Well, the Cleveland Cavaliers missed the N.B.A. playoffs. Oh, and they got a new owner this year.

Are these two facts connected? Yup.

On March 1st, mortgage mogul Dan Gilbert bought the Cavs for $375 million. At the time, the team’s record was 31-24 and it was on the way to the postseason, led by young superstar Lebron James and a capable “supporting cast.”

Just three weeks later, Gilbert fired the team’s respected head coach — Paul Silas. A couple of weeks later, the rumor was that he would shortly fire General Manager Jim Paxson within the next 48 hours. That didn’t happen, but Silas’s firing and the Paxson rumors created turmoil on the team. The young Cavs fell apart, ended up 42-40, and will watch the playoffs on on their plasma TV’s.

Now, what the hell does this have to do with radio???

Someone once told me: “Radio General Managers are to logos as dogs are to trees.” In other words, some new G.M.’s come in, and right away have to put their “imprint” on a station, no matter how successful it is. They have to make changes. They have to change format. They have to bring “their” people in. At least, they have to change the logo!

Program Directors can fall into the same trap. As a consultant friend said to me just a week ago: “They have to change the voice guy. Or buy a new jingle package.”

Dan Gilbert just couldn’t wait to fire a playoff-bound Paul Silas. And yesterday, he finally dumped Jim Paxson. “We felt the team had made progress in the past two years,” Gilbert said. “But to get to a championship level, we felt we needed to bring our own people in.”

Detroit Pistons’ President Joe Dumars did it differently. He retired from playing after the ‘99 season, moved into management, and promptly did…nothing major! He observed, he thought, he learned. Then he patiently set in motion a plan that led to a World Championship in 2004.

When you take over a new position as G.M. or P.D., you may not have the luxury of merely “observing.” Some situations do require immediate change. But don’t change a station merely for the sake of change…to put your stamp on it! If you possibly can, take a minute, look around, size things up. Develop a coherent strategic plan based on reality, not ego.

Don’t pee on that logo.

For years, stations made “variety of music” their major selling point. A few even went as far as to call themselves Variety 101 (or whatever).

I never thought this was a powerful positioning. True, if you ask listeners about variety, they’ll invariably tell you they want it! This is like asking them if they like mom’s apple pie.

Just as consumers vote with their dollars, radio listeners vote with their quarter-hours. And until recently, I never found a positive correlation between variety and station preference. The
“variety” station and most-preferred station were rarely the same.

That’s because we live in a polarized society. What wins are the highly-focused edges, NOT the middle. In radio this translates to Country, Hip Hop and News/Talk (among others)…formats with little variety. OK. So that’s what I thought about variety…until recently.

The emergence of the “Jack” (or “Bob,” “Joe,” etc.) format has put a powerful spin on the concept of variety. The format emerged Canada, with monster books in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary. Now, Jack is the “hot format” in the U.S.

The concept of Jack is that it’s anti-format radio. The stations use positioners like Playing What We Want and We Play Anything.

Of course, they really don’t play “anything.” You won’t hear country on there. You won’t hear soft A/C. You won’t hear hip hop. Jack is a gold-based contemporary music station with emphasis on the ’80s and ’90s. It does play music you won’t hear on typical Classic stations — for example, recent tunes and lot of pop from the ’80s that other formats won’t touch.

When Jack first launched, many thought it wouldn’t succeed. How could a station that played music that tested horribly (for example, retro ’80s Euro-pop by performers like Pet Shop Boys and ABC) hold on to listeners?

But that cut-by-cut mentality misses the point of Jack. In this case, the total package really is bigger the sum of its parts (i.e., songs). What Jack does is builds a powerful rationale and cool attitude around variety.

In other words, the listener is thinking: “‘Come On Eileen’ really is a piece of sh**, but hell, they’re just playing what they want!…

And that’s cool.”

In other worlds, Jack’s positioning is much more than “variety of music.” What Jack stands for is an irreverent attitude …one that gives variety the edge it needs to “cut through” today.