Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh A Pivot Point for Top Talent

We can no longer avoid those serious topics that galvanize the audience.  In some fashion, if the biggest news story of the day is another school shooting, we must acknowledge it in the show, by reflecting back to listeners how they feel.  One of our goals should also be to have developed over time an emotional connection with those tuning in where they feel like they know us so well they’re comfortable calling to share their stories of hardship, too.  This is central to our strategic content strategy with Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh who held that mirror to the audience with the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas.  Our mission is to have such a deep bond that a perfect stranger would call to participate in the show, which happened here.  The team was talking about the shootings when a local woman who was critically injured at Columbine in 1999 was listening.  Encouraged by her kid in the backseat to call and share her story, this listener called to add a first person perspective.  This is the kind of relationship you want with your audience.  That’s how you build trust and a base of loyal listeners who’ll tune in every day.

The Josie Dye Show with Carlin and Brent, Indie 88, Toronto The Jewelry Store’s Been Robbed

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!

Josie, Carlin, and Brent, Indie 88, Toronto Goofiness at Comic Con

We are entering the season of fairs, festivals, and conventions in every market.  What’s the list of those happening in your city and how will you tap into them (past promoting them) that can make you more local?  They just had a Comic Con and Josie, Carlin, and Brent, Indie 88, Toronto decided to go.  When you go to these things, you talk about them differently on the show because you’re in the middle of it and can feel it.  And always, target getting audio from those attending.  Because people are at their peak emotion, jazzed to be there.  You might think Comic Con attendees are perfect for messing with…and you’d be right.  The show put together silly and absurd questions to ask those there.  With some editing, this is a perfect break that highlights the show’s personality and features a great exchange that made the 99.9% of the audience not going to Comic Con feeling like they were there while accruing images of being local, fun, and authentic.

London and Engleman, KWST, Los Angeles My Kid Was In a Car Accident

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.

Tony and Kris, WIVK, Knoxville The Golf Ball Drop Decides the Winner

It’s really important to be topical.  Being about the moment makes your show sound connected and relevant.  Think of the nightly comedians.  Minus political comedy (which doesn’t fit most radio shows), they create humor around whatever topics are hot right now.  That’s a smart approach to prepping your show, too.  The week of the Masters, Tony and Kris, WIVK, Knoxville decided the audience deserved to know who’d win before the iconic weekend golf tournament started.  So they wrote the names of each golfer on a ball, dropped them down a flight of stairs, and whichever one their producer Cody grabbed first was predicted to be the winner.  Think Topic-Treatment-Tone (as espoused by my friends at Coleman Insights).  The topic was perfect, but the treatment (the idea) was meant to ramp up the laughter and talk.  Here’s audio of the break.  They did a companion video that was released on social media, too, to extend the life of the idea.

Gregg, Freddy, and Danielle MIX 104.1, Boston The Oops Moment

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.

Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh They Already Won in Australia

My blog this week is Practice Makes Permanent.  In it, I talk about the value of curiosity to get a more creative show.  Surrounding yourself with curiosity always leads to more fun things to do around a topic.  Case in point was what was done last week by Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh.  The big topic in the Triangle was the Final Four match-up that weekend between Duke and UNC, two local teams.  It’s all anyone talked about.  In one of our Curiosity Zooms, when discussing the topic, someone noted that it’s always the next day in Australia.  Which lead to our deciding to call a friend there the day before the game.  They noted to him that, because it’s the next day, the game had already been played and asked who won (he said UNC).  Many listeners got the joke, but a few didn’t, which resulted in one calling the show a little confused.  Do fun and different things with your big topics and there’s no way you can’t stand out.

Lexi and Banks, KUBL, Salt Lake City Will Smith’s Slap Was Faked

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.

Tony and Kris, WIVK, Knoxville That’s All I Need to Know About You

Tony and Kris, WIVK, Knoxville do a daily feature called That’s All I Need to Know About You.  Each of us make daily, private judgments about people when we see them do something we think is stupid.  The guys are great observationalists and this plays off that strength.  Considering that real life is a treasure trove of terrific content, they offer up some inane thing they saw someone do and then tag on the hook line, “that’s all I need to know about you.”  The show then flips and asks the audience to call in with theirs, highlighting more content from listeners’ everyday lives.  This makes the program more relatable and more fun because listeners can go off on the inanity around them with others tuning in nodding yes and laughing along, heightening our relatable and authenticity images.

Sarah and Jessie, MIX 96.5, Houston with Who Sent That Self-Help Book?

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.