Moneyball: Listeners Tell Us What Makes (Country) DJs Great

Nuvoodoo Research: Leigh Jacobs & Carolyn Gilbert

We’re getting great feedback on our participation in a new CRS360 webinar, “A Face for Radio?” …A Difference for Your Listeners.” Along with Carolyn Gilbert and me, the webinar features new Country Radio Hall of Fame inductee Clay Hunnicutt and iHeartMedia Nashville’s Gator Harrison. Together, we look more deeply into what Country radio listeners say makes personalities on Country radio stand out from others. While the webinar is about Country radio, the underlying principles really apply to all types of music radio.

In the webinar Gator and Clay have great tips on translating listener opinions into real world talent coaching. The webinar is available from the CRS website or from YouTube. We’re sharing deeper data from the national sample of nearly 1200 Country radio listeners aged 18 to 54 nationwide that built our presentation for CRS 2025 in Nashville earlier this year.

As noted last week, the hundreds and hundreds of comments from listeners in the study fell into five broad categories – five things that make Country DJs great. And you can draw a direct line from engagement with hosts to higher TSL for stations. Last week I shared comments from the first of the five themes: humor and entertainment.

This week I want to highlight the second theme: relatability and personality. In the webinar Carolyn reminded us that radio is a one-to-one medium: making relatable radio starts with talking to one person at a time. iHeart’s Gator Harrison gave great advice about making content personal by developing a perfect target listener for talent to envision, ensuring that content is directed perfectly at that one listener.

And again, the real stars of the webinar are the unedited comments from the respondents themselves when asked to, “tell us the things that make the Country radio DJs and hosts you enjoy stand out from others.”

• “They make me laugh, they talk about real topics, they are informative”
• “They make it feel like they are playing the songs just for me”
• “They stand out because they feel genuine, connect personally with their audience, and bring great energy and humor to every show”
• “I feel like I know the host personally”
• “I feel like I’ve known them forever”
• “I feel like they sound like I am talking to or listening to a friend”
• “It’s really like listening to your buddies talking about what’s going on”
• “The way interact with each other”
• “They sound like people that live nearby”
• “They are funny and down to earth”
• “They sound more down to earth”
• “They talk about things I’m interested in”
• “They treat you like a real person”
• “They’re funny and talk about regular things”
• “They are funny and relatable. Talk about real life and keep things light”
• “They’re living in the moment and make me enjoy my moments with my family and partner”
• “The jokes they tell and stories about their families”
• “They often incorporate their own stories into the artist that they’re interviewing or the music that they are playing”

Just as with the comments shared last week concerning humor, there’s a lot to unpack in these comments that connect to relatability: one-to-one communication (“playing the songs just for me,” “connect personally with their audience”), being genuine (“like I am … listening to a friend,” “like listening to your buddies,” “sound like people who live nearby”), letting the audience in (“talk about real life,” “stories about their families,” “their own stories”).

Next week we’ll wrap things up by sharing what respondents had to say about the remaining of the five things that make Country DJs great.

If you’ve just found budget for a music test or a promotion, NuVoodoo would love to help. An email to tellmemore@nuvoodoo.com will get quick attention from the right member of our team. Additionally, NuVoodoo marketing guru Mike O’Connor is publishing important insights from our latest general marketing study every week at nuvoodoo.com/articles.