Archive for category: Audio

Garret and Katie, WOKQ, Portsmouth, NH with Lights, Camera, Langley

The topic you choose makes you relatable (“they talk about things I am interested in”), but it’s the treatment of those topics (what you do with them) that makes you memorable.  Radio is a series of experiences for the audience.  Moment-by-moment, if it’s relatable and entertaining, the audience will tend to stick around or return.  Want extra TSL?  Focus not just on the topic, but what you do with it to hold the audience’s attention for those few minutes.  Garret and Katie, WOKQ, Portsmouth, NH had Ella Langley tickets to give out.  They know that only 2% of the audience will try to win them.  So they knew they needed to focus on entertaining those not trying to win them (the other 98%).  Part of Katie’s character is that she is an actress.  So, to build her character around that attribute and entertain those not looking to win the tickets, they did Lights, Camera, Langley.  Create humor with your treatments and the audience who controls a lot of TSL will stick around or return because you have those images.

DJ Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami with The Name Game

On the show DJ Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami, they’re always making fun that Ivy can’t remember the names of callers seconds after they introduce themselves.  For those of us with the disease PCB (Permanent Content Brain), we see breaks of character development in all of this!  We hatched this idea where listeners would come on, introduce themselves, and attach an interesting fact about their life to the audience and Ivy.  She then had to hold on to the fact and person’s name (no writing anything down) for 24-hours.  The next day at the same time, the callers came back on, reminded her of their interesting personal fact, to see if Ivy remembered their name.  Did she succeed?  Here’s the audio.

The Morning Bullpen, KILT-FM The Bull, Houston with Erik’s Aunt Passes

Human beings are multi-dimensional.  Those in life you have a deep relationship with can show their many sides.  Sometimes funny, other times serious.  To build a substantial relationship with your fans, you must be able to show all those sides.  When you can dig deep (in your life), you’re a true original talent.  Such was with George, Mo, and Erik with a K (The Morning Bullpen), KILT-FM The Bull, Houston.  Erik’s favorite aunt passed away.  Many shows would just ignore this.  I always wonder why?  If I’m close to you personally, to build that deeper relationship, wouldn’t you share that with me in real life?  Erik eulogized his aunt in a break on the show because it was weighing on him heavily.  Can you be this honest with your audience?

Elizabeth and Radar, 99.1 The MIX, Milwaukee with Fling or Forever

I have great respect for shows that take what could be standard, pro forma content, and twist it even slightly to make it more effective.  Summer is upon us and that brings back memories for many of summer flings.  Did you have one in your life?  You didn’t have to in order to relate to this topic.  Elizabeth and Radar, 99.1 The MIX, Milwaukee know the power of both nostalgia and storytelling.  They took calls from listeners who told them a story about a summer romance they once had.  At the end, they had to guess if the romance was a fling or forever.  What’s best is that twist – in the frame of the topic, listeners followed along and guessed in their minds, too.  Creating  content that listeners had to pay attention to because of how it was designed.

Karen Carson with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York with That Thing on Your Ring

We’re in the audio and video business now.  Which is why Karen Carson in the Morning, with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York have added a new feature to their show they do on occasion called That Thing on Your Ring.  Listeners call to talk about the odd thing their Ring doorbell camera picked up in the yard.  Great stories with proper call screening – always fun and interesting to hear.  But this feature has evolved!  Because we must also have video for social media, the team now gets callers to send them the videos, which are stamped with the show and station logos and used on their social media feeds to entertain fans there with great content, too.

Anna and Raven, Star 99.9, Bridgeport, CT (syndicated) with Scratch It for Your Graduate

Relevance is when you’re on a topic of the moment.  Something happening now is high school graduations.  Marry that topic with an idea that would resonate with your demo, and it’s gold.  Anna and Raven, Star 99.9, Bridgeport, CT (syndicated) know their Hot AC audience is adult women, many of whom have high school students graduating this month.  Some of those graduates will go on to college, which can be quite expensive.  Which is why they did Scratch It for Your Graduate.  A listener came on to gush about their kid then talk about the university they were going to in the fall.  They had a bunch of lottery tickets in the studio!  They scratched a card and gave the caller whatever the winnings were to defray the cost of board and tuition for freshman year.  Clever and relevant.

Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami with Marco Rubio is Rapper

It’s politics without doing politics.  I’m long enamored by the creative brain that hears one thing, and thinks of another.  Such was the case with Zog and Ivy Unleashed, Power 96, Miami.  Local politician and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (he’s from Miami) sometimes uses contemporary phrases when talking geopolitical topics.  Zog’s brain lives in technicolor.  So, he married Rubio’s audio to the appropriate song in their format (throwbacks), as you’ll hear in this week’s audio.  This scores on multiple levels:  it’s topical, it’s local, it’s music-oriented, it’s funny, and the break is short.  You wouldn’t think it’d get green check marks in so many areas, but once you listen you’ll hear it yourself.

Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston with How Well Does Sal Know the Show?

Character development comes in various forms.  When you’re honest with the audience around a topic of high relevance and when you share a story about your life where someone connects with you.  There are many creative ways to do that.  Ornery Sal, Boston’s Best Boss is a regular contributor to Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston.  The team regularly uses him as a foil to do content.  This time, they brought him in to quiz how well he knows the cast members.  They gave him the traditional one to two sentence story, then Sal had to say which cast member experienced that.  He went four for five, proving he does know the show.  But having him to goof with while doing character development is a novel way to get things done and make character development content stickier.

Christine and Salt, 96.5 WTIC-FM, Hartford with Alexander Graduates

Say your son decides he doesn’t want to walk in his high school graduation ceremony.  What would you do as a parent.  That was Christine’s challenge when her son chose to not participate in the affair, depriving his mom of the picture she wanted of the moment.  Christine and Salt, 96.5 WTIC-FM, Hartford, are deeply connect to the market.  Christine’s been on the show for a very long time and knows everyone.  So they decided to have an in-studio ceremony for Alexander, inviting on local celebrities to give a gradation speech and also to give Alexander a moment to thank a few people, too.  Lots of graduations happening now.  With this idea, the show affirms the images that Christine’s a mom and they know lots of people.  These guys show their innovative spirit to tap into the Hot Topic, making it very memorable on multiple levels for their fans.

Moug and Karla, B96, Chicago with Spirit Calls It Quits

Spirit Airlines went out of business last week.  Even if the airline isn’t in your market, it was a big story that needed to be touched on by everyone.  One of the thresholds to determine if a topic is viable is this – is everyone aware of the story?  They don’t have to be interested in it, they just need to be aware of it.  Familiarity drives our interest in things.  In the trajectory of Topic-Treatment-Tone (credit Coleman Insights), it’s what you do with the topic that makes it engaging and entertaining for the audience.  We are storytellers at our core.  Where lots of shows talked around that topic last week, Moug and Karla, B96, Chicago found two people directly impacted by it.  The first is a passenger who was caught during her travels trying to get to Orlando to photograph a wedding (she has audio of the overhead announcement of the flight being cancelled) and the other is a flight attendant who found out the airline was shutting down mid-flight from a company email.

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