Karen Carson with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York with Kelly Won’t Graduate

Sometimes in playful relationships, you play practical jokes on your significant other.  Making things like that come to life on your show is unique character development which proves how great your relationship is.  Oftentimes, listeners are aspirational to that dynamic.  Meaning, they admire your relationship, wishing it were theirs.  Connecting with listeners is a deep experience.  Revealing who you really are by digging deep in your personal story telling, and letting the audience glimpse into your relationship’s playfulness, goes a long way to deepening that connection.  Karen Carson in the Morning with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York prove this when Johnny’s girlfriend, who’s about to graduate from college, gets a prank call that she’s ineligible due to missing requirements.

The Mannequin of Death

See if you can get your hands on a mannequin and some fireworks.  Then, partner with a local fire department, strap those bad boys on the mannequin, and prove how dangerous fireworks can be for the July Fourth holiday.  It’d make a great video for your socials.

Moose and Breezy, 98PXY, Rochester, NY with Letting Interviews Breathe

When conducting any interview, my radar is up for who talks more, you or the person you’re interviewing.  It should be the latter, as they are the focus of the story telling.  Terrific interviews are done when you have a deep interest in the story about to be told.  Your inquisitiveness to draw out the subject and get them to dig deeper in their story and its emotions determines how impactful the interview is for listeners.  That requires great prep, an ability to listen instead of focusing on your next question, and allowing the interview to breath (silence is a very powerful tool, especially in a serious interview, to give listeners the space to absorb what’s been said).  Moose and Breezy, 98PXY, Rochester, NY show a picture-perfect example of this in a conversation they had with a listener about suicide prevention.

The Overshare Chair

Wanna do some deeper character development over the summer?  Put some personal questions together and spin the big wheel to choose a cast member on the show.  They pull three very personal questions out of the hat and sit in the Overshare Chair to reveal more of themselves to fans.

Chris and Dina, WMAS-FM, Springfield, MA with The Great Lego Walk

One pain every parent knows is when you unexpectedly step on an errant Lego left on the floor by their kid.  A relatable known to everyone, but especially Chris and Dina, WMAS-FM, Springfield, MA.  Dina set up the story line on the show, challenging Chris to remove his shoes and take a long walk over a sea of Legos.  A fun idea that’d vibe with any parent.  And listeners who related felt great empathy for Chris, who had endured the same pain, too.  Plus, it was quite funny to make Chris do this.  Stunts like this build characters and force a sense of compassion by the audience.  Here’s the final break from the show of the walk.  Doing a social media video helps extend the fun and presence of the idea to accrue images.

Here Now the News

With kids off from school, let’s put them to work over the summer with the new feature Here Now the News.  In place of a newscast, bring a cute kid on and have them explain a serious news item to you.  What do they know?  How would they frame it?  Cast kid reporters then go tackle a serious news item.

 

Steve’s Pet Peeves – Volume 3

When you listen to 7-8 hours of radio each day like I do (each hour a different show), you’re bound to hear things that bug you.

Most days, shows are hitting it out the park.  They’re on the right topics cut from that day’s pop culture, things going on locally, and stories about their lives that position them as just like the listener.  Add to that some treatments of those topics which make the breaks sparkle.

Other times, I might get something small that makes me scratch my head wondering why they did that.

Here for you, another installment of Steve’s Pet Peeve’s Volume 3.  It bugs me when I hear shows that…

  1. Use words like: up chuck, throwing up, eating poop, projectile vomiting.  Using what I call “stop listening” words.  Instead of saying “I was up all night barfing,” why can’t you say, “I was sick to my stomach”?  The audience knows what you’re saying, and you aren’t using cringe words that make a portion of your audience turn away because they’re too graphic.
  2. Breaks that start with unexplained laughter. Listeners feel left out when they aren’t in on the fun you’re having in the studio.
  3. When something suggestive is said like, “It’s 69 degrees right now,” and the show devolves into a bad version of Beavis and Butthead.
  4. Shows that try to gratuitously manipulate listeners to stay. Like doing a half a break and then teasing the payoff, making them wait any amount of time for resolution.  Just give them the bowl of ice cream in one break and you’ll accrue positive images.
  5. Shows that don’t keep their promises in an effort to manipulate a few more minutes of listening. If you promise the content at 7:30, do it at 7:30, not 7:36 in an effort to get more minutes of listening.  You get two minutes either side of a promise to make good on it.  Don’t do that to them.
  6. Features that are time-stamped need to be at (or very close to) when you promise to do it.
  7. Explaining games in more than two sentences before playing the game. Listeners don’t have that mental bandwidth at any time of the day for an explanation of anything.  More than two sentences might mean it’s too complicated to play.  As I always say “when you’re explainin’, you ain’t entertainin’.”  You can use that.
  8. Shows that play a trivia game and get irked when the caller doesn’t know the answer to a question they think is easy. Not a great look.  Be empathetic in those moments – these are your fans contributing content to your show.
  9. Playing the Mission Impossible, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or the Price Is Right music when playing a game. They’re all dated and predictable.  Let’s challenge ourselves to update that stuff.
  10. Talent who forget that every day you have new listeners who don’t know who you are. I’m a new listener tuning in and have no idea who’s who.  I recently checked out a show I don’t work with.  Both co-hosts were male.  I left after 90 minutes not knowing who was who.  Help me.

Deep breaths, Steve, deep breaths.  In with the good air, out with the bad!

Have a pet peeve for Volume 4 (oh yes, there will be a volume 4!)?  Email me here.

Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston with 1000 Days of Playing Catch

When the driving force of your show is to be kind and highlight the positives of the audience, you position yourself as the opposite of the negativity most people see every day.  Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston are about real life, always looking for the good their listeners put in the universe.  Their Good Vibe Tribe feature was developed to do just that.  In this installment, Karson’s pastor comes on with the story of his commitment to play catch with one of his kids.  Started years ago, he’s here to celebrate 1000 consecutive days of doing just that.  Both the feature and feeling they want listeners to experience when they hear the show are your takeaways here.

The Yard Sale of the Week

Lots of people have Saturday yard sales over the summer, selling the stuff they no longer need.  Normally a homeowner advertises this by tacking notices on telephone poles in the neighborhood.  What would it be like if, each Friday for the next few months, you let on someone who’s having a yard sale so they can promote it on your show?  Making this small thing big on your program could be very homey and quite endearing.

Anna and Raven, Star 99.9, Bridgeport, CT with the Courtroom Sketch Artist

What do you know?  What do you wonder?  Two critical questions in the prep process that define who you are and create your connection to a topic.  It’s much harder to do a great radio show if you don’t have any curiosity to the topics of the day.  In their prep, Anna and Raven, Star 99.9, Bridgeport, CT (and syndicated) knew they had to be all over the Diddy trial – it’s a Hot Topic and requires addressing.  How to do that, though?  It’s salacious testimony, but you can’t rely on just that.  As they jumped down the rabbit hole, they saw lots of pictures from the trial as done by a courtroom sketch artist.  They wondered what that was like.  So they found one and he shared some insight, making for a fascinating conversation around a big topic as done from their curiosity.