Archive for category: Audio

Your first job when doing and interview, especially with an A-lister, is to connect with them.  That opens the portal to talk with them about near anything because they know you did your homework and trust builds.  Enter John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego with an interview they did with country music star Eric Church.  This happened while college basketball season was upon them.  Eric came on because he had a new album to promote.  There’s no “where did you get your inspiration for this album” questions.  These guys know better.  John poking at Eric about his alma mater (UNC) and how a local San Diego team was doing softened Eric to talk with him about drinking and what he was going to do for his wife for the upcoming Valentine’s Day.  It’s a good game plan because it’s what makes listeners interested.

Interviews are often not prepped – even with the A-listers.  When offered an interview, there are always two agendas:  the person being interviewed wants to sell something (tickets, web hits, downloads, etc.).  Our agenda is to always entertain and engage the audience.  Which is why, when given the interview, that you not just work based on the press release.  True, you must satisfy the interviewee’s goals.  But that comes after you engage your audience with insights and storytelling from your curiosity based on what you learned about them in prep.  Enter Logan and Sadie, WINK-FM, Ft. Myers, FL with their Barry Manilow interview.  No one would turn down talking to Barry, right?  But, he’s coming on sell concert tickets.  Here are two segments they recently aired.  Note how they bring Barry into a community service project they were doing about pets (knowing he’s a big dog guy) and the other, very mainstream things they did to make Barry even more interesting.  Also note the production value they brought to the conversation to.  All of this broadened the conversation’s appeal, as they helped Barry get his concert sold out.

On the show DJ Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami, they’re always making fun that Ivy can’t remember the names of callers seconds after they introduce themselves.  For those of us with the disease PCB (Permanent Content Brain), we see breaks of character development in all of this!  We hatched this idea where listeners would come on, introduce themselves, and attach an interesting fact about their life to the audience and Ivy.  She then had to hold on to the fact and person’s name (no writing anything down) for 24-hours.  The next day at the same time, the callers came back on, reminded her of their interesting personal fact, to see if Ivy remembered their name.  Did she succeed?  Here’s the audio.

I have great respect for shows that take what could be standard, pro forma content, and twist it even slightly to make it more effective.  Summer is upon us and that brings back memories for many of summer flings.  Did you have one in your life?  You didn’t have to in order to relate to this topic.  Elizabeth and Radar, 99.1 The MIX, Milwaukee know the power of both nostalgia and storytelling.  They took calls from listeners who told them a story about a summer romance they once had.  At the end, they had to guess if the romance was a fling or forever.  What’s best is that twist – in the frame of the topic, listeners followed along and guessed in their minds, too.  Creating  content that listeners had to pay attention to because of how it was designed.

Relevance is when you’re on a topic of the moment.  Something happening now is high school graduations.  Marry that topic with an idea that would resonate with your demo, and it’s gold.  Anna and Raven, Star 99.9, Bridgeport, CT (syndicated) know their Hot AC audience is adult women, many of whom have high school students graduating this month.  Some of those graduates will go on to college, which can be quite expensive.  Which is why they did Scratch It for Your Graduate.  A listener came on to gush about their kid then talk about the university they were going to in the fall.  They had a bunch of lottery tickets in the studio!  They scratched a card and gave the caller whatever the winnings were to defray the cost of board and tuition for freshman year.  Clever and relevant.