Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

An oft-used bit is to mess up the lyrics of a song and the listeners have to guess the right song to win. Where things gets into unique territory (and become much more valuable because it’s unique) is to have a cast member’s parent do the bit. Often, a cast member would just do this, but using your mother helps position you as their kid (and a real person) and gives you more to play with. Such is the case in a regular bit done by Brian and Chrissy, WGNA, Albany called Chrissy’s Mom Screws Up the Songs. Here’s the payoff to one they did around Halloween. Listen to the production value of this bit and how quickly they moved through the content to not waste the audience’s time. In less than two minutes, the listener is hooked, engaged, having a good time, and leaves with several positive impressions of the show’s humor and relevance. Bonus points that they never put the caller on to guess the song – I love this because there is no inane banter with the winner. They just credit them, focusing more on the execution of the content that is entertaining to everyone not calling.

PPM ratings are all about occasions.  Our job in developing daily, fun radio, is to have as part of our recipe, “tune-in features” that affect listeners’ behavior so they turn us on.  Listen to any successful show breakdown their wins and you will almost always hear them reference that fans set their watch for features they must hear.  Solid, fun, can’t miss benchmarks must be a part of your show if you care to turn a two-day a week listener into a three-day a week listener.  Much like Apple releases new products and targets them at Apple fans, your fans are the easiest route to getting more listenership because they already like you.  Benchmarks must reach certain thresholds to be effective, though.  Just doing the same thing at the same time each day isn’t good enough.  When The TJ Show was on AMP, 103.3, Boston, we challenged TJ to come with a can’t miss feature we could get known for.  Here’s TJ’s Street Match, a play along game that used people on the streets of Boston, one listener, and a bunch of very quirky questions to keep everyone tuned in.