The gigantic CNN Center in Atlanta – studios, newsrooms, 2 hotels and a food court!

I had a great time working in April with my newest client:

I staged my 2½ day Intensive at CNN’s World Headquarters in Atlanta.

What is CNN Radio? It used to be a network of 2000+ terrestrial radio stations around the country that carried CNN radio newscasts. But a few years ago, CNN got out of the terrestrial radio business and moved its content – based on the worldwide resources of CNN – to the web.

CNN’s dedicated radio staff produces podcasts that can be downloaded from places like Itunes and Stitcher. The foremost CNN Radio podcast is News Day, an in-depth update on the news that is produced every weekday and posted at 4:30 pm. Listeners get a compact, concise half-hour that summarizes the most important news of the day as well as great personal stories you won’t get anywhere else. News Day uses the news, but is not a clone of the TV-side of CNN. I think of their stories as news-based but giving listeners the meaning and context as well as the facts.

It was exciting to be at the amazing home of all of CNN, and very special to spend time with the lean hard-working staff of CNN Radio who are dedicated to producing great radio for the web, mobile and whatever future digital technology may deliver.

I suppose it tips my politics, but I was impressed with legacy medium Associated Press’s decision to ban use of the term “illegal immigrant” in the latest update to its AP Stylebook. As the new entry in the Stylebook instructs AP writers, “use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant.” The AP explains its decision because it is trying to “rid the Stylebook of labels,” which the AP’s SVP and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll termed “a lazy device that those of us who type for living can become overly reliant on as a shortcut … that ends up pigeonholing people …” Apparently, the New York Times is also working on similar revisions. The entire article is here.

Local program production is too difficult and expensive to be allowed to fail. But, the truth is very few local programs deliver a sustainable return on investment: Audience 2010 said “the audience outcomes of local production are often cruel, and the economics are always brutal.”

The answer is:

Get it right!

Design a program strategically as well as creatively.

Design it to succeed!

This may sound obvious, even foolish. Of course, we all want to “Get it right.” But, by creating an intersection of creativity and strategy, we actually can get it right most of the time.

You know what’s crazy? Every business in America has metrics to judge its success and how its performance compares to the “norm” of its business type. If you sell balloons, you know how other balloon sellers are doing, what it is reasonable to spend on advertising, helium, ribbons and labor. But, in public broadcasting, we don’t know how much to invest, what to invest in, and what kind of “return” we should get. Check out a cool new project that John Sutton and I are developing, to produce a tool so you can make “smart decisions” about your investments in program production. It is called the “ROI Tool.”

Believe it or not, there was a time before National Public Radio when there was extraordinary quality broadcasting on commercial radio!

CBS led the pack from the earliest days of network radio, with (Edward R.) Murrow’s boys and a network committed to serving the public interest. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was always a business that needed to make a profit. But, people forget that in those days, a company like CBS was willing to wait a decade for 60 Minutes to turn that profit! When I was growing up, CBS really was the “Tiffany Network.” Here’s a wonderful article on the 75th anniversary of World News Roundup

People wonder if program creation is an art or a science. Is it inspiration or research? Is it a mission or a business? I think the answer to all of these is, “Yes.” Great programs of course need the creative spark that comes from imagination and artistic experience. But too often, these great ideas die on the vine because they do not have an organized, rational business plan — a way of evolving the program’s design that makes sense to all involved in creating and supporting them. In the end, the process can only succeed if the producer finds the perfect intersection of a brilliant idea — a compelling reason to produce the show, and a terrific plan to develop that idea into a sustainable program.

Check out this article, from Transom.org

I have a friend, Doug Hall, who espouses a very short, simple approach to new product creation: “Fail Fast, Fail Cheap.”  In saying this, he is telling us to try out new ideas — quickly and inexpensively — and be willing to throw away those that don’t work. Being willing to fail is an indispensable component of risk-taking and creativity. Moving on, after a failure, virtually guarantees that by playing the law of averages, you’ll discover the right solution to the (creative) problem you’re seeking to solve.

The problem with failing fast but cheaply is that creating a successful radio show can be a very expensive, time-consuming proposition. But, podcaster Andy Bowers has a way around that. Check out his excellent advice in this recent article from Current, the public broadcasting newspaper.

When I was Executive Producer of All Things Considered, I would get letters from freelancers who wanted to produce stories for the show. “What subjects are you interested in?” they’d ask. I was mystified and stumbled “The name of the program is All Things Considered! We’re interested in everything!”

I realized later, when this question kept coming up, that people were confusing subject selection with treatment. I drew up a little grid to show the difference between Treatment and Subject.

Sometimes, even in radio, a picture IS worth a thousand words.

I worry about excessively long segments, features, reports — even on public radio. You see, longer isn’t better and it isn’t in-depth. Longer is just … longer! Continue reading →