Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Can you cry in front of listeners?  Can you be that vulnerable to show your true emotions around a sad experience?  It’s true that much of what we should do in radio is be fun.  High on the list of what listeners are looking for is humor and a good time when they turn you on.  No show wins without that image.  But you’re a human being and there are many sides to you.  My question is are you capable of showing all of them to prove it?  Logan and Sadie, WINK-FM, Ft. Myers, FL are deep and different people.  And quite comfortable to show all of it to the audience.  All of that forms a bond which is almost unbreakable to moving people from being listeners to being fans of a program.  Sadie recently lost her dog, Rascal, after a long illness.  He was a rescue and she wanted to bring listeners into that experience.  Can you do that with those who come to you for connection each day?

There’s this concept of doing your break for the person least interested.  If you can craft a break around a topic and a listener who doesn’t care about that topic is entertained, you win big.  Karen Carson in the Morning with Johnny Minge and Intern Anthony, WNEW-FM, New York raised toys for disadvantaged kids over the holidays.  In our effort to stand out and engage those in the audience who don’t have the resources or would not send a toy for any reason, we needed to grab them emotionally, too.  So each of the cast members called their fathers on-air to ask them to donate some toys.  Which got us a “can you top the last dad” vibe.  Listen to these two breaks through the lens of not caring about what they’re doing.  If you are engaged by what the show did to promote the toy drive, the show won.