I just did a
Google search on Tim Tebow. I got 70,400,000 results. That’s more
than three for each man, woman, and child in my beloved home state
of Texas.
Tim Tebow is an indisputable phenomenon. That was true even before
his recent longest overtime touchdown pass in the shortest overtime
in playoff history.
•Tebow hit more than 1 million mentions on Twitter that night, the
rate of tweets announcing the victory hit 9,420 per second. To put
that in perspective Tebow beats the 8,868 tweets-per-second rate
reached when Beyoncé announced her pregnancy during the 2011 MTV
Music Awards.
•Both Tebow and his favorite Bible verse, John 3:16, were in the top
three Google Trends throughout most of the following Monday.
How much notoriety do you think Tim Tebow would get if he was a
third string quarterback? How many people would have googled John
3:16 and if Tim Tebow wasn’t a Heisman Trophy winner and record
setting NFL star?
Excellence
is what has given Tim Tebow the platform to share his faith.
Excellence has helped make people curious about what makes this
guy different. Excellence is the one factor that gives him
permission to speak into peoples’ lives.
The landmark research study “Why Christians Don’t Listen to
Christian Radio”, uncovered the top five reasons:
Reason #1. Plays unfamiliar music
Reason #2 They don’t know you exist
Reason #3 They can’t relate to your station
Reason #4 Christian radio is out of touch
Reason #5 They see Christian radio as sub-par to other stations
How much more
impact would your radio station have if you strived for
excellence in everything you did?
My brilliant
friend Dean O’Neal, the programming architect of Z88.3 in Orlando, a
station that has been at the top in ratings like no other in the
format, says,
“For us the goal has always been to do the best radio we possibly
can by serving others and pointing them to Christ. When you
serve others, people get to see your heart and become attracted to
you. I believe the tipping point is when a CCM station embraces a
culture of serving the community in ways that radio does better than
any other medium.....It is their trusted friend on the radio,
sharing real life with them...and in the process, having the
opportunity to point them to Christ.”
So, if excellence is the price of admission for your station
to even have a chance to speak into someone’s life--the very purpose
for the station to exist, I would suppose---then why don’t we
respond to those reasons and.....
...play music they know, and----dare I say----LOVE......
.....develop marketing, social networking, and on-air programming
tactics that let people know the station exists...........
.......train our air talent to be listener-centric rather than
station-centric or ego-centric......
.........strive to make our stations the MOST relevant on the dial
by focusing on what our listeners care about......
...........hold ourselves accountable for excellence. I know of
stations where the staff doesn’t even listen to the station, much
less hold each other accountable for what is coming out of the
speakers.
If striving for
excellence became our own version of “Te-bow-ing” it could transform
the impact of our radio stations.
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John is a partner in Goodratings
Strategic Services, and has been a successful major market disc
jockey and program director for such companies as CBS, Cap Cities,
Westinghouse, Sandusky, Gannett, and Alliance during his 38 year
broadcast career. John joined Goodratings’ partner Alan Mason in
1999.
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