Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Here’s another great example of the power of audio.  The North Carolina State Fair happened back in October.  As Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh went with their families, there was color all around them.  From the patrons to vendors to ride operators.  All these people (and more) had fun perspectives on the event and many had stories to tell of what they saw and experienced.  These guys are smart.  Not just because they know to bring this content to the show to position them as local and involved in what happens in the community.  But they also gathered audio (a simple feat with one’s cell phone) for story-telling from the colorful people around them.  In this clip, the bus driver taking fair-goers from the parking lot to the fairgrounds, the show quizzed him on the odd stuff he not only saw, but heard from others who worked the event.  Running this audio in the breaks, and commenting around it, is much more engaging than the one-dimensional act of them recounting everything for the audience.

We do a fun daily feature on John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego called That’s All I Need to Know About You.  It’s a simple, call-in benchmark where listeners phone you each morning, make mention of something they saw someone do that irritated them, and then tag on the line, “That’s all I need to know about you,” as a hook to remember it.  Benchmarks deserve to be updated in how they’re done on occasion, but must always stay true to what they are by defintion.  An example of this is David Letterman’s Top Ten List.  While it stayed honest to what it was for almost thirty years (one category, ten punchlines), how they presented it to the audience evolved over time.  And, at times, there were special versions of it.  Which is what this is.  When the need strikes to do something a little different with this regular feature, but keep it consistent, John and Tammy will do special kids versions.  Consider doing that with your features, too.  Here are two examples.