Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

There’s this old adage in radio that small market stations want to sound big and big market stations want to sound small.  In the latter, “small” means homey.  All radio should sound personal.  If you’re a person of a certain age reading this post, you’ll remember when hometown stations would let listeners get on-the-air and ask the audience for help in finding their lost dogs.  That’s exactly what Wicker and Wilde, MIX 98.1, Richmond did recently.  A listener lost his dog Atlas and he asked for the audience’s help in finding him.  Which resulted in this narrative theme over one show where listeners called with Atlas sightings and the resolution at the end of the program where the dog and owner were reunited.  So homey and touching – with anyone listening that day wondering if there was a happy ending.  This is wonderfully touching radio and super local.

The origin of your breaks communicate your relevance.  Using a Hot List topic to generate your break connects both you and the audience to whatever is going on in life right now.  Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix used the story of Patriots Coach Bill Belichick getting in trouble for sending a text to talk with the audience about the texts they’ve sent that weren’t proper.  As some things go, this became about the inappropriate nude pictures sent to others.  Here’s a fun story told by a female listener to the guys about naked pictures she accidentally sent to a group text, which included her pastor.  The start is the Belichick story, but the end has the focus on a listener, making her the star of their program.  Note her nice compliment to the show at the end of the call.  She shared that personal story because she feels like she knows the people on the show, key to her calling.