Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

You cannot ignore the protests.  Some shows fear tackling a topic as big as this, but to build a brand in 2020, you must take a stand.  Don’t conflate taking a stand against racism or for the Black Lives Matter movement with politics.  You can easily wade into the former with your honest feelings without ever touching Trump.  After all, who’d call to say they would no longer listen because they were for racism?  Part of connection around a topic of this size is first being honest with the audience, and then understanding the tone with which you deliver your perspective moderates any “stop listening moment” your audience could have.  John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego handled this perfectly last week when they admitted to listeners that as white people, they truly don’t understand what it’s like to be African American.  So they found a black pastor to come on the show to teach them what they did not get in their everyday American experience.  This never became about politics – it was affirming, uplifting, positive, and, at its end, might even move you to cry.  This is relevance – not fearing the topic, but thinking through how to present it so the audience leaves understanding your values as someone they wish to wake up with everyday on the radio.

You might be doing lots of interviews with the Covid issue.  Compelling and interesting story-telling with experts and listeners really resonate with the audience.  But, you don’t get there by accident and certainly cannot make it happen without prep.  There is a very compelling TV commercial featuring a nurse at a Hartford-area hospital (here).  It is immensely powerful and paints the picture of a day in her life for viewers.  Christine and Salt, 965, TIC-FM, Hartford decided they wanted to talk with Nurse Sophia, considering how moved they were by the commercial.  A good first step in doing an interview is that you must be moved.  What aids this interview is that they are curious people – not on the surface (i.e. tell us what time you wake up, what time do you get to work – these are the kinds of questions that signal you never prepped to figure out how you’d explore her story – so Nurse Sophie could expose her true life past what we see in the spot).  As you will hear in this interview, the team probed about what it was like to be in a room with a Covid patient and what her life was like when she went home after experiencing that each day.  They went deep and you must, too, if you will do an interview that will be impactful, emotional, memorable, and lasting for the audience.