John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego Character Additions
One of the many things David Letterman taught us was the value of adding characters to the show by using the odd and funny people around you. In these days of ensemble teams and our industry’s inability to budget for more cast members, this is the easiest and least expensive route to growing your show. Characters add dimension and color to your program and can instantly add more humor and edge, too. Look at what Letterman did in the early years to set himself apart from the other nightly talk show hosts and be memorable. He made stars out of the the guy who owned the souvenir store next door to him, the stage manager who had an innocence and natural sense of humor about him, even his mother. You can do that, too, to grow your show at zero expense to the company, Find the genuinely real and funny people in your life (your family, your social circle, neighbors) and create reasons to have them on the program. Some for a specific reason each time (they own a character trait) or to comment on and add to the conversation about whatever topic you’re doing in that break. John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego excel at this. Here are two real life characters that come and go in the show: Neighbor Gary and No Nothing About Country Ken. Find those in your world just like this and overnight, become an even better show.
Let’s play off stereotypes for this week’s audio: guys don’t do any work around the Thanksgiving meal. They neither cook, clean, nor offer anything else. With that stereotype out of the way, here’s a classic piece of audio from Tiffany and Michael, B101, Philadelphia. Holidays are a time of family gatherings, in groups large and small. We know that strategic character development almost always happens when we put family members of the cast on the show and get them to bring us inside the relationship. Real works and this is real. Here’s family man, devoted husband, all-around great guy and cast member Michael Chew getting assigned the list of things he needs to do around the house from his wife, Nancy. To effectively define your character, the audience must see themselves in the story that you tell, you must add dimension to the break (this is what Nancy does – she brings the real and the room plays with it), and at its end, the typical listener must say the cast member is just like them. This accomplishes all of that.
Even though we all knew Alex Trebek would, at some point, leave us, we were faced last week with ways to treat that content on the show. I did some extra listening around the dial – to shows I work with and shows I do not – to sample how talent handled it. Several took the path of least resistance: let’s give out some Trebek facts and spend the balance of our time reflecting on his life and making commentary. Good, not great. These moments call for deeper dives of storytelling. Finding people who can talk about the subject from a first person perspective. Of them all, Rob and Joss, Sunny 98.1, San Diego were one of the few who stood out. Yes, they started the break as we all would. With a great frame. They then pivoted and put on someone who had been on Jeopardy to reflect on Alex and talk about him in ways they could not. Bonus points because that person was local, but they didn’t need to be. Great content is relevant to the moment, emotional in its display, and centered around a story no one else can tell. This hit all those marks.
“Yea, but what are we doing with it?” That’s a question I ask every show in near every weekly conversation. Choosing the topics for the program is the easy part. What we do with them, past the interesting angles that define the talent, is what makes it sticky. You have seen me preach this countless times on this page. The audience wants to be around people they know and like when they turn you on, but most importantly, they want to laugh and have a good time. Looking for a new feature for Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston, the team came up with Drunk News. It’s been done by other shows (Leno even did it for a while). The difference here is how the show did it. They could have read news stories and acted drunk – that would have be perceived as a wacky radio bit. Or, you could type up some news stories and go to the bars in Boston at 2am and get actual drunk people to read them – that’s real. That’s what they did. Nothing truly revolutionary here. It doesn’t need to be. It just needs to be relevant and fun, which this is. Here’s a retro-break that easily shows how it can be done to stand out.
We make these snap judgements about people all the time. Go to the grocery store and watch a shopper not return the cart to the holding area in the parking lot after they put their items in their trunk? Well, that’s all I need to know about them. Drive into a neighborhood and see someone’s washer and dryer on their front porch? You know everything else about their life, right? Lexi and Banks, KUBL, Salt Lake City do a daily feature called That’s All I Need To Know About You. Kinda like an updated version of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck If…” this phone in feature gives listeners an opportunity to call and make their value judgments about people around them, too. It’s relatable, fun, and highly digestible because it quick. Here are a couple of versions of it.
A missed opportunity for many shows is in not aligning with the music on the radio station. I know this from experience – we often see our show as separate from the station brand and many times we are much more focused on our content. The biggest thing you hopefully have in common with the audience is your love of the music you play. I’ve launched numerous shows from that foundation and it always works to form a relationship with listeners. It’s especially powerful at a classic rock station. Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix know and love the music they play. They found a local promoter who has had hundreds of encounters with the format’s iconic artists and convinced him to tell them stories about a few. This clip proves the power of talking about the music and telling stories as the promoter tells a terrific tale about Lindsey Buckingham (from Fleetwood Mac) and how difficult he was to deal with.