Brian and Chrissy, WGNA, Albany Be Where the Audience Is

Great brands meet their customers wherever they are.  Look around any big website.  They tend to have, front and center, stories about (and links to) stuff around the Hot Topics of the day.  Great personality shows instinctively know where the audience is emotionally and where they should be on an given day on a topic.  Which brings us to Brian and Chrissy, WGNA, Albany.  It’s their first show after their Buffalo Bills lose to the Kansas City Chiefs in what was the greatest weekend for football ever.  There’s no need to say that so much of their audience was grieving over the loss.  So, that’s where Brian and Chrissy were, too, with their content.  Some of their benchmarks remained, but the rest of the show had Bills content and tapped into where their audience was emotionally.  Here’s one break which proves that (note how they start the break with audio to hook the audience).

The Big Tigger Morning Show, V103, Atlanta with That’s That with Miss Pat

Alliteration is very powerful, especially when it comes to naming features.  Research has proven that named features are retained.  When you add alliteration, it heightens things.  The Big Tigger Morning Show, V103, Atlanta has, in its cast, a comedian very popular with the audience whose name is Miss Pat.  Wanting a daily feature to define Miss Pat and her sense of humor, they settled on That’s That with Miss Pat.  This is a great, highly memorable name for a benchmark.  In the feature, Miss Pat goes off on a topic of the day that has caught her eye.  She gets to be her big bold self and apply her sense of humor against a story or topic everyone knows about.  Here’s an example of That’s That with Miss Pat.

Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh with Conflict Creates Entertainment

In the construction of your breaks and in the dissection of the stories you tell on the show, where’s the conflict?  Who or what helps push your story line forward and can be the center of emotional engagement that draws listeners in?  Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh think of this in every break they plan on the show.  Sarah was due to have a girls weekend with college friends in Key West.  Yet, one of the friends invited another gal Sarah doesn’t like, and even considers an “energy vampire” so she’s thinking of bailing from the get together because of it.  A good story to tell for character definition because it’s honest and has conflict.  The show took things one step further – after Sarah tells her story and lays out the drama for the audience to comment on, they get on the friend in question so Sarah can ask why she did that.  This is “lean in content”.  And because it had conflict throughout, it garnered an emotional reaction from the audience both on the phones and in social media to make it more memorable to keep the show top-of-mind and “can’t miss”.  In your content breaks, where’s the bold conflict you can center things around so listeners are engaged and entertained?

Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston Just Play More Music

One of the reasons FOX News is so powerful is because in every segment they air, there is a villain.  Regardless of your politics, having a villain in some of the things you do will heighten a break’s stickiness.  It doesn’t always have to be negative, but opposites create meaning.  If I love The Bachelor and you hate The Bachelor, that could lead to an interesting and passionate on-air conversation that forces the audience to emotionally take a side as they identify with whichever position they hold.  Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston have an annual project each December where they gather toys for needy kids.  5000 Toys for Girls and Boys has been a staple of the show for years.  It took off this year when a villain appeared – an antagonist if you will – who was tired of everyone having their hand out for something.  He called the show, voiced his unhappiness, told the show to just play more music, and even insulted a cast member at one point.  What do you think happened?  The feature took off and not only beat, but exceeded its goal.  All thanks to the caller.  That the show used the bashing to further create humor made it even more memorable.

Zach and Brittney, B100, South Bend The Tree Pee

At our core, we’re storytellers.  That’s how human beings connect.  By telling stories. So it was fitting to tell stories just before the holidays about Christmas tree issues gone sideways.  Any show could make the case that this has been done before.  This is an issue if the stories being told are bland, boring, unentertaining, and do not connect. Not so with Zach and Brittney, B100, South Bend, IN who told their stories, then asked the audience to tell theirs.  Here are some wins of this short break:  Vulnerability, coupled around real life, work.  The audience wants in on your life.  You also stand a greater chance to win if you do what these guys did – put the spotlight back on the listener and let them tell their story.  Some shows feel like they should always be front and center.  This break shows how to back up, let the listener shine, and support them where needed to advance the narrative so everyone can relate and the audience can have a fun time hearing the story.

Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh Only at the Fair

Here’s another great example of the power of audio.  The North Carolina State Fair happened back in October.  As Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh went with their families, there was color all around them.  From the patrons to vendors to ride operators.  All these people (and more) had fun perspectives on the event and many had stories to tell of what they saw and experienced.  These guys are smart.  Not just because they know to bring this content to the show to position them as local and involved in what happens in the community.  But they also gathered audio (a simple feat with one’s cell phone) for story-telling from the colorful people around them.  In this clip, the bus driver taking fair-goers from the parking lot to the fairgrounds, the show quizzed him on the odd stuff he not only saw, but heard from others who worked the event.  Running this audio in the breaks, and commenting around it, is much more engaging than the one-dimensional act of them recounting everything for the audience.

Karlson and McKenzie, WZLX, Boston Scared Straight Santa

This is one of my favorite breaks ever as done by Karlson and McKenzie, WZLX, Boston.  We were looking to find an edgy way to connect with the audience.  The show has attitude and swagger and we wanted to channel that sense of humor into a holiday idea that would be much different than the standard fare phone topics most shows do around this time of year.  Enter Scared Straight Santa.  Everyone knows of the “scared straight” concept where prisoners scare kids into towing the line so they don’t end up in jail.  We used that to keep misbehaving children in line for their parents or else Santa won’t show up.  The first break is the call from a parent who tells us how their kid is misbehaving.  The next break (and the one below) is when Pete McKenzie calls back as Santa and challenges the kid to promise to be good.  This hits all important images you should have:  it’s fun, it’s real, it’s innovative, and it’s relatable.

John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego All I Need To Know About You: Kids Edition

We do a fun daily feature on John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego called That’s All I Need to Know About You.  It’s a simple, call-in benchmark where listeners phone you each morning, make mention of something they saw someone do that irritated them, and then tag on the line, “That’s all I need to know about you,” as a hook to remember it.  Benchmarks deserve to be updated in how they’re done on occasion, but must always stay true to what they are by defintion.  An example of this is David Letterman’s Top Ten List.  While it stayed honest to what it was for almost thirty years (one category, ten punchlines), how they presented it to the audience evolved over time.  And, at times, there were special versions of it.  Which is what this is.  When the need strikes to do something a little different with this regular feature, but keep it consistent, John and Tammy will do special kids versions.  Consider doing that with your features, too.  Here are two examples.

The Josie Dye Show with Matt and Carlin, Indie 88, Toronto 5K For Me, 5K For You

Lots of shows and stations give stuff out to help the ratings.  Contesting has an immediate impact on them.  We were presented with a unique challenge when management told The Josie Dye Show with Matt and Carlin, Indie 88, Toronto that we’d have $10,000 to give out every Friday.  The only thing we’d been asked to preserve was that qualifiers needed to text to win throughout the week for a forced listening part of the promotion.  The win in contesting is NOT what you have to give out.  The true benefit comes in how you give out the prize because that will impact perceptions of the show for all those who don’t play contests, which is 98% of the audience.  We have to engage them, make them laugh, and do it in a way that garners positive images.  Instead of giving one of the random qualifiers the $10,000 each Friday, we put in a twist.  The first name we called got $5,000 when they answered the phone.  We then pulled a second qualifier and called them.  If they answered, they got $5,000, too.  But, if they didn’t answer, or it went to voicemail, the first person got all $10,000.  Here’s one of the breaks.  It was an awesome way to give out the money that we feel was fun for non-contest players to listen in on.  The takeaway?  Work super hard on how you give stuff out – always think how will this impact those who don’t care to win it?

Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston Andy Grammer Talks Therapy

Interviews suck!  When they’re bad they do.  But when you get the person you’re interviewing off their talking points or what they’re selling (tickets, web hits, books, product) and move them to reveal who they really are through a story, you add to the authenticity of both them and your show.  That requires prep on your part.  Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston has been open with the audience for years about the mental health challenges of cast members.  That vulnerability draws the audience closer to you.  So it’s appropriate, when they found out in prepping for an interview with artist Andy Grammer that Covid put him in therapy, to go there.  Listen to how intimate and real the first part of this conversation is.  How open and honest they are so that Andy is open and honest, too.  Knowing who you are, preparing, and having the confidence to go there makes for a conversation you can’t get anywhere else.