Radio Program Director
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The popularity of television, the Internet and a host of other new technologies create even more reason why today’s radio station program director must not only be effective at programming, budgeting and day-to-day operations, but he or she must also possess a high degree of people-management skills and an ability to attract and develop on-air talent. Today’s market is extremely competitive and low unemployment and a paucity of real on-air talent creates an employee’s market making it even more important for the program director to possess effective people-management skills. The growing diversity of the work force and the listening audience also require an emphasis on people-management skills. Formerly, the radio industry viewed the program director as the executive in charge of the “sound” of a station and with building the listener audience. From this perspective, aspects like budgeting and people-management were secondary or not concerns compared with skills dealing with entertainment. Often the point of view was held that the program director had little concern with the profitability of the station. Because of the pressures discussed above, radio industry corporate culture and thinking have evolved to define a broader role for the program director, one that includes budgeting, people-management and increasing value issues, “Radio is an evolving medium and how radio views management is changing. When increa
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with station personnel (Checkley, 1991: 39).
The program director position has broadened to include so many managerial functions that did not apply in the early days of radio that many of them are now hired in a position that is known as the operations director. Looking at an overview, the three broad areas which the program director is responsible for today would fall into the categories of programming/building listener audience, budgets/finances, and personnel management. In the area of programming the director must be very aware of his listening audiences needs as well as knowing how to hold and build that audience. Further, the situation merits a continuous monitoring process for which the program director is responsible, “Manager must know how programming is working to attract and hold an audience. This involves constant monitoring of audience levels and analysis of the competition. Every element of the stations sound must be evaluated continually and measured against the programming’s ability to attract the levels of audience demanded by advertisers” (O’Donnell, Hausman and Benoit, 1989: 287).
Programming costs can be considerable. Not only is the top on-air talent available expensive but so are many of the tech
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Approximate Word count = 2861
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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