Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Without friction, you don’t get any explosion!  That’s another way of saying if you don’t have conflict or tension, your story is less valuable to the audience, maybe even worthless.  When looking at the stories to tell on-air, ask if there’s a tension of opposing forces.  Mix those and then watch what happens.  As evidenced by Chris and Dina, WMAS-FM, Springfield, MA.  Back before Mother’s Day, they heard from a stay-at-home mom who wasn’t going to get a gift from her husband.  That’s moderate tension, as they wished her well.  On the next break, they heard from her husband who said she always complained and that he felt her being able to stay-at-home with the kids was a gift all itself.  Explosion.  How do you think the audience reacted?  Yup, that’s what happened.

To make an idea sticky, you must push your verbiage to the margins.  Language counts for something so to look for the best or worst of something is better than living in the mushy middle.  Which is why Carlin and Brent, Indie 88, Toronto went looking for Toronto’s worst bathroom.  No doubt their listeners have had to use many of them (so we knew it’d be relatable).  We went about this differently than normal.  The show curated a ton of audio and video content prior to us launching the competition, guaranteeing we’d have stuff for breaks long before we asked the audience to get involved.  Here’s an example of a break they did after the launch.  The winning store owner of the worst bathroom got the golden plunger award.  Remember when doing something like this to push your language to the margins so it stands out.