WDRV (The Drive), Chicago Todd Rundgren Flames Out
One way to invigorate your benchmarks is to occasionally ask celebrities to do them. Benchmarks work because they create an appointment for your show (which is why you do them at the same time – and no, the audience doesn’t bore of them if they are entertaining, because you change the content each time you do them). Sherman and Tingle, WDRV (The Drive), Chicago do a fun, music-based benchmark each morning at 7:30 called the Thirty Second Song Challenge, where a listener must name seven songs in thirty seconds to win. It has a huge vicarious element to it. But on occasion, they’ll get a celebrity to play. Here’s the version with Todd Rundgren, who is a core artist to the format. Todd comes on because he has something to promote, but the show (with permission) also gets him to play the game, where he fails, but has fun in the process.
Very, very few shows can do political humor. It’s way too touchy for many of us in radio, considering how polarizing it is. But you can under a couple of conditions: you’re grounded in politics as your plot or you have been on the air forever and have a deep relationship with the audience who know you very well. The latter is like the friend you’ve had for a very long time you can talk politics with (few in radio have this level of a relationship). An example of the former is Daybreak with Drew Steele, 92.5 FOX News, Ft. Myers, FL. This is the conservative politics station in the market. It’s in their DNA to do everything political. And it’s in Drew’s ethos to take the political topics of the day and have fun with them. Considering Joe Biden is front page news to this audience, and that Drew’s job is to share his perspective in a humorous way, here’s his take on Joe and a parody on how his audience sees the former vice president.
It’s a dilemma as old as radio. How to talk about sports on a female-targeted radio station, especially if the sporting event is the biggest topic in town. The answer may be easier than you think. Talking X’s and O’s with scores and stats aren’t even done on sports-talk stations – they story-tell and entertain. Which is where our answer actually is. Create fun, tell stories, personalize the experience, and it will be inviting to both men and women. The St. Louis Blues had an amazing run-up to win the NHL’s Stanley Cup. Stacey and Jonah, 1065 The Arch, St. Louis added a feature to their show to bring listeners into the arena experience with the addition of Hey Beer Vendor, where they got to know the beer vendors in the stadium. They redid Lady Antebellum’s “Hey Bartender” for a production value and then had fun with beer vendors, coming in the side door to talk about sports, while keeping it fun and relatable to their target demo.
The throwback concept is easy and brings back great memories for people. Whether online or you do something with it on the show. Which is why we added a feature called Throwback Live on David, Sue, and Kendra, Magic 106.7, Boston. David, our show anchor, pits Sue and Kendra against each other to identify throwback clips from pop culture. This works for several reasons. The clips themselves (all from the 80s and 90s) bring back terrific memories for the audience. Sue and Kendra each fancy themselves experts in this kinda of stuff so the natural, playful competition between the two is a fun draw for the audience. And you also have that most classic of game qualities, listeners can play along in the car. We set this feature as an appointment each day in the show for an original air (Throwback Live at 8:25) and re-air it the next morning for a fresh appointment in the 6:00 hour.
One of the simple ways to easily grow the entertainment quotient of your show is to use the cast of characters around you at the radio station who are not on the show every day. Letterman taught us this simple approach, and every late night talk show host has done it since. Find people in the building who are bold, own a perspective or expertise in something, radiate wattage, and are fun (or you can have fun with), and bring them on the show from time-to-time. Koz and Jen at WTMX (101.9 The MIX), Chicago do this with Dale the Receptionist. It’s commonly believed that the station receptionist knows all. So when the show wanted to talk about outdated technology around the building, it was an easy decision to bring Dale on to note all of it and have fun. Real life characters add easy laughs for the show – you just gotta be on the lookout for them around the building.
Two of the regular items that bear themselves out when you talk with listeners is that they want fast moving breaks, with multiple parts to keep their attention. And that the sweet spot for length is about three minutes with rare exceptions. Enter The Big Dave Show, B105, Cincinnati who prep their breaks accordingly. Here’s a nice, compact break with two major elements around the Luke Bryan tickets the show has for giveaway: Part One in Luke or Dare is the team offering a trivia question to a caller – if they answer it correctly they get the tickets. Or they have to accept the dare, which is Part Two. Listen to this break and note how quickly it moves – they never give the audience a chance to get lulled into restlessness because of its pacing – it was prepped for this. There is launch/set-up, execution, and payoff all within three minutes, leaving the audience wanting more verses fatiguing them by staying too long. Which leads to a third important point: if you have something to give out, spend more time figuring out how to give away the prize because how you do it is the win for those just tuning in, wanting to have a good time.
Our post last week was about being in the moment for pop culture – attaching yourself in a unique way to a Hot Topic. The most inviting content might be what’s going on in the world right now, because those topics are clickable (and postable on your social media platforms). But the treatment of that topic, as my friends at Coleman Insights have long advocated, is what is critical to making the break stand out. There was a huge controversy around the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, where the expected horse to win was disqualified and Country House declared the winner. Good conversation for the show just after the race, because people are aware of it (awareness is the main threshold for determining a topic for your show). Kyle from Two Men and a Mom, WRAL-FM, Raleigh found out something very cool. His father-in-law placed a bet on Country House, because he lives in a country house (it was one of those “on a whim” bets). His father-in-law’s $20 bet, at 65-1 odds, paid off $1300. So, they got him on and you got to hear his story, energy, and sense of humor around the topic. Giving their program one more break that could only be done by them to engage and entertain the audience. That he placed the bet and won big is a coincidence. That they took advantage of it as content for the show isn’t.
If I were to take an hour of today’s show and play it in two weeks, would it feel old and dated? If so, that’s a good sign that your content choices were “of the moment”. That you were so tapped into what’s going on right now, you reflected pop culture and were contemporary. Your audience wants not only a connection to you, they want to be connected to the topics of the day. That’s being radio’s version of click bait. In a brainstorm around the topic of James Holzhauer, the weird guy who keeps winning on Jeopardy, John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego wondered what it was like for the contestants who lose to him. Noting that each contestant and their city of residence are used in the introduction at the beginning of the show, they wrote down a few and used the Google Machine® to find one. Here’s an interview with the guy who came the closest – the contestant who lost to Holzhauer by just $18. In the moment, from a unique angle that fascinated them, and a few minutes of highly relevant pop culture radio their fans could not get from anyone else.