourself but be smart enough to avoid getting personal and open enough to give them a forum to counter your point of view. Good banter on a topic with multiple viewpoints makes for compelling discussion.

What if your peers think you’re crazy? Just be crazy enough to have a position and good rationale for why you feel how you do and they’ll get over it or come around to your way of thinking. It’s about delivering interesting content and when you are firm with your thoughts and prepared with information to support your position, more people will connect with you than tune you out and after all, that’s the name of the game.

Sometimes personalities lose sight of this and need to be reminded how important it is and to get their attention over the years I’ve been known to dish out a few silly gimmicks that get their attention. In a few instances I’ve pulled out a green pillow and offered it to a few hosts so their asses would be well protected while sitting on the fence. Usually it’s led to a good laugh and a host realizing that they need to be more authoritative and not dance around the subject.

I’ve also given out a few nails and dollar bills to let a person know they nailed an opinion or provided something great and I’ve given out a compass to ask them if they knew where they were going with their stance. While it may be hokey, the point is to make one think of how their position has come across on the air. Most hosts forget that nobody wants them to succeed more than the PD that put them in the studio in the first place but sometimes even the best need a reminder that something wasn’t as sharp or as strong as it could be.

Based on my experience, usually it’s athletes who are just transitioning into the format who take the most time getting comfortable in this arena. Fortunately though, once you tell them they’re quick to adapt because they appreciate and respect coaching and want to make an impression rather than sound too guarded. That said, being comfortable taking strong positions does take some people time and while it may not always feel great, it’s critical to one’s presentation.

If there’s one thing to leave you with, it’s to remember to always have something to say and a good sound reason for why you feel the way you do. Listeners can get information from a myriad of places but those who stand out are the ones who are confident and comfortable enough to give an opinion and make it interesting.

I’m often asked by fellow colleagues in the broadcasting industry for my thoughts on what makes an effective programming clock. I usually offer my feedback and go over strategies that I feel confident in but truth be told, there really is no magical clock that is going to help a station deliver ratings. Are there certain games to play in the ratings game to give your brand an advantage? Absolutely. But let’s not lose sight of what really makes an audience respond, great content from great talent.

Recently I had a discussion with someone who does research about the differences in setting up an hourly clock. When I explained how I have some shows operate with a 4-break per hour system and some manage with a 3-break per hour system, I was asked immediately if I’d consider changing my setup to reflect a 3-breaks per hour system on all shows. I wasn’t asked who the shows were hosted by, when the breaks were happening or how long each break was, instead it was the typical analysis “less commercial breaks means better ratings”.

Too many times I have heard the same exact thing “Nielsen (much like Arbitron) highly recommends to take as few breaks as possible“. I’ve heard this in multiple markets, various sports radio conferences and I do believe that there’s some merit to it however what researchers don’t take into account during these conversations are how it actually works on the programming end. You can play math equations all day long if you want but listeners (even those with meters) don’t listen based on quarter hour measurements and there’s much more to keeping people interested in consuming your product than just eliminating commercials.

I can argue that a show has much better pace, energy and stronger focus on delivering content inside of a 10-minute window than it does when offering up a 20-25 minute segment. Listen around the country to numerous talk shows on various stations who deliver longer segments and find me the program that is consistently fast paced, energetic, content rich and moving from Point A to Point B to Point C inside of a 20-25 minute window. It doesn’t happen often.

Why might you ask? Because when hosts are delivering content for that length of time, most lose focus and ramble. They don’t view their 20-25 minute segment as a combination of four 5-minute segments and they don’t stay aware of timing. Usually phone calls flood the segment or a guest who’s great for 5-6 minutes gets stretched out to 10-15 minutes and it becomes more about filling time than maximizing content time.

I like to look at a 20-25 minute segment as an opportunity to deliver four to five mini-segments. When you approach it that way, you continue moving forward with good momentum. In a perfect world, your host is coming out of the gate with strong opinions on the most popular local topic for anywhere between 5-10 minutes. If it’s well crafted, it’ll be a captivating 10-minute ride. If not, 5-minutes can still be accomplished and if it’s emotionally charged from your host, the audience should respond by wanting to engage in discussion on it.

After the opinion and supporting facts are offered, you have the option to either include a guest who can add further insight and/or opinion on the story or you can utilize the audience to weigh in on the topic too. There’s also the possibility of adding sound, a feature or production to paint the story. Having different ways to make the story sound fresh and interesting is important.

If you deliver 5-10 minutes of opinion, 5-10 minutes of a guest and 5-minutes of audience reaction, you’ve now presented three different ways to keep that one particular topic interesting. That’s how a 20-25 minute segment stays compelling. It takes multiple layers, multiple voices, multiple sounds and multiple twists and turns inside the content to keep it interesting to the audience.

Search the country and find any show that has longer content segments and see if you remember how the segment started and whether or not you could stay mentally excited and engaged in the content for longer than 5 minutes. Remember, Nielsen ratings are about securing 5-minutes of listening inside each quarter hour and if you’re going to offer 20-25 minutes of straight content with no focused destination, people’s attention spans will become smaller and they will tune you out faster.

I bring up this example for a reason. If you take fewer breaks per hour inside of a show, you’re going to end up with at least one real long stretch of content at some point and I find that most shows and hosts don’t own those opportunities as much as those who perform shorter segments. While someone from Nielsen or a research company can suggest breaking as little as possible, they don’t take into account who your talent is, how you strategically match up against your in-market competitor and if your station’s style of content is geared for longer or shorter stretches.

For stations on FM, one of the reasons why radio operators starting moving to the frequency is to attract younger people and build tomorrow’s way of doing sports radio. Do younger people listen for 30 minutes straight to content or do they like faster impressions that they can digest in 5-10 minutes? You know as well as I do, they want it quickly and they’re not staying with you for long periods of time. They are more likely to tune in 5-6 times per show than they are to give you 2 straight quarter hours of listening time.

As it applies to breaks, based on Nielsen’s recommendations, your ratings should go thru the roof if you only break 1x per hour since after all, it’s mostly about eliminating interruptions. As I once told a former host at one of my previous stations, unless your name is Chris Rock, I don’t want to hear you talk for 30-40 minutes straight without a break. Here’s why, most people can’t be highly entertaining consistently for 30-40 minutes straight.

Remember this too, when Chris Rock does a standup show, he’s got his act in place to entertain for 60-minutes. He knows the start, the middle and the end of his routine. But what if he was doing a radio show? Could he do that for 3-4 hours per day? Maybe he could but I think you’d find more holes in the presentation.

On the other hand, give a host 10-12 minutes and ask them to stay crisp, focused and in control of the pace and it absolutely can be done. When a researcher explains to me how 3-breaks per hour is better than 4-breaks, I remind him that my station’s best ratings are during the two shows that deliver 4-breaks, not the ones that do 3-breaks. Does that mean they wouldn’t be successful going with 3-breaks? No. But when people are good at certain styles of execution and the audience is responding to the way it’s laid out, isn’t that what’s supposed to matter?

In the grand scheme of things, some hosts can be great for 5-minutes, some for 10, some for 15 and even a select few for 20-25. You can give them 2 commercial breaks, 3 commercial breaks or 4-5 commercial breaks and some shows will stand out and perform strongly and others won’t. It still comes down to talent, selecting the right content, delivering it in an entertaining way and making sure the momentum keeps going forward and the pace feels fast.

I’m not going to suggest that Nielsen’s ideas of breaking less don’t make sense. They do. In a perfect world we’d take 1-2 breaks and have talent execute amazing content for 20-30 minutes straight every time but the reality is that it’s not as easy as some may think. To be outstanding for that period of time is difficult and I want personalities on the air making sure that every minute they spend talking is leading somewhere, not just filling up air space to avoid an extra break.

The other part not being considered is the business side of the operation. Face it, we’re in the business of selling ad time, content association and branding partnerships. Like it or not, commercials are going to be a part of our system. We can try to limit break times and unit counts all we want but our business requires buy in from advertisers too. You sit there and tell a client who wants to spend six figures on your radio station that you’re not going to sell them a fifteen second commercial because you only want sixty second spots since you’re trying to keep unit counts low.

Here’s the deal, I’ve gained great ratings in my career with shows that have taken breaks 4-5x per hour and I’ve gained the same from shows who have broken 3x per hour. The bottom line, there’s no perfect way to do it and commercials need to be in place to assure that we have a profitable business. All you can do is focus on maximizing your content time while making your interruptions as short as possible. Under both scenarios, the companies I worked for made money.

When I program a 4-break per hour clock I try to keep breaks to 3 minutes or less so our shows have a chance to deliver 11-12 minutes for content inside of a 15-minute window. If I’m going with a 3-breaks per hour system, we’re likely going to run 4-4:30 of ads so we fulfill our business obligations and still give our talent a chance to spend 45-48 minutes per hour delivering content. I believe in delivering a content rich experience and don’t want hours cluttered with a plethora of ads and pointless benchmarks which encourage listeners to leave. Striking a happy balance though is the key.

If quarter hours are :00-:15, :15-:30, :30-:45 and :45-60 and you need 5-minutes of listening spent in those windows, your goal as a PD, Host and Producer is to play the percentages and try to offer as much content time as possible. That doesn’t mean you’ll get ratings credit, it just means you’re giving yourself the best chance to gain credit.

All of this comes down to one thing – content! If the personality is not informative and entertaining and talking about the topics with the broadest appeal to the local audience, then I don’t care if you’ve done 60-minutes straight with no interruptions. People only listen to stations and hosts that mentally distract them or emotionally excite or frustrate them. If the content isn’t great, neither will be your ratings. It doesn’t take a whole lot of research to figure that out.

As the sports radio business grows and revenues for the format increase, the same can’t be said for the commitment of radio stations to broadcast LIVE from big events. I’m not talking about individual games or personality driven agendas that don’t move the ratings needle. I’m talking about the moments in sports that a broadcaster is supposed to live for being at. You know, the events that your audience plan their day or week around because they can’t miss it!

From the Super Bowl to the World Series to the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup, those are major events. The College Football Playoff and NCAA Tournament qualify as well. Certainly others could invade that conversation too such as a popular player from a local market going into the Hall of Fame, Mayweather fighting Pacquiao (if it ever happens) or depending on your market, a trip to Spring Training or NFL Training Camp to cover a popular local team.

So if these events matter to your hosts as well as to your audience, then why would sports stations not be broadcasting from them? The answer is simple – costs!

I’ve watched the amount of stations at radio row during the Super Bowl decrease every year and it baffles me. The one thing worth talking about on a sports radio station in late January/early February is the Super Bowl and yet radio operators have to be talked into heading to the host city to broadcast from it. Is there a lack of interest from the audience? No. What it comes down to is operators wanting to save money rather than thinking about the benefit for the audience, the impression it gives of the brand and challenging their sales departments to step up and activate sponsors.

Is it easy to turn a profit in one week? No. But there are certain things in sports radio that you do for profit and certain things you do to build credibility, trust and loyalty with your audience. Depending on a station’s approach, five to fifteen thousand dollars is a small expense for something as big as the Super Bowl, especially when it will cost you a lot more than that if you don’t have access to great content during an otherwise dead week. It’s even worse if your competitor goes and you don’t.

Secondly, rather than waving the white flag and assuming your clients won’t spend additional money, how about having some confidence in the fact that they’ll want to have a bigger presence during the hottest event of the year, one which your brand has incredible access to. Business owners make irrational decisions when they are passionate and emotionally connected to big events and there’s no better time to test that theory than when your station commits to broadcasting from them. You’d be amazed at what some advertisers do to make sure they own the branding around a signature sporting event.

I raise this point not because I want to get ahead on discussion about the Super Bowl but rather because we’re in the midst of the World Series and it’s an event that sports radio should be all over yet isn’t. I’m fortunate to work for a company that gets it. We could sit back, not send anyone and just rely on local people being interested in the story since the Giants are in it but rather than do that, we’re sending our afternoon show to Kansas City to broadcast LIVE from it. We’re also adding post-game shows with our host Damon Bruce as well as created post-game shows after each home game from a local venue.

Why do we do that? Because stations are expected to step up their game and treat the situation with the proper respect that it deserves and when a World Series takes place, it’s the biggest event in baseball for the year and you rally around it. Many of my guys probably get tired of me asking them to spend 2-3 hours hosting watch parties at local bars, taking photos with fans and heading to games to track down interviews but I believe that the bigger the moment, the bigger your station should look, feel and sound.

Today, many of the biggest events in sports have turned into great television productions but radio has been losing sight of what made it special. Being live and local and around teams, players and the key people of interest, is what keeps our format important to our audience. Why would we provide less coverage when bigger opportunities arise? That makes no sense.

Sure it might require spending a few extra dollars or shifting things around in your budget but those sacrifices are needed when big situations pop up because it’s what the audience deserves. Staying in your studio and hamstringing your talent and audience by providing little to no special access or coverage is not worth the praise you’ll get for winning the battle on paper with your higher ups.

I do recognize that this is a business and certain bottom lines must be met. While we may want to send our crews everywhere, that isn’t reality but I also don’t think that it’s acceptable to be absent from the key sports events of the year, especially if the team in your own backyard is involved. For national networks, it makes sense to be at a lot more locations than local stations since they serve more people. For local stations though, if a team from your town is in the World Series or NBA Finals, you should be there. A case could be made for the Stanley Cup and College Football Playoff too but it depends on your market’s appetite for those stories.

One event that should not require a battle is the Super Bowl. First of all, the #1 piece of content that moves our entire format is football. Secondly, audiences today are not split 90%/10% in favor of local team content. There are TONS of people in your respective areas who have interest in the entire NFL. That includes transplants who move to your town and continue following their hometown teams. Add to that increased interest in fantasy football and sports betting and it’s baffling to me why any programmer or host would have to make a case for being present at the biggest event in professional sports.

I’ve heard the argument in the past that it’s the same people doing interviews all over the place, it turns into a guest-fest, if the local team isn’t involved then it’s not important and I’m sure in some cases there’s a degree of relevance to it. I still though don’t buy that having too many high profile quality people on your radio station is a bad thing or that two teams which are playing for the ultimate prize in all of sports are any less of a story because they don’t happen to share the same zip code as my current radio station. Peyton Manning vs. Russell Wilson, Tom Brady vs. Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers vs. Ben Roethlisberger – those are storylines local people will be talking about all week long and the next few days after the Super Bowl has been played. If they care enough about it, you should too.

Funny enough I had this debate two years ago with a former colleague and he asked me why I felt a station needed to be there and I explained the points above that I’ve already laid out but he still didn’t agree. I then reminded him that my brand’s slogan for 4 months had been “Fueled by Football” and nowhere in that position did it say “Fueled by Local Football” or “Fueled by Football…until the biggest football event of the year occurs and we bail on it“. That seemed to connect with him because he saw the value in being consistent with the approach and hitching a brand’s wagon to the NFL, the most powerful brand in sports.

One final note on this subject. If you’re a talent and you don’t want to be there for these kind of events, shame on you. We are fortunate to do what we do and have the access that we have. If you don’t have the personal joy to talk about these events and get emotionally invested in them, then why are you on the air doing this brand of talk? Sports is fun and it provides emotional highs and lows for the audience and ourselves and being a storyteller who can take people on the journey through key events is something you should live for. If talking about the biggest events that matter to our listeners and being present and interacting with the key people involved in these storylines doesn’t appeal to you, it might be time to do a self-analysis and ask yourself whether or not this is the right format for you.

Some PD’s and Hosts will agree with me on this and others won’t. I’m sure everyone has valid reasons for why they do it the way they do and I respect that. I do believe that our industry can do a much better job of investing in the moments that matter most and rather than boxing ourselves in with the same negative views, we’ve got to start asking “how can we do it better, how can we own it and how can we give our audience a memorable content experience“?

Sure, you can choose not to cover big events and that’ll help your brand save some money. It may also help you win a short-term budget battle and make you look good on paper. I just wonder if that’s worth it, when the next piece of paper shows your ratings down during a time when they should easily go up. When that happens, is winning the battle still worth it if it means losing the war?