Radio Anxiety

That Radio Dream

I had that radio DJ dream again last night. This time it was a jazz format with a poorly maintained LP collection. I spent lots of time looking for the right tracks while the needle drew ever closer to the label. I ended up blowing off all sorts of stop sets.

I've had variations on the dream with rock formats, classical music and public radio fundraising, even news.

There's not enough preparation and too little time to set things up.

There are several types of anxiety dreams. I found ten categories explained on Bustle.com. My radio announcer dreams seem to be a mashup of two types on Bustle. 

Being Late

If you take pride in showing up early for commitments, traffic delays are pretty much your mortal enemy. Dreaming about being late is just as stressful. Dream Stop said on its site, " It signifies the anxieties and pressures you have in real life. You may be afraid of missing an important opportunity. It can also mean there are big changes coming you should embrace rather than fear." Release yourself from the shackles of self induced pressure and relax, confident in your ability to wake up on time and be prompt for events.

Forgetting Something Important

You're on stage, at a Broadway performance, and you totally forgot you were part of the show, and you now have no idea what your lines are or what stage directions mean. If you were ever in a high school musical, you've probably experienced this dream once or ten times. But you don't have to be a performer to have anxiety dreams about forgetting something important. You could be dreaming about a "high pressure event," Habash tells Bustle. This could "indicate too much stress and pressure in your life." To avoid recurring anxiety dreams about planning a wedding or work event where everything goes wrong? You might "benefit from setting some boundaries or delegating" in your waking life, Habash suggests.

What can be done? 

In real life, this didn't happen very often. I always did a lot of show prep. Even in instances where I was thrown into a situation, I had experience to draw on. But that doesn't stop the anxiety dreams. According to Healthline "these dreams don’t signify anything deeper than perhaps some subconscious (or conscious) worries about these things happening." Face it, 2020 was a very stressful time and that stress has spilled over into 2021.

Wake Up - Hit the Reset

Healthline has several suggestions to help you hit the reset.

Try something relaxing

A relaxing activity can help put your brain back into sleep mode. It doesn’t have to be dull or boring, exactly, but it shouldn’t wake you back up. Try:

• a warm drink
• quiet music
• a soothing podcast
• a favorite book, or one with slow pacing
• breathing or meditative exercises

Just keep your lights dim and try to avoid watching TV or scrolling through your phone, since that can wake you up even more.

Then repeat, It's only a dream. 

Think before you promote

Growing Audience Takes Planning

One of the public radio stations I listen to has a heavy rotation of promotions for weekend programming. Instead of focusing on one program, it's a splatter approach of a little of everything and we'll see what sticks.

I appreciate the effort. Weekend programs tend to under perform when compared to the weekday juggernauts, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Much of this has to do with the lifestyle of the listener. On the weekend they're a lot less likely to be that captive weekday audience. Their routine is so different on the weekend.

It is also harder to draw audience to a once a week offering. Radio listening from, the perspective of the audience, is habitual. The medium is convenient. Tune in and what you expect is magically there. Weekend programming needs to meet audience expectations. Once you get the listener there, the content needs to fulfill the expectations of your audience. If not, they're gone.

It's not going to work

But is this kind of promotion effective? Obviously, you want to make your audience aware of your weekend offerings. Not really. The most effective form of promotion is forward promotion. You're trying to increase time spent listening. There I said it. I also felt the hackles of so many doubters in public radio land go up. Unfortunately, this is basic radio. Promote what is coming up in the next ten to 20 minutes and do it consistently. Your goal is to increase time spent listening. 

Next, focus on vertical promotion. Try to increase occasions by promoting to your daily talk shows or All Things Considered during Morning Edition. 

Horizontal promotion works well. Promote a series of stories on Morning Edition during Morning Edition. You could easily do the same during midday programming.

Look for opportunities to cross promote. Local stories can be expanded upon by your midday offerings and other platforms. Don't miss this opportunity to promote between platforms!

Promotion on Monday morning for The Moth Radio Hour airing on Sunday night is the least effective thing you can do. I'm simply not going to remember it.

What works for weekends?

If you want to draw an audience to a weekend program, it would be more effective to run OES scheduling for that program. Optimum Effective Scheduling (OES) is a concept created to reach the majority of a radio station's listeners 3 or more times by distributing ads evenly throughout a week. This will take planning and discipline, but it works. 

Wind Turbines in the Cold

Texas Turbines Fail

Republicans in Texas are quick to blame wind turbines for their energy problems during the extreme winter weather there. That theory is more politically motivated than truthful. Wind turbines failed in Texas, but two-thirds of the power problems were due to breakdowns at fossil fuel power plants. Green energy has been a political punching bag for Texas Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott throughout the winter storm. Experts say that politicians never take responsibility for natural disasters when it comes to preparedness. (Texas Tribune).

Abbott isn’t alone. Republicans looking to score political points from across the spectrum have been blaming green energy for the disaster, including those in Texas. “This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “When weather conditions get bad as they did this week, intermittent renewable energy like wind isn’t there when you need it.”

To drive the point home, many are sharing a viral image of a helicopter de-icing a frozen windmill. “You know how you unfreeze frozen windmills? By sending up a helicopter that shoots out chemicals onto the blades,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) tweeted, ostensibly in response to the viral image. “You need fuel for the helicopter. Keep that in mind when thinking how ‘green’ windmills are.”

The only problem is that the image was not taken in Texas earlier this week. It was taken in Sweden in 2014. (Rolling Stone)

 Wind turbines work well in cold climates. All you have to do is look at how wind generating companies in the north operate. The turbines in the north are fitted with deicers. More traditional power plants are engineered to deal with the cold. So are the water companies. 

Utilities in Texas are being charged with a lack of preparedness in  the face of the storm. They knew it was coming. They had days to prepare. That would not have been enough time for a storm like this. Preparations should have begun years ago.

Utilities in the south are not equipped to deal with the cold. 

There have been warnings from climate scientists. Their warnings went unheeded. The change in the vortex has been under study since the 1950's. and the breakdown has been occurring more frequently with increasing intensity. An article published by Acuweather warns, Longer, harsher winters may be in store for the portions of North America as the polar vortex continues to weaken and shifts, according to a new study.

The vortex has been shifting according to Acuweather's Senior Meteorologist Bob Smerbeck. "There are other factors that determine where the vortex sets up," Smerbeck said. "The warm blob over the north Pacific in winter 2013-2014 and the unusually warm waters along the west coast of North America [for the] 2014-2015 winter contributed to a southward dip in the vortex across eastern North America and cold winters in the central and eastern U.S."

Climate denial is a big part of power politics in the south, especially Texas. With more of these events likely in the coming winters, preparing infrastructure for more extreme cold would seem to be imperative. Housing will need to be updated to withstand the cold.

It will be costly. It will be necessary.

There's an opportunity here. Updating the infrastructure means good paying jobs. 

Radio still connects content with audiences

 Reach Out and Engage

Even in the early days, radio was an extension of what I liked to do best, share what I've found, and then listen to the response. As an announcer, I went at it as somebody who was making discoveries, a curator in the hope of finding a common bond. At first I did that with music. Later I was sharing stories.

Radio does this very well, especially public radio. I craved the feedback, Content that resonated well with the audience became the benchmark. In the beginning it was the phone calls. Later it became actual research. Unfortunately, phone response represented the caller and nobody else. 

It worked. It worked really well. 

Radio is a personal medium. It's been said that everything that comes out of your radio speakers is local, because the listener is able to interact. Listeners would talk in terms of the the stations they listened to as their stations. 

Radio is a personal medium and, unlike other media, it can accompany you throughout the day. This fact makes radio the ultimate local community and loyal friend. Radio is highly personalized because it requires the listener to fill in the blanks … and they are entirely in charge of what they “see”. The Media Online

Radio has changed. Instead of lamenting being displaced by Social Media, look at it as a way of making your discoveries available on multiple platforms.

Check out Zane Derbyshire's article at The Media Online. Derbyshire is currently the head of all things content at East Coast Radio. In it he says, "Technology will take radio forward and allow for even more meaningful ways to connect the audience to the presenter.  Radio needs to make it easy for listeners to interact, be it through calls, WhatsApps, video sharing, or text messages. Sharing of great content also needs to become easier. If that happens, your audience will become the promoters of your content.

• Be proactive
• Reach out
• Use research
• Listen and engage

Please understand you're going to need to bring people in your own house on-board. I've had to persuade people who think only in terms of my show, my story, my music. That won't work for radio. Loyalty for the listener is primarily to the radio station. That has not changed. Don't believe me? Run a crossover analysis of Morning Edition to the rest of your broadcast day. You are likely to find 80% of your audience filters through morning drive.

Think of it this way, you're starting to understand the power of the shared experience. I share stuff on Social Media all the time, but now I'm appealing to a core audience that never exceeds 50 people. In my radio days it was about 100,000 core listeners. Pretty heady stuff. If you can bring that audience to your content, then you've succeeded.

Medgar Evers

Guided By Faith

Medgar Evers was one of many leaders of the civil rights movement that leaned heavily on their faith to give them strength against a system fueled by hate, only wishing to harm black Americans and kill them if need be. Those who would do harm to African Americans for seeking dignity and respect as promised by God, were protected by unjust laws and a system that legalized and encouraged racism.

"As long as God gives me strength to work and try to make things real for my children, I'm going to work for it - even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice."

-Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers was an activist and leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s. He fought in World War II, and was part of the Normandy invasion. When he returned after the war, despite his service, he found barriers to his willingness to live the American Dream he fought for in the war.

He was undeterred. "Evers soon found that his skin color gave him no freedom when he and five friends were forced away at gunpoint from voting in a local election." (NAACP History) Despite this he enrolled in Alcorn State, majoring in business administration. According to the NAACP History site he soon became an activist as the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civil rights and pro self-help organization. He led a boycott against filling stations that would not allow Blacks to use their bathrooms. In 1954 he enrolled at the segregated University of Mississippi Law School. The NAACP took up his case and facilitated his enrollment.  In December of 1954, Evers became the NAACP’s first field officer in Mississippi.

Evers, activism made him a target of the segregationists. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard left him vulnerable to attack. On May 28, 1963, a molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home, and five days before his death, he was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office. Civil rights demonstrations accelerated in Jackson during the first week of June 1963. A local television station granted Evers time for a short speech, his first in Mississippi, where he outlined the goals of the Jackson movement. Following the speech, threats on Evers’ life increased.

On June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from an integration meeting where he had conferred with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that stated, “Jim Crow Must Go”, Evers was struck in the back with a bullet that ricocheted into his home. He staggered 30 feet before collapsing, dying at the local hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television in support of civil rights. (NAACP History) 

His killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was not found guilty until 1994 because the all white jury deadlocked in the first two trials in the 1960's. New evidence found by the FBI in the early 90's led to his conviction. The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi tells the story of the 1994 trial.

The Dialogue

Common Ground

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.
- Colossians 4:6


Dialogue is a non-confrontational communication, where both partners are willing to learn from the other and therefore leads much farther into finding new grounds together. 

- Scilla Elworthy (From Sojourners)

So much of what we've gone through in the past 13 years is because we've become confrontational. We've chosen sides. The guiding principle, "Those who shout the loudest are convinced they've won." Anybody in our tribe must pass a purity test. Anybody willing to compromise is tainted and a traitor to the cause. This came to a head on January Sixth. It can easily continue for the foreseeable future. 

Do you want to help change this? Start by listening. Then speak when it is your turn.