Summary

In this chapter we explore core concepts of radio station management from the perspective of the radio manager, informed by relevant research and practice gleaned from business and management studies.

We show how awareness of 'brand values' and 'mission statements' are important to any station. We look at different management styles, the importance of the winning team, leadership and vision. We discuss the need for creative people in station management and the challenges of managing creative people and processes and the challenge of multi-tasking within small-scale station management.

We ask whether different sectors and platforms in radio require different management practices and using the example of managing radio presenters whether different parts of the workforce require different management styles.

Core values

Just as in any friendship, the relationship between the listener and the radio station depends on a mutual understanding, an agreement on shared interests and social attitudes. Everyone involved in producing material for, or marketing, the service should understand these underlying values. How a station is branded, marketed and how its core values are established are discussed further in Section 2.8.

Written up into a couple of easy to remember paragraphs, these values should inform a wide range of management decisions, from the design of the logo, to the design of the studios, to the choice of music and the selection of presenters. The core values can even influence technical parameters, such as the settings of the transmitter processing and the choice of company vehicles. For example would it be appropriate to your core values for your sales team to drive smaller environmentally friendly but trendy cars?

Managing creative talent

Some of the most unpleasant and ineffective meetings we have ever attended have been radio station "presenters meetings". In the nature of their work presenters tend not to be in the office at the same time and some might never meet at all. Particularly in the early days of UK commercial and community radio the obvious answer appeared to be the calling of a regular, perhaps weekly, meeting of all presenters. Often this had to coincide with some pre-recorded programming so they all might attend.

The experience varied but in many cases such meetings were, to say the least, dispiriting and demoralising affairs. Often just as de-motivating for the management as for the staff and freelancers attending. By contrast the sales department would have a weekly meeting where, by design, the staff left the gathering highly charged and with a new found sense of purpose. Why the difference? In order to understand this requires an understanding of individual motivation.

The individual and motivation

A programme manager must remember what qualities they look for in a good broadcaster. Radio presenters, particularly on smaller stations, are expected to produce their best work while sitting alone in a soundproof box. For hours on end they must talk 'to just one person' while knowing that their efforts are being subjected to widespread public and professional scrutiny. In short, they must be very personally motivated to work well in those circumstances. (see also Section 2.5 ).

Many top radio performers are not naturally gregarious. Following his death in 1995 the brilliantly inventive former pirate radio, BBC Radio 1 and Capital Radio DJ Kenny Everett was described by The Independent in his obituary as 'shy and delicate of nature' (Hayward 1995). In completing the late John Peel's autobiography, his wife Sheila comments that, at Radio 1 or Radio 4 he was in his element: "But put John somewhere new and you could watch him retreat into his shell." (Peel and Ravenscroft 2005:181). She describes arriving at parties where John would search immediately for some task that would excuse him from the awkward formalities of socialising.

The personal motivation of each radio presenter varies from individual to individual, their aspirations vary enormously and the terms and conditions under which they are employed may vary considerably across the schedule. We should not be surprised that, once herded into a single room, their only matters of common interest were the lowest common denominators, such meetings tending to focus on such matters as the state of the studio headphones, the squeaky studio chair and the strange smell from the air-conditioning. Seldom would there be any desire to debate creative and subjective matters of much greater importance to their listeners.

So how might we influence, manage and control an individual's motivation given that some, for instance sales staff, seem to be encouraged by financial rewards yet others - a presenter like John Peel - appear to have other motivators?

According to Abraham Maslow (1943) we all need good, safe working conditions and a meaningful job to feel happy and fulfilled. In order to understand this further Maslow developed his 'hierarchy of needs' - a sort of sequential ladder, or pyramid, of human needs ranging from lower to higher order - shown below.

Higher order needs

Self-actualisation (the need to fulfil one's full potential)
Self-esteem needs (need for recognition and a belief in one's self)
Social acceptance needs (need to be able to form satisfactory affective and support relations)

Lower order needs

Safety and security needs (need to feel safe and free of fear)
Basic physiological needs (need for food, shelter, clothing, warmth)

(Maslow's (1943) Hierarchy of needs)

For Maslow the lower order needs are primary and must be given first priority, starting with the physiological needs, but once these are at least partially satisfied higher order needs may then become important. In order to manage staff effectively a radio station manager needs to consider what needs are important to the individual and how the manager may affect them. Whilst some individuals may be motivated by financial incentives and rewards this may not be true of all. It should however be noted that whilst money may not motivate in this example, a reduction in salary can be demotivational and counter productive (Herzberg 1966).

From the hierarchy of needs it seems that some people may well be more motivated by higher order needs such as 'self-esteem' and 'self-actualisation'. Frederick Herzberg (1966) argued that individuals most concerned with lower order needs may focus most on what he termed 'hygiene factors at work, salary, working conditions, quality of supervision and so on. Other people however may focus on what he termed 'motivation factors', a challenging job, recognition and a scope for achievement, growth and development. For the latter a form of 'job enrichment', where the individual is encouraged to develop skills and given increasing autonomy and responsibility is appropriate.

It should be stressed that merely increasing the number of tasks that an individual is given may not be motivational. Indeed if someone is given too many dull, repetitive and stressful tasks then the person may feel overloaded and become demotivated. Sadly one hears all too often of a job being 'multi-skilled' when all that has occurred is that people are expected to perform a large number of repetitive and very similar tasks. Job enrichment requires that tasks are achievable, reasonable and encourage the development of skills and abilities. Job enrichment should focus on 'multi-skilling' rather than 'multi-tasking'.

Recognising the importance of individual needs, today most experienced programme managers avoid holding group meetings of presenters except where there is a matter to announce of company-wide importance (when there is probably a general staff meeting anyway). They prefer to schedule regular one-to-one meetings with individual presenters, or perhaps with the team responsible for a co-presented show. A programme manager may wish to formally sit down with the presenter of a daily programme every week and perhaps once each month with the presenter of a weekly programme. Such 'coaching sessions' are frequently based around the playback of a recent programme. The programmer can play a sequence, or perhaps a single link, and then spark a discussion on how well it was presented and maybe how it could be improved in future.

To save time it is common to use a recording with any music tracks edited out. To this end some studios have a dedicated recording system set up to run only when the 'microphone-on' light is illuminated. This conveniently provided a ready-made recording without any music, advertisements or other external or pre-recorded items.

However they are undertaken these coaching sessions should be helpful and supportive, rather than negative and controlling. There is no point in encouraging the presenter to repeatedly brood over an error or misjudgement, far better to highlight and fix in their mind those elements which worked well, or at least those which make their boss happy. The meeting thus should focus on the higher order needs for acceptance and esteem and so on. For this reason it is often helpful to chose a programme segment at random rather than using this meeting as a post-mortem on the worst of the week's output. Indeed it can be constructive to invite the presenter themselves to choose the segment for review. They may pick a section of which they are particularly proud or they may use the opportunity to benefit from your input on a particularly challenging part of a previous programme.

US programming consultant David Martin says the secret of radio coaching is to bring out the best in others: "The most effective approach is to catch them doing something right - we catch performers doing something right and we recognise and reward that behaviour, that performance" (Martin 2007).

Similarly the highly respected US programme consultant Dan O'Day advises programme managers to listen to each programme for at least long enough to hear the talent doing something exceptionally well. Then when they happen to meet that presenter in the corridor, or in the elevator, they can casually comment on how much they liked that moment in the last show. He points out that such casual 'positive reinforcement' can be more effective than any number of formal meetings.

In larger stations a programme producer may be responsible for developing and coaching the presenters. The relationship between a presenter and their producer is complex and can be critical to the success of the programme. John Peel worked for many years at BBC Radio One with producer John Walters and together they were a formidable team. 'They had a closeness that was quite touching to observe,' recounts John Peel's wife Sheila (Peel and Ravenscroft 2005: 251). 'John frequently characterised their relationship as being like a man and his dog, but with each plainly believing the other to be the dog.'

Creative control

Radio attracts creative and sometimes innovative individuals and there are numerous examples of presenters and producers who have caused headaches for their managers because they pushed at the boundaries of what is acceptable to some parts of the audience. These same presenters have produced hugely successful radio when they managed in the right context. When the writer and presenter Chris Morris started out in BBC local radio he initiated various on air pranks - including letting off helium into the news booth so that presenters sounded like Donald Duck and broadcasting a commentary over the local news saying whether he thought items were news worthy or interesting. He was sacked from his local radio work but went on to work in BBC comedy producing some very highly regarded satirical radio comedy such as 'On the Hour' on BBC Radio 4 (which satirised local radio news) and Blue Jam on Radio 1 Extra.

The tension for people working in the creative side of radio is between having the time and conditions to be innovative and meeting the needs of their employers who expect them to deliver their radio work. Block et al suggest that the audiovisual industry may be best understood though using of 'chaos theory' and the concept of 'bounded instability (Block et al 2001:228):

A highly stable, routinised environment does not lead to creativity, and a highly unstable yet energised creative environment will probably not lead to the completed product. The principle (of bounded instability) is that of hidden order in a seemingly random and uncontrolled environment. These hidden patterns provide the controlling mechanisms to differentiate a system from a purely random association.

(Block et al 2001:228)

Factors influencing the motivation of programme staff

 

The presenter's perceived ladder of success

One of the nice things I have discovered about radio is how quickly you can change things. Though of course you bruise a few egos in the process.

Nicholas Kenyon (Controller BBC Radio 3 1992-1998) talking about instituting changes in Radio 3 presentation (Carpenter 1996: 342)

On most radio services there has conventionally been an imagined hierarchy within the programme schedule. This does not necessarily reflect the value put on any individual programme or day-part by the listeners or the station management, being more akin to the order of artistes on a variety bill. Typically on the top rung sits the main host of the weekday breakfast show, below him or her the mid-morning show presenter, then perhaps the "drive-time" sequence host and so on down to the freelance who records voice tracks to play out at 3 am in the morning.

Successfully managing the presentation team requires that you understand the generally perceived pecking-order on your station. In reality it is quite possible that the current breakfast show presenter could achieve more for the station, and themselves, following a move to mid-afternoon. They might be worth just as much to you at that time as a result of other ways they will contribute to the service and you might even be happy to maintain their current income, but they may well see the suggestion as damaging to their professional standing.

While in general the main breakfast show host is the most highly paid individual on the station, frequently earning more than the most highly paid member of management, there is no real reason why this should always remain the case. A new competitive situation and different format could present a scenario where the most valuable creative contribution could be made at another time of day. For example, while the presenters are generally unpaid, some UK community radio services have opted not to offer a live breakfast show at all. Long-established community broadcaster BCB in Bradford argues that the talents and skills of its accomplished team are better deployed at other times of day.

Fear of stepping forward

In the Table of Factors above influencing the motivation of programme staff, at the foot of the "demoralising" column, we list "success being penalised". This is a bizarre but surprisingly common failing of busy overstretched management. How often have you yourself found yourself in a situation where you hesitate to volunteer for an additional and inconvenient task, perhaps to help out in an emergency, because you fear that, should you be deemed to have done it well, you will be asked to permanently add it to your normal routine in future? Equally, an individual's enthusiasm may lead them to attempt something brave and original only for any failure to be highlighted by their manager with the result that, in future they may decide to keep a low profile, offering nothing new to the station. In all departments of a creative operation such as a radio station the manager must be careful to encourage calculated risk-taking and support staff who try new ideas, even when they fail.


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