Why Personalities Matter

As this annual blood-letting of personalities grinds across the radio industry, as we enter the era of "there's not a slot for everybody," as AI raises the threat of voice-tracking to "11," as Nielsen taunts us that on music-oriented stations (according to meters), less talk is better, it's worth asking the most fundamental of questions: Do personalities matter?

My friend Matt Stockman published this recently in reference to talent on Christian music stations:

Well the more "nice" the talent is, the more that talent is replaceable.

"Nice" is a commodity. It's a dime-a-dozen.

Unique is what's precious and scarce. Unique is what's irreplaceable. Unique means bringing to the mic what's special and compelling about you and connecting that to the hearts and minds of an audience. It's not about "shaking things up" per se, it's about being worth listening to amidst the cacophony of too much else.

That's what personalities must do to succeed, but is that why they matter to audiences?

No.

Personalities matter for a reason both ineffable and obvious - a reason coaches skip, listeners can't verbalize, localism is blind to, and talent, caught in the day-to-day, forget.

The essayist Pete Hamill captured the answer beautifully in this piece about the legendary Frank Sinatra:

Like our favorite Christmas songs, great personalities "relieve the ache of loneliness." They "only connect."

Where do most radio listeners tune in your station? In the car. And who's driving along with them? Nobody, usually. You are.

My wife's elderly grandmother had eight radios scattered around her house. She lived alone. Her company was you.

How many times have listeners shared the difference something on your station has made to their lives at some critical moment - often a moment of deep alone-ness and desperation?

The problem with Nielsen's conclusion that "less talk is better" is that meters make no distinction between promotion-filled blather and sincere, heartfelt conversation with real listeners that changes and saves lives. The ideal volume of nonsense talk is zero. But when you "transcend my solitude," I don't want you to stop talking at all.

Please, don't stop.

One of the very best episodes of TV's The X-Files featured this melancholy coda: "For although we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways, on this planet, we are all... alone."

"Separate ways" of our own making.

Particularly as we enter the holiday season, we hear stories of friends and family and neighbors estranged or distant from each other. People sitting down to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner solo. Again. People who live surrounded by neighbors they don't know, and bustle alone along freeways surrounded by anonymous fellow travelers, also alone. Everyone going about their busy-ness, fighting the urge to consider that, in this world full of humans, where are the people I love who also love me?

Maybe one of them is on the radio right now. Can you hear her voice? She's talking to you.

You are not alone anymore.

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