Famous Isn't Familiar

I used to think, as I'm sure many others did that hiring a famous name would give a breakfast show or drive show a better chance of success. I mean on the surface it makes sense, a famous name is generally not the answer, in fact it rarely works. Radio management keeps thinking that hiring a famous name is the solution. A television personality, a sports person with a profile, a comedian or a podcaster with a following gets hired and then comes the first survey result, then the second and the ratings don't move to the degree management or the board expected. Why? Because famous and familiar are not the same thing, they never were. Familiarity is knowing someone and fame is recognition and in radio familiarity wins.

Radio is a companionship medium. People do not sit down to watch it, they live with it in the car, in the kitchen, at work, on the school run etc, and the voice becomes part of their routine, the same day part, the same people, the same tone and a feeling that they know the city they are broadcasting to. This is how time spent listening is built, through a parasocial relationship that is strong enough to establish habitual listening because they call the host a friend.

Knowing a person is not the same as recognising them. Plenty of famous people sound like they are visitors when the microphone is on and that distinction matters. On-demand audio has trained audiences to choose a voice. Podcasts sell intimacy without the live interaction, streaming sells the song without the companionship and radio's remaining advantage, which I have said many times, is the live, local, human presence that people connect with.

A name that gets someone to sample a show when they otherwise wouldn't have has real value, but the mistake is treating sampling as the job done. Being famous may get a listener to sample but content and chemistry determines whether they come back. If you asked most programmers if they would prefer profile with little knowledge of the craft, or someone who knows the craft and was experienced on the air, they would choose the latter and build the profile. Of course, both is the ideal but very few people have both.

Adjacent industries are not equally close to the craft. Stand-up often travels well because timing and being yourself under pressure is part of the job. Podcasting is closer when it comes to intimacy but weak on live and local and Television presenting is mixed as pictures cover a lot of sins that audio will not. Sports and specialist journalism can bring authority but not the companionship and Reality TV fame is the furthest away from the craft.

Developing talent takes time, which the corporate quarterly cycle often doesn't have the patience for so the pressure to hire someone famous is understandable. The industry has been thinned by networked programming, voice-tracking and smaller content teams so when looking for a new breakfast host the shortlist fills with people the public already recognises, because recognition looks like a shortcut.

The problem is the skills are not the same. Radio is a one-on-one medium. You are talking to one person, you have to adlib to fill time without a camera, work within a format of news, traffic and music, know what you're going to say before the song finishes and sound unscripted while being well prepared. Television is built around editing, podcasts favour depth and social media prioritise bite-sized clips. Listeners can hear when someone is uncomfortable without a script or an autocue and the result is familiarity doesn't develop and therefore people don't stay. Hiring for celebrity rather than radio craft has been criticised for decades for that reason. Radio is a different job and fame is not transferable and it's a weak predictor of success.

New breakfast shows usually need eighteen months to two years before they start to sound like a show rather than a group of people who have just met. The CEO and the board rarely demonstrate that level of patience and then the tinkering starts which becomes a real problem because familiarity requires consistency. The show on at the same time, the same team, the same features and the same benchmarks week after week. Every time changes are made the familiarity clock resets.

If you're building a show the structure that has the best chance of success in my view is one that has a famous person who will attract sampling together with experienced radio people. Two famous people who have never done breakfast radio every day, five days a week is a huge gamble and very different from a name sitting with people who understand how radio works. They know how to work a format and then you need to teach the famous name the craft. The famous person needs to understand very quickly that they need to talk about their personal life so they become known as a person and not just a celebrity.

When it comes to marketing on-air and off-air you should stop selling the 'famous person now does radio' line as soon as possible and start selling who this person is who wakes up with you in the morning. Content Directors need to measure the right attributes. Awareness will look good early but the questions that matter later are similar to, do they belong on this station, when they talk about their life do you relate to it, would you miss them, do they know the city etc and if those aren't heading north fame is not converting to familiarity.

If you don't build familiarity, then the result is predictable. While sampling increases the cumulative audience (or reach), the residual effect can fade and if time spent listening (TSL) doesn't grow then share either stagnates or slowly declines. The station is then faced with a choice it created for itself, persist and spend another year trying to salvage a show that the market has already decided is not right or change and deal with a messy exit, some negative PR and start the process all over again. Either way costs more than the cost of building the profile of an experienced radio person. Hiring famous people and then not building familiarity almost guarantees failure.

Listeners are not confused by any of this. They know the difference between someone they recognise and someone they are familiar with. They will sample the new show, but they won't stay if familiarity doesn't build. They will go back to the station where they feel welcome or they will put a podcast on and get intimacy that way.

A famous person from an adjacent industry is not a bad idea by default but it is a bad idea when the starting point is "we need a name". It can work though when the person is actually good on a microphone without pictures, will accept coaching, is paired with people who already know the craft, the show has a position they can inhabit, and management will allow a year or two of consistency. Famous is a just a headline. Familiar is a year or two of consistency and that's what radio runs on and it's the one point that is usually missed and a reason why stations keep buying the headline, don't build familiarity and are surprised by the result. One look at history tells you they should have seen it coming.