In 1996, Dave Ramsey — host of what was then called The Money Game — told SuperTalk 99.7 WTN executives he wanted to nationally syndicate the program. When engineers told him they were too busy to handle the technical aspect, they asked who would handle the syndication. Ramsey pointed to his producer — Blake Thompson — who was in his first week on the job.

Thompson didn’t know it at the time, but that moment would go on to represent much of his tenure at Ramsey Solutions, leading the company into new frontiers.

While maybe not viewed as a usual suspect in the digital media landscape, The Ramsey Network has seen some of the medium’s greatest success in the podcasting and digital video mediums. The Ramsey Show’s YouTube channel features more than 626,000 subscribers. That number pales in comparison to its “Highlights” channel, which boasts just over 3 million.

The company has compiled more than a billion views on YouTube, while simultaneously eclipsing more than a billion downloads on Apple Podcasts.

Blake Thompson was hesitant to take credit for the company’s overwhelming success in the spaces. Instead, he pointed to the message Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions present, and the need to embrace whatever platforms their intended audience uses as the biggest drivers of the content’s success.

“It’s the same mindset of wanting to get to people where they’re at. So maybe a new generation comes up, and they’ve heard about our show because of radio, because their parents listened, or some older generation. The real young generation is starting to come up and they already know about us because of radio, which is so cool to see. But they happen to have a new Tesla that doesn’t have a radio, and they have a CarPlay, or they only use YouTube. They don’t even know what cable TV is,” Blake Thompson joked.

“And so with that mindset, it’s just about reaching the most people where they’re at. That’s how we went about it. We just learned early on to always try to be a step ahead in what’s coming … We try to stay ahead of the industry in with the right context and kind of see where it’s going and try to be a step ahead in planning of production … but now we’ve learned to shift and also spread and disperse more in our distribution department to these other platforms.”

Despite the network’s current success, getting to this point was a series of trials and errors.

“The thing we learned earlier was the format difference. We did, forever, just cut and paste. And when I say that, we did a radio format three hours a day, and then just put those three hours on a podcast Monday through Friday. We just threw up three hours up on YouTube,” Thompson said. “Well, the way you’re measured for success with analytics are just different on those and as time goes, they look at things differently. Where, of course, you want to be on radio all day long, but maybe on YouTube, they’re going more for consumption and how much time is really spent on the content you’re putting up.

“So we really learned that, actually, you could do too much content on some of those digital platforms. On podcast, we were doing 15 hours a week. You normally said ‘That’s great because people are getting all this information.’ But at the end of the day, you’re not having someone sit in their car for three hours. It’s the same with radio. You’re trying to catch up on where they’re at back in the day that we started trimming that stuff down. And we had to learn that we had to do those in different formats or different lengths in order to win in those spaces.”

Ramsey Solutions is actually seeing its digital efforts translate to increased listenership for its terrestrial radio offering of The Ramsey Show.

“The best way to describe it is that they’re going to a Short because they happen to be on YouTube and they see a clip of Dave — even an old clip in the studio — and he hits a felt need with them that we’re doing a good job leading them further down and then they realize ‘Oh, this guy’s on the radio. I just happen to be on YouTube looking on how to fix my car hood. And I see this guy and then I recognize him from a billboard in my market or I’ve heard that name.’

“So in our last survey, we’ve really seen a crazy amount of people who have even come from those digital shorts, or Instagram, or TikTok over into listening to radio,” Blake Thompson shared. “It was neat to see people discovering us in those really short formats on video in other places, and then realize that we’re in their market on radio and tune it in when they’re in their car heading to work.”

One could think that seeing the expansive growth on the podcast and digital video fronts would be a tempting endeavor to chase full-time, leaving behind the show’s radio roots. However, Blake Thompson remained adamant that Ramsey Solutions will continue to be a radio-first organization.

“The fact that we’re still winning there and that we still get testimonies from people who have paid off all their debt, or call in, or come to the lobby to watch this on the glass, it’s still a major thing. We just treat it as equal as any other thing, we kind of have the mindset of whatever we’re doing, we want to be the best at that,” he shared. “We don’t say one thing’s more important than the other.

“Because if you come at it with a mindset that it’s about the people and not the platform and the analytics and just the ROI, and it’s truly about the people, then that’s the way you’ll go about treating radio, treating YouTube, treating Spotify, and treating whatever the new thing is down the line. Radio is just so special to us because it’s what made The Ramsey Show more of a household name. Because that was the original. That’s the way we grew, that was our baby. That’s our mothership.

“So it’s a mixture of me being an old timer here, making sure (new employees) understand that mixed with that, ‘Hey, it’s about the audience.’ So as long as radio’s around — and I’ve had many platforms that have come down the line of ‘That’s going to beat radio,’ and guess what a lot of those are dead and gone, and radio’s still here.”

Blake Thompson has been the right-hand man of Dave Ramsey and his radio network for nearly 30 years. The media world has certainly seen transformative change in that time. And while Thompson freely admits he never saw the company reaching the heights it has, especially in the digital realm, he was quick to point out that Ramsey Solutions has grown into the image its founder had when he launched it decades ago.

“It blows my mind that Dave envisioned the campus we have now, the size of the team we have now, and more importantly, the amount of people affected by the messages in the lives helped and change in the hope given,” Thompson said. “We both started together in a closet doing a radio show here in Nashville at the time, and we would drive 40 miles round trip to go do that show in a little closet studio on the campus of the Opryland Hotel.

“He sold me on this vision because it had happened to him, gone into debt, and doing it the wrong way, that he was called to teach people how to avoid the way he did it. And the phones my first day when I’m in there were lit up. There wasn’t an open line.

“And I didn’t know much about money. I wasn’t taught this stuff in high school … but I saw the need, I understood that it was bigger than just Nashville and that other people needed it, but I never would have guessed that we would have hit a billion downloads on Apple … I had no clue that this was going to be ahead of us, at this size. Dave knew it because it equaled how many people’s lives were changed.”

What’s one of the biggest complaints about broadcast radio and television? Too many commercials, right? The interminable wait before getting back to whatever you really want to hear? The stop sets so long that you can’t imagine the client whose spot runs in the middle of the break is getting any kind of value from it?

Then why are some podcast networks doing the exact same thing?

Take iHeartRadio. I listen to some of that company’s podcasts, and they open with several pre-roll spots and promos, insert several more in the body of the show (mostly pre-recorded, not host-read), and close out with the ultimate in useless, several post-roll spots and promos– the show’s over, the goodbyes and see-you-next-weeks are done, and… more spots and promos?  The thing podcast listeners are escaping broadcast radio to avoid? The saving grace is that listeners can fast-forward or skip ahead, but that’s not good for business, either.

Which brings me to the NAB Show. I missed this year’s show for the first time in decades, mostly because nobody was gonna cover my travel expenses, and so I missed this year’s Next Big Thing, which, of course, was artificial intelligence. From what I gather through others’ reporting, AI was everywhere at the LVCC, and everything had some kind of AI component involved. New-ish technology! Revolutionary! This changes everything!

Sigh. This isn’t going to change the things that need to be changed. The problems facing the media are more about humans than they are about technology. As podcasts are repeating the mistakes made by radio, AI-driven operations will only be as good as the people programming, feeding, and operating the platforms.

Radio people, handed podcasting as a new medium, applied their radio way of thinking to it, and so we have a half-hour podcast starting with a thick morass of ads and promos. Give them AI and what are they going to do? They’ll use it to crank out the same tired, personality-free, liner-card-reading content they’ve been doing on broadcast stations, just with fewer (or no) humans involved. They’ll use it to do back-office stuff with fewer (or no) humans involved. Will they do something creative, revolutionary, or different?

What do you think?

Here’s what I’d do: I’d assemble a team of the most creative people I could find, regardless of the medium in which they work. I’d present them with the technology and explain the capabilities. And I’d let them imagine what they could do with it, encouraging them to ignore what’s been done in the past.

Anyone who suggests doing a standard radio show but with an AI-generated “host” would be fired into the sun. Okay, maybe not that, but it would be unacceptable. If the cream of creatives can’t develop new, different, and compelling uses for AI, what’s AI worth to the programming side of broadcast media?

Right, reducing payroll to nothing might buy some companies a couple more years. I get that. But it’s like inventing the airplane and using it as a paperweight. You’re being presented with something a convention hall full of people are touting as revolutionary. If you can’t find a way to use it to lead a revolution, perhaps it isn’t the game changer everyone says it is.

Or maybe you’re not the game changer.

Markets are tumbling. Audiences are segmented. Advertising avenues are growing. If you are a radio host in any format, you must prove that you are valuable.

As I have said over and over again, the worst lie that can ever tell is the one that you tell yourself. So, here comes the definitive guide for being essential and indispensable.  

How Much is Your Radio Show Billing?

You need to know this. You may not be an Account Executive, but your show’s billing is enormously important. Your station’s Market Manager knows this. What is it? Ask your Market Manager this frightening question: “Is the billing good enough?”

Follow up with this even more scary question: What can I do to improve the situation? I have the answer for you.

You are an ambassador for your station and company. Everything that you do in public and quite frankly in your private life reflects your show, station, and company. Are you a good example? I don’t know, are you? Be honest. It’s just you and this article. What is the truth? Bad service at a restaurant, do you tip poorly or yell at the waitress? That sucks if you do this.

I guarantee you this: someone in that restaurant knows who you are. One bad impression spreads like mononucleosis among smooching 13-year-olds. You have someone repairing your car. Are you gracious? You hire an advertiser to fix something in your home. Do you argue over the bill? This can never happen. You must be gracious in all situations no matter if you have been wronged. People gossip like crazy if a “famous” person has been a jackass.

You have been taken on a sales call. How do you behave? A lot of talk show hosts are introverts. A lot of people in programming can only become alive when a microphone is on.

If you are to be considered essential, this must change. Shake hands with the owner, manager, or decision-makers and look directly in their eyes. Not in a creepy way like a stalker of Britney Spears. Smile. Ask questions. Pay real attention to these humans. Ask for a picture with the people you are meeting for your station’s social media. This is really important. You are making them the star. It matters not if they are buyers or not.

You will create an amazing story that these people will share at church, with friends, with fellow business owners, and at the bar. You will create a connectivity that will demonstrate that you are an amazing human being. They will share this picture, guaranteed. You will raise the status of everyone in that picture. Yes, you. The radio star who came to meet with this business that employs people. This business has many loyal customers. You are making a great memory.

Bring Ideas to the Table

Do you have an idea for a sponsored segment or benchmark? Tell your sales manager or market manager that you won’t air this until it is sponsored. Tell that revenue leader that if you can’t get it sponsored, you cannot air it.

Create excitement and opportunity for your Account Executives. Salespeople generally are not that creative. They sell what is put in front of them.

Back in the 90’s when I broke into radio, most market managers had a background in programming. During that time, these individuals had a fundamental understanding of your job. Your current Market Manager likely has very little understanding of your job and the programming department at your radio cluster. You must lead them. To be essential, you must educate them.

Make Sales Calls with Account Executives

Make one day per week dedicated to sales. Become that air talent who is willing to grind for more sales on your show. Come with recommendations.

When you are at a business, ask to be introduced to the owner. Tell that business leader that you love his/her company. Also, explain that you want to share your fandom on the air. Make an appointment to return with an Account Executive. This is a slam dunk for a sale.

Deliver Unforgettable Live Copy

Do you sound like you love the product or service? Are you excited about it? Your listeners will connect with what you love. These amazing people who listen to your show love you! These folks already share your passions, love your personality, and most importantly, trust you. This is sales gold!

The social media age has launched “influencers.” You are a real influencer. It’s not feigned victimhood, whacky stunts, or unreal circumstances. You have thousands and thousands of friends in that audience. By the way, never take it for granted.

You are essential. You mean so much to your audience. Be the face of your radio station, but never believe that you are bigger than the brand that you work for. You are a steward of that brand. Respect and love that brand. Know your place.

Remember this fact: Revenue trumps ratings, dedication, or longevity. Make yourself essential.