Q102, Cincinnati All The Moms, All Weekend Long
What does a typical radio station do for Mother’s Day weekend? They give out flowers or spa certificates to caller ten every hour. The atypical radio station has every daypart co-hosted by the mother of the DJ on the schedule. That’s what the brilliantly programmed Q102, Cincinnati (Patti Marshall, PD!) did last month when faced with doing something special that weekend. One of the many great things about the Q102 brand, built over many years, is its laser focus on the right music, its longtime, highly entertaining Jeff and Jenn morning show, and doing unique things like this to connect with and entertain the audience. Where most stations do standard fare, Q102 has always stood out to do something unique, fun, different, and interesting, which is why it always wins big. Here’s one of the promos they ran that weekend so you can get a sense of what they did and how it sounded.
Sherman and Tingle, WDRV, Chicago couldn’t care less about the Royal Wedding. This doesn’t absolve them from dealing with it – it actually gives them a powerful perspective from which to develop their breaks and humor. There have been times where certain shows or talent will use the “I don’t care about it so I didn’t do anything around it” as a defense to avoid a big topic. That’s not smart (it’s actually lazy!). We never assign perspectives, we just need to identify them to tackle the topic. Add a splash of imagination to your take and you’re off to the races to entertain the audience. These guys imagined what Prince William’s first toast of the happy couple would sound like at the reception. Behold a perfect break – it’s around a big topic of the day, it’s foundation is the team’s take, it’s funny, it’s short, and it’s inventive.
The highlight of the week could very well have been the narrative arc done by Two Men and a Mom, WRAL-FM, Raleigh around Bryan’s upcoming July wedding. The show hatched the arc around the thesis that Bryan’s fiance had invited an extra bridesmaid so he needed an additional groomsman. That’s when it became fun. He decided to write a “recruiting” letter to Duke’s Coach K (seen 
It’s quite clever when a show marries something in pop culture with character development to satisfy the audience’s need to understand the talent as it reflects a topic of the day. Enter Spencer’s Neighborhood, 106.5 The Arch, St. Louis who did just that with the Kentucky Derby last week. The topic amongst the cast and then with listeners on the phones was for each to share a short highlight of their weekend and then the team assigned you a Kentucky Derby horse name based on the experience. Spencer and his team get so much done in a few short minutes, which requires additional prep because they have very little time to waste. Listen as this is wonderfully set up in the first few seconds with audio of the event, hooking the audience, and then tied that to pop culture to contemporize the show along with short stories from the weekend, all leading to humor.
Radio stations need to do promotions – these large giveaways (usually trips or cash contests) add energy to a radio station and cultivate listening from contest players. Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix subscribe to the philosophy that while these promotions need to be talked about on their show, that kind of break is only geared at the 2% who care (and will follow or play the game). We need to make a break like that entertaining to the other 98% to help carry listeners thru content that really doesn’t matter to them. The station just started a game centered around classic rock called The A to Z Game. Listen to this break and note what they did in promoting it to make it fun to hear for the larger group, the 98% who’ll never call to win anything from the station.
Much like Steve Harvey does special-themed Family Feuds, it’s totally fine for you to take your tenured, signature features and do something different with them on occasion, too. Koz and Jen, The MIX, Chicago, do the Show Biz Pop Quiz each afternoon as listeners are driving home. This Hollywood trivia game is widely done and immensely popular with an audience because it’s vicarious, easy, and centered around a cast character in efforts to help define them. Here is their 100th episode of the feature. As a special treat for both Jen and the audience, Koz had her play against someone who is 100 years old. This quirky turn is geared at those just tuning in to play along, helping heighten how fun it is for them.
A first threshold by which listeners determine if an interview will be worth their time is if they know and like the person being interviewed. For any country audience, Scotty McCreery is on that list – he’s a star to them. Having the number one song in the format at the time of the interview increases the interview’s relevance. His interview with The Big Dave Show, B105, Cincinnati, is a textbook example of how to do an interview for the two groups of people listening: those who like and know Scotty and those who don’t. Instead of a typical interview where the person would come on and be asked about their inspiration for their current project (no one cares), they quickly congratulate him on being number one, note why he wrote the song (because his grandfather passed – they knew this from research) and then talked with Scotty about getting married, the new American Idol, and ran him through a fun quiz to see what he remembered about his time winning the show’s tenth season. All around, this was well thought out and done to make a very accessible five minute interview that was entertaining and engaging for all.