Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Work with me and know I’ll ask in every break, “what’s the pivot?”  Shows that are not much more than chatter are fatiguing, because listeners have short attention spans and require glitter being thrown at them very quickly in any break to keep their interest.  Examples of pivots:  talking about Travis Kelce marrying Taylor Swift?  Here comes his high school football coach to add a fresh perspective.  In a conversation about Robert Redford passing?  Here’s a fun quiz on his movies.  The Morning Wolfpack (Matt, Gabe, and Captain Ron) at 100.7, The Wolf, Seattle have dubbed this the QAP (the Quick Ass Pivot).  In a conversation about the Hot Topic of the Mariners run to the World Series, here comes a doctored voice from ChatGPT, who they asked to predict the winner.  In many of your content breaks, plan the pivot – the treatment to the topic you’ve chosen – to make the break all yours and be memorable because of what you did with it.

News features, when done on morning shows, are a smart thing.  The items tend to about whatever is going on right now (very important).  But the goal should not be conveying news items and facts.  Because there are credible news sources all around you, the win of these features now come in the conversation that happens about the story and the commentary offered by those in the chat.  You will define yourself and create a connection point when you’re honest about whatever is being talked about.  Yes, there are exceptions to this observation (how a talent feels about what happened to Charlie Kirk is a total danger zone so avoid that, as an example).  But for most items, when in conversation, the most authentic reactions always appear, shifting your trending feature from fact-based to observation/opinion-based thus engaging the audience more deeply.  Here’s a dated, but very good example of how this should be done from Karen Carson in the Morning on WNEW-FM, New York City.