DIRECTOR OF LIVE LISTENING, WBUR Program

As our Director of Live Listening, you will provide active daily leadership in growing audiences and revenue on behalf of WBUR's live listening experiences, and supporting audience, engagement and revenue goals for all other WBUR platforms. Alongside the Chief Content Officer, Executive Editor for News, and Managing Producer, you will nurture an "audience first" culture, along with a bias toward action in project and services planning.

Your Topline Goals:

• Ongoing work in close coordination with executive leadership to grow listening habits to WBUR.
• Solidify and reinforce WBUR's position as a first-choice news station in Greater Boston by amplifying local and national journalism each day.
• Interrogate and refine formatics and presentation to elevate and distinguish WBUR's live listening experience and stationality.
• Serve as an additional strategic thought partner to senior leaders, tracking and maximizing live listening.
• Support a bias towards action – things will need to evolve for WBUR to grow live listening.
• Represent WBUR's interests with content partners (new and existing) and programming opportunities.

Programming:

• Reimagine WBUR's logs and formatics to optimize time for live news through the day, along with priority messaging from across the organization. This work includes news presentation strategies, promotion and audience-building priorities, and each moment of every local break.
• Work across the organization, convene regular "managing our messages" meetings to coordinate priorities and build collaboration around how to use air effectively.
• Once formatic and promo priorities are established, work directly with Programming, News, Marketing, Traffic and others to socialize any required changes to WBUR's SOP.
• Optimize and focus the WBUR day sheet to focus on major news coverage across each day.
• Communicate and manage breaking news-special coverage opportunities on behalf of local broadcast demands and stakeholders.
• Provide ongoing listening notes to WBUR's CCO, EE, Managing Producer and others.
• Support monthly air-checks with on-air hosts and anchors.
• Participate in daily news meetings and manage operations and promotional planning for special coverage and developing news.
• Analyze monthly audience data and provide topline insights and recommendations on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and progress against goals/KPI's.
• Recommend schedule adjustments based on audience research, system trends, and the local media environment.
• As helpful, serve as a sounding board/resource for formatic and station service questions about WBUR's national programming.
• Represent WBUR through programming partnership examinations and growth opportunities (partner & station introductions, audience and revenue analysis support, program director relations including PRPD networking, more).

Presentation and Stationarity:

• Based on listening sessions and guidance from leadership, recommend steps to enhance WBUR's stationarity, vibrancy, and pride of place in Boston.
• Develop a "Sound+Style" guide for WBUR – defining the aesthetic and personality of the station.
• Create workflows and feedback loops that steadily move WBUR towards a more modern sound and pacing.
• Continue to refine and integrate all live read copy using a more modern, and conversational style.
• Collaborate with Membership on news-driven messaging and break design during pledge drives. Minimize audience disruption and maximize revenue based on current listening patterns.

Cross-Platform Audience Building:

• Collaborate with new Cross Platform director, News, Podcasting, Newsletters, Social and other teams to coordinate and optimize audience flow and growth across WBUR platforms.
• Create new opportunities and workflows to elevate WBUR's enterprise journalism and most creative work.
• Design experiments to grow podcast audiences.
• Based on listening patterns, design promotion strategies to build audiences on mobile and smart speakers.
• Refine and align the use of air to promote WBUR events, and other station audience priorities.

Required Skills

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years in progressive leadership roles in news programming, content strategy and/or audience development.
• Passion for public medias mission and values, with strong commitment to editorial independence, diversity and public trust.
• Proven success designing audience-centered content strategies across broadcast and digital platforms.
• Excellent communication, organizational and editorial decision-making skills.
• Ability to manage complex, fast-paced news environments with composure and authority.
• Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration capabilities. Willingness and ability to mentor and support junior colleagues.
• Experience with audience research, analytics, CMS workflows and cross-platform programming is a plus.
• Collaborative leadership style with high emotional intelligence.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, natural or protective hairstyle, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military service, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, or because of marital, parental, or veteran status. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.