Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

March Madness is done, but there are a couple of breaks I thought you’d enjoy, both from Two Men and a Mom, WRAL-FM, Raleigh.  The first is a simple break where Sarah tells Kyle and Bryan her bracket strategy.  She is an NC State alum and knew little else about the teams involved in the tournament.  That didn’t prevent her from picking winners, although her logic was odd, in a funny kind of way.  The takeaway on this break is that when you are honest with the audience and comfortable to share that you have no idea what you’re doing, a playfulness and organic sense of humor appears.  In the second break, the team crowns its winner of their parody, Starch Madness, where they looked for the most popular potato-based food item.  After all the voting, the team decides to insert in the break a little unexpected Easter egg by using a personality from their sister TV station, who had an investigative bulletin.  Surprises are nice in breaks and this is one of them to capture the imagination of the audience.

We all make snap judgments about people, don’t we?  We see someone, make a note of something they’re doing, and make a broad assessment about their life.  Anna and Raven, Star 99.9, Bridgeport, CT recently added a well-evaluated feature to their show (as developed by Bud and Broadway, WIL, St. Louis) called “That’s All I Need to Know About You”.  This is a fun feature because it’s digestible, funny, and highly relatable.  If you’re the kind of show that journals each weekend to generate personal experience stories as content, it’s likely you have several in there to kick this feature off (“if I see you shopping at Home Depot in curlers, that’s all I need to know about you!”).  Throw a few out on your own to frame it so the audience understands what you’re looking for, then open the phones to grab some from listeners.