Archive for month: February, 2023

We get to holidays and everyone seems to do the same stuff every year.  Innovation is one of the four critical images a show must earn.  Not in a “here’s a new bit we’re doing” kind of way.  We just need to identify the right topics and do something different around it that fits the show.  It’s the treatment of the best topics that make you different.  Lou and Shannon, WJLK, The Jersey Shore were tasked, like every other show, on what to do on Valentine’s Day this year.  We’ve moved the show in a direction of being much more real, and more story-based.  Lou did some intel behind the scenes and found one of Shannon’s exes and invited him on the program to dish on Shannon so we could learn more about her.  This content is relevant, compelling, fun, and defines her character in a unique way.  Go be different around the great topics and get remembered for it.

When you have a three-person show, you always have two people of the same gender and one common challenge.  You must separate their characters.  Case in point is Karen Carson in the Morning with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York and Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh.  Both shows have two guys and a challenge we face at both programs is developing different personas for each of the two gentlemen.  It’s first important to know how each is similar and different from the other and focus on the differences.  Then, there are things you can do to help accentuate that.  The week leading up to the Super Bowl, we set both guys in a competition with female-friendly Big Game trivia where the loser had to shave their head.  In both instances, we got a ton of repeat listening as we did a narrative arc that lasted the week and incredible engagement on social media.  Hear how both shows wrapped things up with the Super Bowl Shave Off on the Friday of that week.  Watch WRAL-FM’s final round on Facebook here and the actual shaving of Bryan’s head here.

In a time when listeners are less inclined to call radio stations, we must be more resourceful in creating entertaining breaks around the most relevant topics of the day.  Tom Brady retires again from the NFL and you’re a show in Boston, where Tom remains a star.  What do you do?  If you’re Gregg, Freddy, and Danielle, MIX 104.1, Boston, you use the resources right in front of you.  There’s a sports station in the building and one of the hosts was a Patriot and knows Brady.  The message here is use the resources around you to do your show.  Where they could have opened the phones and not known if they’d get anything good, they used the host to talk about Tom Brady in the first person.  A simple, yet very effective decision.

You can’t tell a great story without at least one viable point-of-conflict.  A point-of-conflict that will draw the audience in and make your story electric.  The length of the break is also dependent on how many points-of-conflict you have.  Case in point is this great character break from Sarah Pepper and Jessie Watt, KHMX, Houston.  Jessie’s 80-year old grandpa got married again.  Their code name for the new bride is Gizmo because Jessie refuses to call her grandma.  This break is four minutes long but doesn’t feel it for several reasons.  First, this is excellent story-telling.  Within the first ten seconds, I know the topic and the main point-of-conflict.  Then, in Jessie’s telling, she adds drama around the main narrative with at least ten additional observations (other points-of-conflict).  You must have drama in stories to make them fun.  Add in great use of audio and this is real and highly entertaining because of how it was told and the details of the story.