HOW TO LIMIT MISTAKES THAT COULD COST YOU MONEY

rADIO Ink 

September 30, 2014

9-30-14

In light of the recent court case lost by Entercom in Kansas City, we figured this would be a good time to revisit some of the protections you might want to have in place at your station. As general managers and market managers, it is ultimately our responsibility to prevent costly mistakes. We are only human, at least most of us, but there are ways to safeguard those events from occurring. Let’s take live content, for instance. As publishers of local and live programming on-air and online, with shifts lasting four-plus hours, it only takes a millisecond to make a mistake.

I remember an incident at Power 105 in NY where a word in a regular feature caused quite a stir. I literally received thousands of e-mails from this particular special interest group, rightfully so, and took responsibility immediately. We removed the feature, I then met with the president of that group and we worked things out. We proactively informed our advertisers and let them know about the mishap, what we were doing to correct the situation, and safeguards that were implemented to try and prevent further mistakes. The worst is when your competition or the trades get to your advertisers ahead of you.   

It is so important to clearly define expectations with the air staff and producers so they know the boundaries and insist that, when in doubt, don’t do it. At WPST, our program director, who is also a member of the morning show, sets the direction and flow of the show, who their target audience is, and defines the border of what they can say and do. The team huddles daily and reviews the topics for the next morning’s show.  Plus it helps to have a 7-second delay. The program director also meets and reviews audio with all personalities so there is no gray.

As much as you set boundaries and clearly define what is off limits, creative ideas with the best intentions can and will produce unintended consequences from time to time. It is a fine line with your personalities, not wanting to inhibit their creativity. But the best always have that conscious competent gene working and know when to self-edit their content on the fly.

I am confident you are already doing this, but a little redundancy to err on the side of caution doesn't hurt.

Andrew Rosen is General Manager of Connoisseur NJ/PA.