Archive for category: Audio

There is content everywhere you look – if you see it, the richness it brings your show can be immeasurable if you capitalize on it.  In an off-air conversation with the midday gal, Josie, Carlin, and Brent, Indie 88, Toronto found out that she’d been in a local mall the day before and witnessed a robbery at a jewelry store.  It’s excellent content as it’s a story listeners will want to hear.  That it happened the day before means the emotions and details are fresh so the story will be well told.  The first decision is an easy one – the team had the midday gal on so she could tell her story (they didn’t tell the story for her).  All they had to do was get the details from her in conversation.  Then the pivot, which is so necessary to advance the story line to keep the audience hooked.  They asked for stories from listeners of when they witnessed (or were part of) a crime.  Here’s the break of callers telling their stories.  A bold one to grab the audience at first, then something silly at the end.  Both real life, which is great content for the audience.  Keep your ears open.  There is content all around you.  Just hear the good stuff like this and bring it to your show!

This week’s audio is forty years old!  Cruising around YouTube to reminisce on some of my favorite shows as a kid, I happened upon London and Engleman, KWST (K-West), Los Angeles and this gem from 1982.  I remember these guys as having unbelievable chemistry and showmanship.  What also made them stand out to me back in the day was their high level of sarcasm. While this radio station didn’t last very long, I always remembered this team because of those attributes.  In this vintage retro clip, Engleman’s kid had been in a car accident the evening before and they decided to discuss it.  Even then radio shows understood the power of going personal.  Sharing your life defines you and establishes that bond radio excels at developing with loyal listeners.  Make sure you’re always doing that – and in ways listeners can relate to.  They tacked on the end of the break an equally sarcastic call from a listener.  I still can’t figure out if the call was real.  Regardless, enjoy this clip of high sarcasm, comedy, and real life.

What’s fun is hearing listeners call themselves out when they’ve stumbled in life and done something stupid.  Your show and its cast are elevated when you do the same with the audience; make them the star.  That’s why it’s critical, even in these days when so much effort is put on social media engagement with your fans, that you continue to cultivate great story telling on the phones so listeners add to your program’s content.  In this regular feature as done by Gregg, Freddy, and Danielle, MIX 104.1, Boston’s great afternoon show, they ask the audience to call with their oops moment and tell them a time they did something completely inane and left embarrassed by it.  The show asks all the appropriate questions to create the fun.

Wonderment and unique angles to big topics engage the audience.  What Will Smith did to Chris Rock was easily the biggest story last week.  Every show should have been on it a lot and from multiple angles to keep the audience interested.  In a brainstorm in our weekly call, while talking about the topic, we wondered, as did everyone, if the slap was choreographed and the entire episode staged.  That was part of the national conversation so we felt a need to address this, too.  The simple thing would be to ask listeners’ opinions.  Not a bad move.  What Lexi and Banks, KUBL, Salt Lake City did, though, was engage a body language expert found on Google who analyzed the video.  The gentleman they found came to this conclusion based solely on body language:  it was faked.  This is not only an engaging treatment of a big topic, it could get external press, too.

Sometimes, little things become big things.  Consider the mystery faced by Sarah and Jessie, MIX 96.5, Houston back in December.  Someone sent Sarah Pepper a self-help book from Amazon.  The only problem?  No one copped to it.  There wasn’t any receipt or note with the delivery acknowledging who sent it.  Small things can become big things.  And those big things can become defining things!  Sarah and Jessie set off to find out who sent the book and who thinks Sarah Pepper needs some help!  A question I often ask in a prep session to talent is:  what do you wonder about this?  Wonderment is a great place to start to come up with something creative.  They wondered if Sarah Frazier, Audacy’s market manager (and someone close personally to Sarah Pepper), sent it.  Ms. Frazier is always money on the air.  So they called her to ask.  Resulting in this tiny thing (getting a book from an unknown person) into a bigger, stickier thing, considering how much fun the conversation was.