Radio Show Content | Audio Breaks

WDRV The Drive, Chicago A Survivor of Southwest 1380

April 22, 2018

How hard is this? Not very. Tapping into the biggest stories of the day radiates relevancy to the audience. When tragedy happens, shows need to only think – what would Good Morning America or the Today Show do here? Sherman and Tingle, WDRV-FM, Chicago think like that. So the morning after Southwest #1380 is in the news for an engine blowing up at 30,000 feet and an emergency landing happening in Philadelphia, they’re faced with three choices: not have it as content on their show (big mistake), talk about it based on what they saw on TV and read online (just okay), or have someone on who was on the plane when it happened (amazing). No one tells a story better than the person who experienced it. The team got one of the passengers to come on to paint the picture of what it was like. While we won’t give away the secret of how they got her (it’s way easier than you think), these guys did a break no one else in Chicago did, thus winning the moment.

WIL, St. Louis Name that Street

April 15, 2018

There are multiple ways to tell the audience you’re new to town. The standard way is to ask listeners where to get a great local pizza, etc. That can live for only so long before it becomes one-dimensional. Stacy and Jonah, WIL-FM (New Country 92.3), St. Louis have been in place as the new afternoon show in town for only a few months so we’re now looking for fresh ways to publicly learn the market and have some fun. Stacy’s mom recently visited for the first time. The streets are notoriously hard to say in the market given their French spellings. Which is why they had their longtime traffic guy, Captain Mack, give her the spellings of local roads and Stacy’s mom had to pronounce them. Goals served for being local, saying we’re new to town, and creating some fun.

WRAL-FM, Raleigh March Madness

April 8, 2018

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.

B105, Cincinnati The Scotty McCreery Interview

April 1, 2018

A first threshold by which listeners determine if an interview will be worth their time is if they know and like the person being interviewed. For any country audience, Scotty McCreery is on that list – he’s a star to them. Having the number one song in the format at the time of the interview increases the interview’s relevance. His interview with The Big Dave Show, B105, Cincinnati, is a textbook example of how to do an interview for the two groups of people listening: those who like and know Scotty and those who don’t. Instead of a typical interview where the person would come on and be asked about their inspiration for their current project (no one cares), they quickly congratulate him on being number one, note why he wrote the song (because his grandfather passed – they knew this from research) and then talked with Scotty about getting married, the new American Idol, and ran him through a fun quiz to see what he remembered about his time winning the show’s tenth season. All around, this was well thought out and done to make a very accessible five minute interview that was entertaining and engaging for all.

WEZN, Bridgeport, CT That’s All I Need to Know About You

March 25, 2018

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.

Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

WDRV The Drive, Chicago A Survivor of Southwest 1380

WIL, St. Louis Name that Street

WRAL-FM, Raleigh March Madness

B105, Cincinnati The Scotty McCreery Interview

WEZN, Bridgeport, CT That’s All I Need to Know About You

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