With the July Fourth holiday approaching, time to see how well your listeners know America. Click here and you’ll find the questions immigrants must answer to gain citizenship. See how well your team does, and how much listeners know. You won’t be surprised to find out that fans know all the judges on The Voice, but none of the justices on the Supreme Court!
Our audio this week highlights the best way to solicit for listeners when you want them to do something creative to win a prize. Last February, Thunder and PT, 102.9 The Wolf, Minneapolis had Taylor Swift tickets to give out. Her tour was in town and it happened to be Valentine’s month so they brought both topics together, which is brilliant. The idea was asking listeners to leave Taylor a love message on their Valentine Line – the purpose being to generate audio for the show (content) with the best winning the tickets. The smart move here was Thunder doing his Valentine so those wishing to enter would know what they were looking for. This break is fun for those not entering (a very important point) and instructive to those who will. Guess what they got over the next few weeks? Fun entries from listeners because they gave an example of what they wanted instead of just explaining it.
Relevancy almost always is being topical. What are the big topics today and what are you doing with them to create fun and capture the imagination of your audience so they come back for more the next day? This weekend we celebrate Father’s Day and Karen Carson with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York City are all over it, as is evidenced by these two breaks from this past week. I love the first because it’s never been done before, which makes it unique. Karen hadn’t bought her dad a gift yet so Johnny and Anthony got him on to quiz him about much he knows about her. Each correct answer netted a dollar amount Karen had to spend on his gift. While done before, the second and third breaks are two dads telling dad jokes. They’re included because they’re just so damn funny.
I’ve always thought Friday shows are easy because you can just ask the audience what they’re doing this weekend (like we ask co-workers on Fridays) and they give you lots of lifestyle and local content. A great name for that feature comes from Donny and Lauryn, Pop Crush Nights (Townsquare) is Sip, Sip, Hooray.
Did you mow lawns around the neighborhood as a kid to make some money each summer? How about getting a client to give you a lawnmower then setting up a cute kid to mow lawns in his or her neighborhood through the summer? Make them a weekly feature on the show, helping them pitch for work and then following their story line until they return to school in the fall.
Buying a house is an adventure. Part of Bryan’s character on Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh is that he’s starting a family. With baby number two almost here, the listeners have been following the on-going saga of Bryan and his wife making offers on bigger homes with them not getting one because their offers were too low. Relatable content, right? Then one day the heavens open and they win the bidding war. Here’s a break of the reveal of that good news. We want the audience to get to know the characters on the show. These stories can’t be done by anyone else. One item I also want you to hear is the pivot. At just the point the audience might fatigue with the story, they bring on the mayor of the town where Bryan lives (Apex, NC) to tell him that Bryan’s new house is also in Apex, so he’s staying in town. It’s a great transition and makes the break even more fun. I love content that’s story-based and breaks that can’t be done by anyone else. This lives up to that.
Last Monday, I fired up the HBO Max app on my Apple TV to catch the finale of Succession and groaned.
HBO Max (formerly known as HBO Go formerly known as HBO) is rebranding again and they told me that to further engage their content (for $19.99 a month) I needed to download their new app called Max. There was a heavy sigh because I don’t have the patience to do that and find these moves perilous. I had no choice so I signed into the app store (what’s my password again?), downloaded the new app, had to reauthorize its use with my TV provider, and then enter a six-digit code on another device to make it work. That’s lots of work to watch a TV show. Prayers were said and the app worked. But the process made me wish HBO were owned by Waystar Royco, with Kendall as CEO, because I know he wouldn’t make it so hard.
We can talk in another Planet Reynolds about the constant re-branding by HBO. I’d always thought that the value of HBO’s programming over the years was in those three letters H-B-and-O and am not really sure what “Max” means. But that’s for another time. What I’m reminded is that change is fraught with peril. Which is why I sighed again getting an email from them, suggesting I “find my way around the app to find everything.” I have no time to learn a new app. They’re making me work for it. And no one likes that.
Change at your radio station, and more specifically, change on your morning show is a high wire act. Some shows tell me they want to move their benchmarks around to “keep them fresh” or “let a different audience hear them”. I always push back on that. Because listeners/consumers/all humans hate change. We sometimes have ideas with layers and nuance and make the audience work for it, which they won’t. It’s easier to tune out, then to figure it out. That’s for all of us when we are faced with change in anything.
We crave familiarity and routine when we wake up. That good predictability and structure makes it easy to listen.
Think about it like this: when you get out of bed each morning, you do the same thing in the same order every day. I get up, I head to the bathroom, let the dogs out, then turn on the coffee, etcetera. When you leave your house, you take the same exact route to work every day, despite being able to get to the studios dozens of ways from your home. That routine wakes you up. Predictability, familiarity, and structure!
I am looking at new cars. The biggest downside in my decision? I’ll need to learn where all the buttons are to do everything again. It’ll be frustrating and is a vote to not do it because it’s taxiing and unnerving. Change rattles us. Which is why we keep gravitating back to what we know, even if it ain’t the best. I know where to find my content on the (now defunct) HBO Max app. I don’t on their new one. Why did they make that change and why is it on me to learn it?
Benchmarks and known, familiar talent bring that to your listeners. If done well, that’s another familiar item in the routine of your fans. That structure plays in your favor. Same for content – I have launched many shows over the years and my advice is always the same. The audience pushes back at change so our ratings might go down. So, play familiar music, choose the most familiar topics, and tell stories to introduce yourself to the audience so that that familiarity transfers to you. For tenured shows, follow the same path and play inside that known topic which brings good unpredictability to the dynamic.
HBO Max, or whatever they’re calling themselves now, and their new app, makes it harder on those of us to find their content. Thanks for the email, Max, suggesting I spend time learning your new app. While that won’t happen, I guarantee when I fire it up next, looking for a show or movie I want to watch, there’ll be lots of profanity in the house, and the dogs will run and hide, as I endlessly scroll looking for it, because HBO changed things.
We know what we like and always seek what’s familiar. Be careful before you thrust change into listeners’ lives. Unless you’re patient, it could work against you and create an opportunity for a competitor to seize your spot.
Play to becoming familiar. Known, trusted brands tend to own the category and be epic.
Sometimes the best breaks are the easiest breaks. They sit right in front of you, waiting to be done, and will bring you impressive imagery. This past week was the one-year anniversary of the school shootings in Ulvade, Texas. Because there are so many shootings in America, this content might not pass noticed. Unless you’re a show in Texas. Then you could even consider it local content. Sarah Pepper and Jessie Watt, KHMX, Houston excel at touching the audience. Often in easy, but quite powerful ways. In their trending feature, they decided to note the one-year anniversary by simply reading the names of the students and teachers who died that day. They followed it with a song to keep the audience reflective. That’s where many listeners were that morning. They were right there with them. This content, and the way it was done, was impressive.
Turn left or right and Taylor Swift is in the news. Regardless if she’s been to, has yet to, or even isn’t coming to your city, Taylor Swift content is high equity. Taylor Tales is where you find people who’ve met her and ask them to come on your show to tell that story.