The Super Bowl comes this Sunday. One of the highlights is the National Anthem. Many have messed it up over the years at various venues. Grab as many as you can on YouTube and edit together the Star Mangled Banner. Play it each day. First listener to tell you all the people in it wins!
One of the many ways the internet has come to help shows is to offer up audio of almost anything you’re talking about. Breaks need another element to keep listeners’ attention. Often that’s a listener call. But almost any topic that’s tackled has some kind of audio available online. Chatting about last night’s big TV show? Play a piece of audio from it so those listening who didn’t see it feel included. Then, social media has lots of audio from videos of relevant topics that help sell what you’re doing and create laughter. Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix found a video of a parrot who can sing along with Led Zepplin songs. Just the right silliness for a show that plays classic rock music. Hear how the audio of the parrot helps create the fun. Bonus points from these guys for the front and back ends of the break. In the first part, they seamlessly talked about NFL football from the day before and on the back end, there was a tease about the My Pillow guy, taking a break that could have been done anytime, and making it topical, too. Make sure you use available audio in all of your breaks to help them stay electric.
Why not find your market’s funniest drag queen and get them to delivery flowers to listeners each day the week of Valentine’s Day? Produce all of these in advance so you have one great video to release each day for social media with the best audio parts for the show that morning.
Continuing the theme of taking a stand so the audience feels something for you. The Josie Dye Show with Matt and Carlin, Indie 88, Toronto is liberal in a liberal city. The show is at a stage in its development where they wanted to take a stand against people who did not believe in masks. So we ventured out on that limb with lots of conversation about how to do that and how to handle ourselves to define the program. What was critical was finding someone who could hold the position opposite of the show. Here’s a break of them talking with someone who was a public face in the market against the wearing of masks. The show brought her on, then challenged her beliefs with their own. There are many caveats to doing something like this, which could be perceived as political should you consider wanting to be this honest and emotional with a topic that is polarizing: first, where is the show in its development stage with the audience? The better developed shows can potentially do this. The younger, less defined shows cannot. How will you treat those you challenge? Will you give them their time, then do it in a tone accepting of another point-of-view? Finally, are there enough fans of the show who would agree with your position to connect with? It’s important for any talent to honestly share their feelings about the topics of the day. But the rules (if it should be done and how) are different for all. Something you must be exceptionally sensitive to and discuss strategically with others in and out of the show to decide if it’s appropriate. This audio passes all our thresholds and caused talk for the show, but only because we did everything above.
A program director asked me an intriguing question in December. If I had five wishes for things that could help talent grow their shows, what would I ask the genie?
As a former talent, my reply was, “I only get five?” Typical talent, right? Trying to figure out how to make the break longer!
So, I rubbed the bottle, the genie came out, and here is a short list of what I wished for. This list is partial because I have lots of wishes.
These are the things I talk with my shows about now and I love these conversations.
New shows I work with know I like to ask provocative questions and challenge them in ways that make all of us think strategically. The shows I currently work with are used to it – many enjoy the exercise because we find when we talk on this level, we end up with a much better show than our competitors, with greater creativity.
If you find any of my wishes interesting, it might be great to engage your shows on them, too, so everyone can level up.
I’d love to know your wishes for talent – send them here if you have any.
With the old game show Name That Tune back on TV, do a Covid twist by pitting two listeners (or two cast members) against each other in something called Name That Quaran-Tune. Grab some retro songs in the format, play the first few seconds, first to three points by naming artist and title wins. This is great because listeners will play along and the retro song will be a feel good.
A primary strategic objective for every talent is to do content that moves the audience to care about them. Think about the relationships you have in your real life. The people you know, who you can just be yourself around. Who you have fun with and affirm you. Those are the people you want to spend time around. We develop a relationship with listeners in exactly the same way. By revealing ourselves so they feel like they know us, too. Mojo from Mojo in the Morning, Channel 955, Detroit had open-heart surgery last week. It was a procedure he’d known he needed for years and now was the time. The listeners knew all because Mojo has this deep capacity to share all of this life with his fans (everyone on the show has this ability, which is why they are all so popular). Here’s the break where Mojo talks about his family on the eve of the operation. It’s exceptionally honest, authentic, and real where Mojo explores his fears, and chats about his therapist, his mom, his kids and wife, and the video he would leave for them if something went wrong. Then wonderful dimension at the end when they aired callers wishing him well. Pay close attention to the callers. Listen to how they talk with him. What they say and how they say it. It’s quite apparent they care about him. That’s the kind of relationship you should have with your listeners, too. This is content only they can do, which makes them special. Despite the length of this break (they’ve earned that), would you do a break like this? Could you? Email your thoughts to me here once you hear it.
The day after the horrific Newtown shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, I remember waking up wondering Howard Stern’s take. So, up to Howard 100 I went on Sirius XM and sure enough, that’s what Howard was talking about.
I can’t remember how long the segment went (I didn’t actually care). But I do remember it was as insightful, engaging, and interesting as Howard and his team always are. He made points, shared his thoughts, and asked questions of his team that lead to a provocative conversation. Howard, Robin, and the show filled my immediate need to hear their perspective. They were, on that day (as they are on all days), quite relevant. Their content matched the moment.
I realized then that this is the relationship I want every radio talent I work with to have with their listeners. I want the audience to wake up, and be curious, wondering the perspective the show has on whatever is going on in the world on that day.
True, it’s generally about some sort of frivolous topic: who didn’t get a rose on The Bachelor, the Sex and the City re-boot, or the NFL playoffs. But last Wednesday’s attack on the US Capitol forced an all-consuming topic that every American knew about and galvanized around.
I listened to fifteen shows last Thursday (some live, the others recorded). Most mine, some our competitors. Just to see what everyone was up to when I dialed in. I listened to each for an hour. That was much more than what the typical fan would give a program. I wanted to see if I had the same experience around this topic with them as I did with Howard on Newtown. I wanted to see how relevant each show was to meet the moment from the previous day.
Almost all the shows did something (or several things) around it. Sharing their shock or take on what they saw (reflecting back what the audience felt). Some found people who were actually in the Capitol at the time to get first-person storytelling (riveting). One got on their preacher for his perspective (quite inspiring). Another a therapist on how to talk with kids about it (appropriate). Nearly all felt comfortable tackling the topic, because that’s where listeners were when they tuned in.
But others were a head scratcher: One talent did a four-minute break about how she could eat an entire 16” pizza in one sitting. Another show asked for callers on their topic of the day: tell us about the argument you had with your delivery person. A host went on about how he could never say the name of his maid correctly. One did their generic relationships bit about first kisses at wedding receptions (tongue or no tongue?!?). And finally, more than one kept telling me to not go away because they had “an all-new prank phone call coming up in the next fifteen minutes.”
This might have been okay content on an average day. But last Thursday, they were missed opportunities.
One of radio’s greatest strengths is its ability to shift quickly to be relevant. Relevancy is derived from the topic – it’s whatever is going on right now – it’s a critical image to own and something the audience is looking for when they tune in. For shows that miss that mark, the audience shrugs its shoulders on that day and continues its search for relevancy.
There are a few standard push-backs when serious topics like what happened in Washington last week come up. Here they are and here’s how I reply:
On a typical day, the topics are light and frivolous. But then there are days when they aren’t. One of my biggest lessons as a talent coach over the years is that we must continue getting our personalities comfortable to go there by exploring what they think so they can be themselves and be honest with the audience. And move the audience to care about them.
We can reduce their fear of the topic by also teaching them how to do this, so the program continues to radiate their wattage and defines who they are as personalities, so listeners wake up each day wondering what they think. It’s easy to say things like the DC uprising should be a topic on the show. It’s harder to show them how it can be done. That’s why we teach.
Relevancy is not an elusive concept. Be about “the now”. That’s one way we’ll make more radio fans.
At our core, we’re storytellers. Each break in which we do content, we convey who we are and what we’re all about by the sharing of stories. We prove our relatability and entertain the audience by telling them. Then the great shows turn the forum of storytelling over to the audience. There are three components of all memorable stories: the set up (this is the short synopsis of what the story is about at the very beginning, not unlike the opening paragraph of any written story). The second part has all the wonderful details, drama, and tension that move the narrative of the story forward. And the end is the payoff or destination. With this week’s audio, I want to focus on the middle part, because it’s the drama and details that make a story come to life and entertain the audience. Lexi and Banks, KUBL, Salt Lake City had just come back from their holiday break. Lexi had a very bad motel experience as she drove with her boyfriend and dogs to see family. A five-minute story is long, unless it contains lots of drama to keep the audience hooked to move through the narrative. As she tells the motel story, count nine different pieces of drama that kept the listener’s interest. If you have only one or two pieces of tension in an experience, reconsider telling it because there might not be enough there to entertain the audience. This has all that and then some, which makes it memorable, relatable, and fun to hear.
The President has seemingly been banned from social media. What’s that like? How about you let the audience vote on who on the show should be banned from every social media platform for the balance of the week? The twist is that the rest of you get their log-ins and can tell them small morsels of what you see on their feeds as they’re tortured not being connected.