Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

We offered a Free Idea last week called WINOS.  As Rush Limbaugh taught us years ago, putting together tribes in your audience gives them power to not feel like they are alone in this world.  Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL, Raleigh seized the idea, which is an acronym for Women In Need of Sanity.  Their target is a 35-year old female who’s going crazy after one year of Covid.  Sarah from the show will lead the group, then over the course of the next few weeks, build out the tribe by taking calls from women who have this in common with her and the others who want in.  There’s power in the group.  There is also humor as this week’s audio proves.  This is where your win actually happens.  Listen to not only the real life offerings from this nurse, but how deft the show is at allowing her to be the star of the break, maximizing her observations and sense of humor.  We all know shows that would be uncomfortable allowing the caller to be the center of the break, even trying to top the lines.  Not here and not with this team.  The show is elevated because they elevate the caller.  WINOS starts a new idea for the program, a tribe for the audience, and more genuine humor coming from listeners who feel comfortable to call the show to have fun.

One thing that makes powerful talent powerful is they’ve moved the audience to care about them.  The intimacy of our medium (it’s just you and that one listener, as we learned years ago) flows from a very deep relationship.  Built on vulnerability and the sharing of your life with listeners, the more you let them in and prove you are like them, the more that connection happens.  You have the power to make people care not only based on what you share, but how you share it.  At John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego, John has been abruptly forced out of his apartment because the landlord sold the house.  On its face, you could think:  how do I make them care about my problem? Emotion, and more specifically humor, moves them into the “care column”.  John has accumulated lots of stuff as we all do (very relatable) and must decide what to take to his new place.  The X-factor in this break is the show asking the listener who joined to decide if the item John references should make the move.  The feature they did was called Take It or Toss It and the ruling made by the caller was final.  That John has to move is his problem.  That they figured out how to use a listener in a fun way made it sticky, thus moving the audience to get to know him and care about him.