Archive for category: Audio

Let’s create some discomfort!  Kyle and Rachel, Radio NOW, Indianapolis, invited B-Lord’s father in last Father’s Day.  Bryan’s dad is a principal at a local elementary school.  Under the thesis that principals know all, his father was tasked with giving listeners life advice.  On paper, this is kind of monochromatic.  But not in execution as you’ll hear, considering how the team created that discomfort.  The team starts the break with a slew of profanity (knowing you don’t curse in front of a principal) followed by a listener call asking a risque question about a first date, knowing a fun and uncomfortable reaction would follow suit.  The show took what could have been boring and put 220-volts of electricity in it in how they designed the break.

There have been some stellar things done by Reynolds Group morning shows in the past several months.  Here’s another.  With core hip artist WIz Khalifa set to debut a new masterpiece, The Cruz Show, Power 106, Los Angeles, seizes the moment.  Not only in allowing Wiz to take over the show (where anyone tuning in at any point during the program gets some of Wiz), but in what they did to promote the day.  The video piece at the link below lasts just two-minutes, yet has been seen and shared online 10-million times because it’s so funny.  The team successfully brought two topics together:  Wiz’s new effort and Adele’s hit song “Hello”.  They get Wiz, known for his pot smoking, to do his version of her song, thus garnering lots of eyeballs and laughter.  Creating talk around the topics of the day requires an interesting, humorous, and unique twist.  This one by this great morning show is an A+ all the way around.

We always preach that the prize doesn’t get you the true win in a game or station contest, but the way you give it out.  Amanda and Jesse, B105, Cincinnati, had Rascal Flatts tickets to give out.  With the group coming to town for a concert, just taking caller ten on their fun afternoon show would have been blah, blah, blah to the audience.  So they came up with a game called “Rascal Cats” where they replaced a word in a Rascal Flatts song with a cat screeching.  This works for a few reasons:  it’s vicarious (it gets passive listeners to play along) and those who have no interest in winning are laughing because of the twist.

Despite our being just past the holidays, here’s a break from Lisa and Ray, US99.5, Chicago, that really excelled.  Like many popular morning shows, the team was offered an interview with country legend Trace Adkins.  Not content to just do a Q&A centered around his agenda, the team made the off-air ask and then wrote a Chicago version of the classic “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”.  Trace consented and with his large, booming voice, read the poem in one of the breaks.  We were uber local and affirmed our fun images.  We always ask:  what are we doing with this topic no one else thought to do?  In doing so, we create an innovative moment which helps us bring the audience back again.

There is, somewhere in your market, a radio station that is an expert at giving their listeners the news.  While most listeners wake up and want to know what’s going on in the world, the purpose of the newscast is less to inform people than it is to define who you are.  The listeners want your take on the day’s topics (that honesty is character definition).  You want them waking up wondering what you think about whatever is big that morning.  This is why perspective is so critical when talking about a story.  What’s yours?  What work do you do to figure that out before the news story is done on your show?  What also helps a newscast is, when applicable, a sense of humor is shown.  If the audience cares about a story, they already know most, if not all, of what you’re about to tell them.  Ryno and Tracy, KYGO, Denver newscaster Chuck Clark is here telling the audience what they already know the morning after – that the Broncos beat the Patriots.  But listen to this very short clip how he created humor to make it sticky.