Archive for month: May, 2020

You might be doing lots of interviews with the Covid issue.  Compelling and interesting story-telling with experts and listeners really resonate with the audience.  But, you don’t get there by accident and certainly cannot make it happen without prep.  There is a very compelling TV commercial featuring a nurse at a Hartford-area hospital (here).  It is immensely powerful and paints the picture of a day in her life for viewers.  Christine and Salt, 965, TIC-FM, Hartford decided they wanted to talk with Nurse Sophia, considering how moved they were by the commercial.  A good first step in doing an interview is that you must be moved.  What aids this interview is that they are curious people – not on the surface (i.e. tell us what time you wake up, what time do you get to work – these are the kinds of questions that signal you never prepped to figure out how you’d explore her story – so Nurse Sophie could expose her true life past what we see in the spot).  As you will hear in this interview, the team probed about what it was like to be in a room with a Covid patient and what her life was like when she went home after experiencing that each day.  They went deep and you must, too, if you will do an interview that will be impactful, emotional, memorable, and lasting for the audience.

We’ve all done the same half dozen Mother’s Day ideas for years, right?  Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston developed a new idea this year called Iron Mom.  It’s the pretty simple bit where listeners call a voicemail line to tell them about what makes their mom special – what elevates this idea is the frame (they are creating a club of Iron Moms, which is powerful) and what they are asking listeners to share when they call.  The brilliance of this break is how they debuted the feature.  Where many shows would just promote the number, keeping the idea in listeners’ heads as they explained what they wanted, the team left their own mock voicemails for themselves and then played them for the audience.  As you will hear, the examples both defined the show’s cast for character development but also gave those inclined to call what they are looking for.  Each was both touching and funny and they moved the audience to feel the idea so listeners knew what to leave on the voicemail line for airing – which is smart.