Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Sometimes, little things become big things.  Consider the mystery faced by Sarah and Jessie, MIX 96.5, Houston back in December.  Someone sent Sarah Pepper a self-help book from Amazon.  The only problem?  No one copped to it.  There wasn’t any receipt or note with the delivery acknowledging who sent it.  Small things can become big things.  And those big things can become defining things!  Sarah and Jessie set off to find out who sent the book and who thinks Sarah Pepper needs some help!  A question I often ask in a prep session to talent is:  what do you wonder about this?  Wonderment is a great place to start to come up with something creative.  They wondered if Sarah Frazier, Audacy’s market manager (and someone close personally to Sarah Pepper), sent it.  Ms. Frazier is always money on the air.  So they called her to ask.  Resulting in this tiny thing (getting a book from an unknown person) into a bigger, stickier thing, considering how much fun the conversation was.

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.