Audio

Tiffany & Michael at B101, Philadelphia had a chance to talk to Jerry Springer a while ago. What’s great about this interview are the topics they chose to talk with him about.  It didn’t center around whatever he was selling, it was around very high equity topics:  Oprah retiring, Dancing with the Stars, Thanksgiving, and wrapped up with a question-and-answer session where they got him to reveal things about his life that are intriguing.   Tiffany & Michael were masters in this interview at choosing topics to talk with Jerry about that a wide swath of the audience were interested in.

Here’s a well thought out bit done by Drex and Maney, KISS 95.1, Charlotte back around Mother’s Day.  This is called “Messin’ with Mom” where listeners called their moms to have fun with them.  Two things of note in how this was constructed:  first they had Cassidy, the female on the show, call her mom so the audience would get the bit.  They could have told the audience how it was going to go, but they demonstrated it (and did character development in the process).  Then, just before they did it with the listener, they explained the entire scenario of what she’d say to her mom so the audience could get focused just on the mom’s reaction.

Here is a flawless interview done by Karlson and McKenzie, WZLX, Boston’s highly rated morning show.  Interviewing classic rock legend Gregg Allman about a biography he wrote, they did several smart things to turn this bad interview into a great, highly entertaining one:  they read the book prior to the interview and explored with Allman the parts that most intrigued them.  Allman is notoriously difficult to interview, often giving one word answers.  They kept at it, continuing to explore the stories that interested them.  In a stroke of terrific honesty for the audience, they challenged him on not wanting to answer questions to things that were in his own book.  Then, once it got really bad, they ended the interview, stayed respectful, and blamed themselves for how it went, heightening how entertaining it was.  This interview was prepped and handled perfectly.

Great phones on morning shows should be about story-telling.  Kyle and Rachel, Radio Now, Indianapolis, waded into stories about the weird things that happened at a wedding (Kyle had one to go to and an old story about accidentally setting something on fire).  Time, then, for listener calls.  Here is a fun segment of callers.  They’re short, highly engaging, and fun to hear for those tuning in.  Oftentimes, listener calls are about opinions or yes/no answers to questions.  These kinds of phones are never as good as hearing entertaining stories.

With this being the weekend of Cinco de Mayo, Eddie and JoBo on KHITS, Chicago played a fun game called “Cinco de Mayo (my-oh) or Cinco de Mayo (may-oh)”.  They had a guy on staff say a sentence in Spanish.  The sentence either referenced something around the Mexican holiday or it had to do with mayonnaise.  A nice quirky twist and a really fun dimension to a break.