Radio Show Content | Audio Breaks

Ty Bentli Show, Nashville The Ten Minute Tune

July 21, 2019

Here’s a fun, new feature that highlights two important attributes of a show – music and fun around pop culture. The Ty Bentli Show, Nashville (syndicated) has access to hundreds of artists being in the mecca for country music. Each morning, they bring in a different budding artist (they’re screened for a sense of humor) and given a topic right out of the headlines and tasked with writing a quick song around the topic in ten minutes. There are some terrific attributes of this feature: it reinforces the contemporary nature of the show’s content, it’s intended to be funny and highlight the music images of the program, and proves an advocacy for the struggling artist because they get the show’s platform. The other item that stands out is its design and name – given we all want things right now, a show with a feature as unique as this starts and pays off in ten minutes, possibly getting more listeners who want to follow it from topic choice to completion to stay for a few more minutes.

AMP 103.3, Boston Robert Kraft is in Trouble

July 14, 2019

A goal for your show should be to start moving away from being feature driven (all those benchmarks do work to create appointments) so that the draw for listeners and fans is the compelling conversation you and your team have around the topics of the day. Go back to when New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was arrested for getting his happy ending at a message place when the Super Bowl happened. We’ll identify first that, at the time, this was a top shelf topic. It had all the elements of solid content: it was relevant (Super Bowl), is had just happened so the timing was perfect, and it had a sex component, which always adds to things. And for The TJ Show, AMP 103.3, Boston, it was local. TJ, Loren, and Producer Matt are terrific in many ways – most especially because they are hyper aware of the world around them, very knowledgable on all topics because they read a lot on everything, and have an almost infinite take on what’s going on. This break is not revolutionary for its innovation, but it serves the goal of moving these guys to become more personality-based because it was great in the moment and the team did a terrific job just conversing about all its twists and turns to connect with the audience and keep them engaged.

WDRV (The Drive), Chicago Todd Rundgren Flames Out

July 7, 2019

One way to invigorate your benchmarks is to occasionally ask celebrities to do them. Benchmarks work because they create an appointment for your show (which is why you do them at the same time – and no, the audience doesn’t bore of them if they are entertaining, because you change the content each time you do them). Sherman and Tingle, WDRV (The Drive), Chicago do a fun, music-based benchmark each morning at 7:30 called the Thirty Second Song Challenge, where a listener must name seven songs in thirty seconds to win. It has a huge vicarious element to it. But on occasion, they’ll get a celebrity to play. Here’s the version with Todd Rundgren, who is a core artist to the format. Todd comes on because he has something to promote, but the show (with permission) also gets him to play the game, where he fails, but has fun in the process.

92.5 Fox News, Ft. Myers, FL Joe’s Flip Floppy

June 30, 2019

Very, very few shows can do political humor. It’s way too touchy for many of us in radio, considering how polarizing it is. But you can under a couple of conditions: you’re grounded in politics as your plot or you have been on the air forever and have a deep relationship with the audience who know you very well. The latter is like the friend you’ve had for a very long time you can talk politics with (few in radio have this level of a relationship). An example of the former is Daybreak with Drew Steele, 92.5 FOX News, Ft. Myers, FL. This is the conservative politics station in the market. It’s in their DNA to do everything political. And it’s in Drew’s ethos to take the political topics of the day and have fun with them. Considering Joe Biden is front page news to this audience, and that Drew’s job is to share his perspective in a humorous way, here’s his take on Joe and a parody on how his audience sees the former vice president.

106.5 The Arch, St. Louis Hey Beer Vendor

June 23, 2019

It’s a dilemma as old as radio. How to talk about sports on a female-targeted radio station, especially if the sporting event is the biggest topic in town. The answer may be easier than you think. Talking X’s and O’s with scores and stats aren’t even done on sports-talk stations – they story-tell and entertain. Which is where our answer actually is. Create fun, tell stories, personalize the experience, and it will be inviting to both men and women. The St. Louis Blues had an amazing run-up to win the NHL’s Stanley Cup. Stacey and Jonah, 1065 The Arch, St. Louis added a feature to their show to bring listeners into the arena experience with the addition of Hey Beer Vendor, where they got to know the beer vendors in the stadium. They redid Lady Antebellum’s “Hey Bartender” for a production value and then had fun with beer vendors, coming in the side door to talk about sports, while keeping it fun and relatable to their target demo.

Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Ty Bentli Show, Nashville The Ten Minute Tune

AMP 103.3, Boston Robert Kraft is in Trouble

WDRV (The Drive), Chicago Todd Rundgren Flames Out

92.5 Fox News, Ft. Myers, FL Joe’s Flip Floppy

106.5 The Arch, St. Louis Hey Beer Vendor

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