Archive for category: Audio

We all agree that real life is very important as content for your show.  Sometimes, it’s the very little things that become the biggest, and most memorable.  How many Tide Pods should be used when doing your laundry?  This was the real life content tackled by Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix last week.  Mark saw that his wife put two Tide Pods into the laundry.  Once she stepped away from the washing machine, he fished one out, believing it should only be one.  And he never told her.  This resulted in calls about the correct number of Tide Pods that should be used with a full load.  You might be interested to learn that, according to the company, it’s….two!  This is great content – Mark and Paul created this break beautifully around the topic by adding in a couple of phone calls (one at the very beginning to grab you) as well as a quick quiz with a co-worker to find out how many she uses in the laundry.  Overall, this is a small thing which will become a big thing.

How do you take a relatable as simple as wondering if people with low cell phone batteries are bothered with not having a full charge and turn it into bolder content?  Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX Phoenix show you with this week’s audio.  On a show call recently, Mark bemoaned that every time he looked at his wife’s cell phone, her battery was dangerously low.  That’s a simple enough character story to tell on the air and leave as-is or use as a phone topic.  But the show decided to add other elements to the content to elevate it.  Mark talked with three listeners at a station promotion and asked their names, what they did, and the current status of their cell phone charge (element #1).  Then he used that audio and asked NeanderPaul to guess what their battery level was, knowing that he would be funny with it (element #2).  They turned what could have been a standard break or phone topic into a game listeners vicariously played along with in the car.  Add elements like these on occasion to your breaks to present them differently to your audience so your content stays fresh and different for fans.

The most entertaining guests on the show sometimes live on the fringe.  When they are family of cast members, they also provide character development.  Letterman taught us the importance of finding the colorful people around the show and figure out how to get them on so their oddities can capture the audience’s attention.  John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego have some very fun family members.  John’s daughter, Abby, just became a a vegan.  This lifestyle is distant from the typical country partisan.  So, John decided to interview his daughter to find out what that was like, and, loaded up with things to say, Abby judged the audience and created both fun and character development for her father in the process.  Bottom line:  look for the fun, odd people around you and introduce them to the audience to create some electric content.  Here’s the break to hear how it’s done.

A critical element to create great content is conflict – be it real or manufactured for fun.  Content segments without that push and pull of tension do little to grab the audience emotionally, which is the one thing that will both intrigue them to hear it (hence, a powerful set-up or hook at the very beginning of the break) and provide a resolution to that dramatic thesis at its end.  For Father’s Day last month, Lexi and Banks, K-BULL 93, Salt Lake City had the typical giveaway packages from the promotions folks.  Not content to play a silly game or take caller X, they fished through social media looking for listeners who had borrowed money from their fathers and not paid it back.  That was the thesis of real life drama they would use to tell a story, tie into Father’s Day, and get dad and and their kid on to give something out.  Mining the story from both perspectives, as you will hear below, is appropriate and relatable.  But at the end, they asked the father to forgive the “loan” in return for the prize package, thus providing resolution.  All around, this is very well conceived and executed by the team!

You can tell someone else’s story, or get them to tell it themselves – which one is better to you?  Obviously, it’s the latter.  When you hear a great story, make the effort to get the person who experienced the story to come on your show and explore it with them.  Doing so brings you a deeper level of honest storytelling, you find out more details which makes the story come to life, and there’s much more emotion to it.  You might have seen the viral video of Chris Swanson, the Flint, MI cop who took off his riot gear to be with protestors.  Instead of just talking about it, John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego convinced him to come on the show to tell his story.  Hearing his voice made all the difference because he lived it and it ended up being pro-cop, a lost perspective with all the protests.  This changed the break from C-level to A-level.  We all must be better at this kind of prep.  Doing this makes the break much more memorable and gives you something around the topic to totally own.