Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami with Trends with Benefits

I’m a fan of trivia games that allow the audience in cars, driving to work, to play along.  I’ve featured many on these pages over the years.  This one works not just because it accomplishes that but because its name is memorable and the trivia questions are cut from today’s headlines so it helps the show be contemporary.  I also preach let’s be about now.  Every trivia game must have its genre of trivia and this is about current events.  Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami play Trends with Benefits twice each morning to accrue those images and help define Ivy as the one on the show who’s tapped into whatever is going on in the world and in the market.

Karlson and McKenzie, WZLX, Boston Scared Straight Santa

This is one of my favorite breaks ever as done by Karlson and McKenzie, WZLX, Boston.  We were looking to find an edgy way to connect with the audience.  The show, when on, had attitude and swagger and we wanted to channel that sense of humor into a holiday idea that would be much different than the standard fare phone topics most shows do around this time of year.  Enter Scared Straight Santa.  Everyone knows of the “scared straight” concept where prisoners scare kids into towing the line so they don’t end up in jail.  We used that to keep misbehaving children in line for their parents or else Santa won’t show up.  The first break was a call from a parent who told us how their kid was misbehaving.  The next break (the one below) is when Pete McKenzie called back as Santa and challenged the kid to promise to be good.  This hits all important images you should have:  it’s fun, it’s real, it’s innovative, and it’s relatable.

Matt, Gabe, and Captain Ron, KKWF (The Wolf), Seattle with Operation K-9 Companion

You might be doing a community service project now to show your heart.  That’s a smart move to rally the audience to help you reach some goal to make the community a better place.  Listeners are searching for any reason to feel better about their town, those less fortunate, and themselves.  Your event probably does all of that.  Matt, Gabe, and Captain Ron, KKWF (The Wolf), Seattle just wrapped up their annual effort called Operation K-9 Companion where they ask the audience to help them buy and train service animals for soldiers who are home with PTSD.  Lots of country stations do this – it’s a great event.  This year, the team rallied their listeners to help them raise over $400,000 in one week.  That number is outstanding.  I reminded them that this week-long effort is not a fundraising event.  It’s a story-telling event.  Tell stories and you’ll motivate more people who are inclined to give to do so.  You’ll also elevate the images of your show with those who won’t.  Below are two stories told that showcase two very different emotions.  In the first, they surprise the woman who runs the organization with her mom, who beams with pride.  In the other, a soldier tells a tough story about how his service dog passed away.  Both stories have intense emotions, elevating things for the team.

Iris and Grizz, KSII, El Paso, TX with Content that Becomes the Tease

We tease content for two reasons:  to extend listening with a provocative, intriguing tease.  The other is to make listeners who must leave the show wonder so they’ll return the next day out of a fear of missing something.  Often we think of an effective tease as one or two sentences.  What happens when content becomes your tease?  Iris and Grizz, KSII, El Paso, TX recently combined the two efforts very effectively.  They have a daily benchmark where Iris gives pickup lines centered around the biggest topics of the day.  Pennies will no longer be minted so Iris writes lines around the topic, then opens the phones (ChatGPT can help with this).  Listen to them here do content and how their chemistry drives the break, which leads to the tease of the actual lines.  I’m laughing at this break, so I’ll stay for the next.

David, Sue, and Kendra, Magic 107.7, Boston with Sal and His Apple Trees

There is content all around you.  As you engage people at the station or in life, listen out for stories to tell and quirky characters to put on.  In Boston, Sal the Boss is a character on every show in the Audacy cluster.  Sal always brings great stories, a swagger and attitude, and a terrific sense of humor.  One of Sal’s passions is his apple trees.  Each fall, he picks his apples and gives them away to those at the stations.  So this year, David, Sue, and Kendra, Magic 107.7, Boston had him come in to talk about it.  They then blindfolded Sal, made him take bites of apples, and he had to identify the type of apple it was.  This was fun audio, but an ever better video for social media.  The audio is below and the video is here.

Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami with Is Zog a Thief?

Evolving story lines keep listeners hooked to stay to a conclusion.  Much like a TV show, we keep coming back because we want the ending.  This was the case with Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami.  Zog shared on a Zoom that he’d gone to the mall to buy some T-shirts.  They only had a few in his size so he took those and the store shipped the rest.  When the package arrived at his home, he got all the ordered T-shirts as well as doubles for the ones he already had.  To many shows, this would be a one-off break.  But, we played with it.  When I asked the room what Zog should do, and if he were to keep them all if he were stealing, we were off to the races on a story line to hook the audience.  Break #1 is the dilemma and moral question, break #2 are calls with listeners chiming in, and, because he’s a good guy and doesn’t want the worker to get in trouble (keeping in character), break #3 is Zog calling the mall store to ask what he should do.  So instead of one break, we get three to extend listening with a story that has an unexpected conclusion.

George, Mo, and Erik with a K with The 6:10 Amen

In some regional training I did this past week with talent from Chicago and Milwaukee, the room discussed the power of good news.  Strategically, when the world is on fire and negative news is seemingly everywhere, your profiling the good things going on in listeners’ lives sets you apart from all that and reinforces to your fans that, despite a world of stress, you can be the outlet for good stuff.  Many in radio do this feature under a variety of names.  This is one of my all-time favorites.  George, Mo, and Erik with a K, 100.3 The Bull, Houston did the 6:10 and 8:10 Amen.  It’s a great feature name for a country station in Texas.  Here, they ride along to celebrate a listener calling in with her good news of getting a house.  Anytime you show interest in what’s going on in the lives of your listeners, you will win.

Chris and Dina, WMAS-FM, Springfield MA with Here’s Why I’ve Been Gone

Each of us in radio have call letters that will always be meaningful.  Today’s audio comes from one for me because this is where I started my morning show career, when on-the-air.  I jokingly say that it took this station firing me, then re-hiring me, then my leaving for things to click professionally.  Chris and Dina, WMAS-FM, Springfield, MA own every single demo in the market.  They have large leads because they are excellent broadcasters, understating why listeners tune in each day – what they’re looking for.  And central to that is connection.  They are deeply connected to the audience because they share their lives with their fans.  Dina went missing for a few weeks because her mom unexpectedly passed away.  It’s powerful to talk about something like this with the audience as it’s pure character development and very emotional.  Here’s Dina sharing with the audience what happened.  Her mom was a big part of the show so, Chris tilted the sadness at the end by re-airing a time she was on that was fun to hear again.

Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh with The Winner Happens In the Future

Last week’s audio featured pure silliness – Moug and Karla, B96, Chicago getting a witch to put a hex on a rival sports team.  Let’s keep both themes in this week’s audio.  The premier sports match up in the Raleigh-Durham area is whenever Duke plays UNC in basketball.  As someone who lives here, this area comes to a standstill the day of this game.  We talk a lot about topic-treatment-tone, the Coleman Insights inspired 3T’s of content.  Here’s one you can steal if you have a similar sports rivalry in your town – and it’s memorable because of it’s silliness.  Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh wondered the day of the game who’d win.  So they decided to go into the future.  And where is it tomorrow?  Australia!  Where the game has already happened!  They called Australia to find out who won, before the game happened.

Moug and Karla, B96, Chicago with The Etsy Witch

Your Cubs are in the MLB playoffs (Hot Topic) and you want to align with it in a unique, fun way to make people talk.  This one is pure silliness, which is why I like it.  Moug and Karla, B96, Chicago went to Etsy and found a witch to put a hex on the opponent’s of the Chicago Cubs baseball team.  Who even knew that getting a witch on Etsy was a thing?  Even if it isn’t, this creative approach to the topic is the perfect way to make fans stop to listen and, if done well like this, leave talking about it.  Choosing the topic is the first part of a great break.  To make it strategically successful, it’s the treatment you bring that makes it memorable.  Here are two installments of The Etsy Witch from this past week.