Elevating Your Talent in 2025

Part of my role as Brand Director for our Pillar Media stations, as well as a coach for other Program Directors and Station Managers is to keep an “eye on the horizon” – attempting to identify trends and future opportunities and threats, both near and far. What things do we need to focus on NOW to be making a bigger impact down the road, given the “horizon” feels like it’s changing ALL THE TIME?

The signs have been all around us for some time, but now the flashing warning lights are getting bigger and brighter… your radio station’s personalities continue to become MORE CRUCIAL to the overall “value” that you add to your listeners life. For people of every age demographic, and in particular Gen Z, the desire for realness and truth in everything, coupled with “Algorithm Revolt”* - a concerted move away from anything that hints at being generated by a computer in favor of human curation - points to real people talking about real things is “cost of entry” into your listener’s life.

In last week’s Programming Drill I talked about finding the dynamic talent on your team, what makes them so, and some beginning steps to highlighting “that thing” that makes them so connective. While I don’t need to belabor points that have already been made, I am borrowing two sentences from last week’s Programming Drill to reinforce a key baseline understanding for today - “In my opinion, we’ve done a pretty good job industry-wide of putting “nice people” on the radio, rather than developing “dynamic” talent with opinions, passions, fears, quirks, and the ability to shake things up a bit. To quote a consultant friend of mine, many radio stations have on-air people who are “nice Christian people, talking to nice Christian people about nice Christian things.”  

Today, listeners are demanding unvarnished. Unvarnished, 3-dimensional talent get listeners to say “that’s me too!” with their honest content and build an instant connection.

So, your current listeners (and potential new listeners) are clamoring for authenticity and for on-air people that feel like their true friends… You’ve got people on your team that can deliver and connect – what do you next?

Here are 3 questions that highlight some areas to put energy toward in the coming year. Spend an hour this week giving thought to these 3 questions, including your talent in the conversation. Their buy-in is imperative and including them in the process will both energize them and help them to take ownership of the added work this is going to require.

1.     What can you do to promote them to a new, adjacent audience in 2025? What audience is “next to your audience” that might connect with your talent, and be introduced to your brand through that connection? Could it be as simple a small “speaking tour” for your talent at local church events? Could they host a local charity event for a like-minded nonprofit organization? The whole idea is to use the uniqueness and connectivity of your talent to introduce your brand to people who might likely be fans, if they knew about you or were encouraged (by the connection to a dynamic talent) to try you out again.

2.     What can you encourage your talent to do that is outside of their typical “job description” in 2025? In what way(s) can your talent grow their platform in the coming year? Tap into them for what gets them excited. Is it writing a book? Starting their own YouTube channel, or a podcast? Is it connecting to a nonprofit, or starting their own? Finding long term projects / initiatives that your talent own and are committed to growing (with the support of your station) can open them up to a lot of different audiences and promotional opportunities.

3.     What brand can you connect your personality to in 2025? Who else is in your community that can benefit by an association /collaboration / partnership with your talent? Is it a local TV personality, a worship leader at a larger church in the area, a local artist / author / chef? What brands make sense to collaborate with? (For example, is there a local coffee roaster that would make a special “morning show blend” coffee, which you promote to your audience, and they promote to their customers, introducing the show to potential new fans?)

Hopefully, this thought process will open up even more ideas and ways to grow your station by growing the reach and influence of your most valuable asset, your talent.

Need help with this, or any other leadership, programming, or talent challenges you are facing? I’d love to chat about it. Just Message me on LinkedIn, and we'll connect ASAP!

*special thanks to Paul and Fred Jacobs for introducing me to the term "algorithm revolt".