Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Last week brought the Las Vegas shootings and for many programs, a total overhaul of their Monday show plan.  Imagine this – you wake up and find out that dozens of people are killed at an outdoor concert while you were sleeping.  What do listeners want you to do on your show that day?  Consider their needs.  They wake up and start scrolling for information.  Some turn on the TV, others go online, your fans turn you on.  Some shows will bark that “balance is needed” on days like this (“we’ll do it twice an hour!”).  Others say “we’re the escape” (as if by 7am they get in the car and they’re over it and know you’re the escape so they come to you), which is flawed thinking because people don’t choose you in their head, they come to you in their heart, to connect.  The audience wants information, they want your take, they want you to reflect the emotions they’re feeling, and they want to be brought into the story.  What factors into the decision is how we’re used.  Listeners come, stay for ten minutes, then leave.  So if you didn’t do a big story like this in that time, you didn’t do it at all, hence a disconnect.  Two Men and a Mom (Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah) at WRAL-FM, Raleigh trashed their game plan that day and worked furiously to find people who were there – people who could offer up a first person experience to the story.  Here are two interviews they did that day (and played a lot) to prove they were totally in sync with where their audience was in that moment.  (If you want to know how they found these two people, reach out to me.)

Benchmarks are a critical element of every show for several very important reasons:  they define the show’s sense of humor if done well, they activate another occasion in PPM if done regularly, and they create talk for a program.  Each Thursday, The TJ Show, AMP 103.3, Boston does Therapy with Judah.  Judah is TJ’s young nephew who is quite older than his actual age.  TJ Skypes with the kid and just talks about something in life, looking for natural reactions from him.  The audience adores Judah – in LABs, you can see their positive body language and hear them almost gush over how fun this weekly feature is to hear.  Benchmarks must be grounded in fun and be one-of-a-kind.  That this could never be done by anyone else in the market makes it iconic to TJ’s show, which helps fuel the strategic objectives noted above.  TJ and his team excel at coming up with things other shows can’t because they are so inventive.  For these reasons, TJ has separated this show from everything else in the market, which starts an ascent in ratings.