Logan and Sadie, WINK-FM, Ft. Myers The Mom Quiz to the College Kid

One of your main goals as a talent is to bond with the audience.  How do we do this?  By showing those parts of your life to the audience where they say you are just like them.  Humans are very tribal.  We are all in search for people just like us. It’s those common bonds where we find comfort and the best chance to connect with other people to form a relationship.  Logan and Sadie, WINK-FM, Ft. Myers, FL had a feast of content with Logan’s son going off to college for the first time.  In those conversations, Logan proved he was just like the station demo (40 year old women who were also shipping their kids off to college or could relate to the experience because they had it).  Besides telling the story and airing similar stories from fans, we also must do the content in unique ways.  Which is why Logan got his son, Gabe, on and had a mom in the building ask him questions that moms would be curious about with a kid leaving the house for college for the first time.  The execution of this content gets us four images:  how fun the show is, how relatable the talent are, how vulnerable the show can be in revealing itself, and how different we do our content.

The Never Ending School List

Teachers recently put out the list of school supplies they need their students to purchase for this upcoming school year. Gather as many lists as you can (easy Facebook content) and get a cute sounding kid to read every list on one of your shows.  Have the kid start at 6am and they keep reading until 9am, with you checking on them every break to listen in.

Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix How Much Do You Make?

We offered up a new Free Idea a few weeks ago called How Much Do You Make. Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix were wondering on-the-air how much money the pharmacist at the grocery store makes. A listener set them straight (about $120,000). They then wondered if the grocery store manager made more than that. Curiosity is so important to drive content. The topic gets interesting to the listener when you are interested in it, too, and you explore. From this, they started a new idea called How Much Do You Make. They asked listeners to call and tell them what they did for work. Mark and Paul get to ask a few questions about their job (there’s that curiosity in play again!) and they then guessed the listener’s salary. The listener then revealed it. Despite conventional wisdom that no one would share this personal inofmration, their phones went crazy. It’s now become something the show does on occasion. It’s exceptionally vicarious because of their questions. Here are two examples of their feature. You will play along, trying to figure out the caller’s salary, which is one of the wins besides the relatable, fun content.

Girls and Gays

When you do an advice-oriented feature, adding an expert to the mix (especially if they are opinionated and boisterous) could radiate.  Do a advice feature called Girls and Gays, where only female listeners or anyone who is gay can offer a solution to the dilemma at hand.  No calls unless you fit into one of those two groups.

Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston My Girlfriend Was On Jeopardy

Great radio is a story-telling medium.  Let’s tell stories.  Even better, let’s tell them in the first-person.  If you have an experience, your telling it is the best route to get the most authentic details at their most emotional.  If others are included in the story (i.e. your mom, a neighbor, your pastor), invite them to play a role in telling the story, too.  Because they might have other details or a different perspective that will have fresh tension and conflict.  That will make the content more electric.  But, if you aren’t part of the story, instead of telling someone else’s narrative, ask them to tell it.  Simple, but effective storytelling here when Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston found out that someone they know was on Jeopardy.  Instead of them recanting it, they invited the friend to tell her story.  Always find the principles of any story and get them to share their experience.  It’ll be perceived much differently by listeners if you facilitate that and ask the obvious questions from your POC (point-of-curiosity).  Note they started with the audio from Jeopardy – smart!

One-Star Reviews

The best reviews on Yelp are the one-star reviews.  They tend to be the most vicious.  Go grab a few and create a new feature where you read them.  Be careful to not take on any establishment that’s local lest that backfire on you.

Start at the End

Years ago, one month out of the first anniversary of the Boston bombings, I decided to engage the two shows I work with in that city around what our programs will sound like that day.  I received back, as is sometimes the case, silence.  When I was on the air, I was the king of never planning.  I usually worried about large milestone shows like this the day before.  We don’t have that luxury any longer because of the competition for listeners’ attention.

I engaged both rooms in an exercise instructive to help develop our content.  Instead of brainstorming certain pieces of content (what phone topic can we do, who can we interview, etc.), I asked everyone this question:  if a listener tunes in that day, what do you want them to feel after the break is over?  What happens at the end of the content?  If we know that, we can work backwards to craft great breaks.

That focus – what emotion do we want the audience to experience listening to us – changed the conversation.  Because one of the many great things about radio is that we determine how our customer feels when they take delivery of the product!

I cynically suggested to the Boston teams that we re-live that day, angering people.  Or maybe offer that they be weary of folks on the streets with backpacks, frightening listeners.  Both were obviously rejected.  I again asked the question: what feeling do we want listeners to have when we’re done?

Then the answer in both rooms:  “We want them to feel ‘Boston Strong’.”  Yup…everything after that got easy.

With the milestone twentieth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, I ask you the same question.  What content will you do, and what emotion are you going for the week of September 11th to be where listeners are?

Some shows will grab all that low-hanging fruit:  let’s ask people where they were when they heard?  Let’s talk to someone who was on a plane that day!  Maybe re-run audio from TV!  All of that is twenty-year old content.  Is that good enough for your fans?

Every show I work with was engaged on this a month ago.  Each has a game plan for unique, local content, all in our efforts to make our fans feel the right emotion so we connect with them, and they remember us.  Because we figured the feeling first.

This proves that to start at the end is quite helpful in crafting the right content for days like this.

What’s your ending?

Start with that, and you’ll be epic the week of 9/11.

Neighborhood Nicknames

Most of us don’t have much of a relationship with our neighbors, but we still talk about them.  Time to reveal all in a new feature called Neighborhood Nicknames, where you open the phones and ask listeners to tell you the nicknames they have for people they live around and why.  Thanks to Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix for this idea.

Klein and Ally, KROQ, Los Angeles I’ve Got a Secret

There are two lessons to learn in this week’s audio segment.  It comes from Klein and Ally, KROQ, Los Angeles.  The big one first:  a cast member has some news to share with the team and the audience.  In the name of prep, should the room know ahead of time?  I’m asked this question on occasion and the answer is always – it depends on the room.  How much trust is there and how well does the room do with unknown moments?  Ally is pregnant and no one knew.  Not even those she does the show with.  During their weekly I’ve Got a Secret segment, where listeners call to share secrets about their lives, Ally revealed the news.  She opted to not tell anyone because she wanted to preserve their natural reaction for the audience.  She knows and trusts her teammates that much that she was confident all would be good (and it was).  The second lesson is being able to adapt to studio challenges.  While this segment is listener-driven, the show was having phone issues that morning.  The quick pivot to make it around a cast member preserves the feature.  The room was never rattled by that curve ball.  Enjoy Ally’s announcement and how she hooks both the room and audience to lean in as she reveals all.

The Josie Dye Show, Indie 88, Toronto Is America Excited?

Canada is about to open back up its borders for Americans to visit their country.  After being closed the better part of two years, we haven’t been able to go there and they haven’t been able to visit the United States.  This begs the question to The Josie Dye Show with Matt and Carlin, Indie 88, Toronto:  is America excited to be able to come back to Canada?  In the construction of any entertainment around a big topic, find the tension.  It’s the conflict that will drive any central narrative.  Think of a story you’ve been told recently – drama has driven your interest.  The rules are different in Canada for cold calls.  Josie, Matt, and Carlin decided to call America, in search of people who were actually indifferent to the fact that the borders were re-opening.  The indifference is the conflict they used to create entertainment.  Here’s a silly break which shows that construction.