Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

We preach to all shows that it’s what you do with a topic that makes it resonate.  Your imagination gets you noticed,  Enter the tooth fairy on Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston!  Karson’s young son Barrett called the hotline one morning to tell his father that he knew it was him who took his lost tooth and left five dollars under the pillow that morning instead of the tooth fairy.  Both Barrett and Karson’s wife, Lana, were trapped, not knowing what to do.  Here’s where their imagination took over.  They aired the call, then, magically, the tooth fairy was listening and they deployed her to call Barrett back to cover for them.  The tooth fairy knew all about Barrett’s room (geez, I wonder how!) and to tell him that she asked his father to cover because she’d been very busy.  Never a wacky radio bit, this came from real life.  It’s totally relatable, story-based, true, with a touch of imagination to capture the attention of the audience and make it memorable.  What you do with the topic you choose is paramount to doing distinctive radio that you will own.

The challenge for this past week is to tackle the serious topics of Bill Cosby’s prison sentence and the Supreme Court hearings without alienating the audience.  It’s a tougher needle to thread if you don’t have a deep relationship with the audience yet.  That’s where Stacey and Jonah, 1065 The Arch, St. Louis are.  They’re new to the station so you have to be cautious.  The topics are so pervasive, they must be tackled.  In our discussion, we noted how corrosive social media can be – it clouds our take on a topic and can easily anger us.  You must come up with a portal to enter any topic that’s honest and resonates – they came in with the promise to turn off all social media this weekend and actually be with people – they would not let social media affect them negatively this weekend and ask listeners to join that tribe.  Here are four absolutely stellar breaks that resonated deeply with all of their audience, without ever taking a social stand.  They talk with Jonah’s sister in two breaks (she’s a social worker), Jonah’s mom just to tell her they love her, and a listener.  This is the classic “running in the opposite direction” from where we are.  Will listeners actually stop using social media (for those of you inside thinkers who worry we’re telling the audience to not look at our Facebook page).  Nope, they will still use all social media platforms.  But the messaging is awesome.  All of this rates an A+.