Focus. Fascinate me.

The most misunderstood and cliched basic rule of good radio is that you should focus on a single listener, talk to one person and imagine that person as you speak. It's okay advice to try to settle the nerves of the raw beginner who will grasp at any straw of wisdom but it's really misleading because the truth is, as a radio personality you're not talking to one person you're talking to many thousands of total strangers who have neither faces nor voices from your perspective.

Even as raw beginners we don't buy it. We're just gripping.

The honest-to-God inescapable truth is, you're talking to a wall beyond a microphone and trying to be warm, fuzzy, and lovable in the process.

Tell me Oscar-winning actors have a greater challenge.

This is very subtle stuff, one of those advanced lessons one learns after years and often decades of being on the air. How do you focus your message to each of thousands of people and make them feel as if you're talking with them one-on-one? Easy...

You can't. It's not possible. Get real.

You talk, listeners listen. That's hardly a conversation, is it? There is no way you can make a listener feel as invested in the discussion as you are unless you give them what they want from you:

Information.

Tell me something I don't know. Fascinate me. And let me learn to like you for who you are in my own good time.

Embracing a radio personality is exactly like dating. If you try to force yourself on your date, he or she will recoil and run.

Just fascinate me. That's all there is to it.

Notice I didn't mention being funny or wise. If you're funny or wise in real life it will come across on the air. If not, it doesn't matter as long as the things you're talking about are new to me and you convince me that you know what you're talking about. Your personality lives in who you are. Trying to be somebody you are not is a major #FAIL.

Talk to me, not just your sidekick. For God's sake don't be constantly talking to your board op and producer. It's a crutch. When you do that it tells me two things: you don't know what you're doing and you are scared.

Fear on the radio is exactly like fear on a date. It's uncomfortable for the person you're trying to impress.

Stop trying.

If you occasionally talk with your call screener or producer to sweep back the curtain that hides the Wizard of Oz, it can be a good thing if you know how to begin and end it. But that's post-graduate stuff. You have to be able to do something like that as an aside, still maintain the flow of information and remember who you're talking to at every moment.

Nobody can do that with effort. It has to be instinctive.

One of the greatest programmers I worked for in my early career, Vic Ives at KSFO, San Francisco, said it best and I remember these words with the same clarity and love as I remember my wedding vows. Vic said to me:

"The more passion and energy you pour into that microphone, the more you will receive in return."

That's all you really need to know about focus.

The process

There is a recipe for creating great radio personalities and great radio stations. It's no different than making a cake.

The first thing you have to do is understand why you want to make a cake. It probably has to do with the fact that you like cake. A lot. So, you want to make the world's greatest cake. That's a good place to start. Why would you set out to make a mediocre cake?

If you're in a hurry you can make a cake the easy way, from a box. Add water and maybe an egg, stir it up and pour it into a pan. Stick it in the oven, wait awhile, and voila, you have a cake! It's a pretty good cake, too. Those people who make instant cake mixes have figured out how to make pretty good cakes on a massive scale. They make it possible for everybody to bake a pretty good cake.

But you won't be satisfied with just a pretty good cake. You don't want the same cake everybody has. You want to make the world's greatest cake and that, as you know, requires learning, practice and patience. And, it requires the finest ingredients.

As we leave our metaphor we understand that the finest ingredients necessary to make a great, one-of-a-kind radio station are great, unique people. Likewise, great radio people are honed and nurtured over time, if not from birth at least from the moment they discover their dream, their calling.

There's no getting around the need for patience, even for cakes from a box. Great radio and great radio personalities require a lifetime of learning and years of practice and loving patience.

Tomorrow: The ingredients.