Most AC morning shows get the bulk of their audience in the 8 and 9am hours.
Yet management often bases talent bonuses on the 6 and 7am hours, challenging the show to match performance of, or out-perform, the 8 and 9am hours!
Mother’s Day is a holiday that everyone can relate to and share stories about. It’s in the storytelling that the magic happens. You can deepen your character on the show and allow your audience to share their lives, experiences and memories in a truly authentic way. Who doesn’t have a story about Mom?
The Avengers. The Hunger Games. Twilight. Local teams in the playoffs. The Olympics. A major concert announcement.
On days when there's nothing going on, it's a challenge to be topical. On other days, it's a crime not to be. For example, The Avengers is opening domestically this Friday and there is speculation based on overseas draws that it might be the biggest movie opening weekend ever. What's your plan?
I was having dinner with my 81-year old Aunt Doris a few weeks ago. I hardly ever get to see her and thought it would be interesting to ask her about our family history. I remember three very specific things she told me.
Reebok’s near collapse and rebirth can teach radio how to empower their teams to be accountable and more productive.
In 1984 Paul Fireman bought Reebok for 75 thousand dollars because he thought it had promise. He discovered that people hated buying new running shoes because it took too long to break them in. His idea was to create a running shoe that was already broken in (innovation!). Within 18 months, Reebok had 43 percent of the market share.
By Angela Perelli
"Frankly there isn't anyone you can't learn to love once you've heard their story."
That quote from a social worker was written on a piece of paper that Fred Rogers (aka Mister Rogers) kept in his pocket. So true. Can you think of someone that you (mis)judged until you learned their story? More importantly for radio, can you think of someone who may have judged you before connecting with you through one of your stories?
We want it and we want it now! By measuring listening behavior, PPM reflects the nature of today’s culture- we want instant gratification. It has proven what we already knew- that you have to capture listeners’ attention quickly or they move onto something else. It’s no wonder that air personalities feel the pressure of PPM.
Start every break with a hook headline to grab their attention, and then you won’t have to rush through the segment at the expense of communication.
Scoop.It is a free publishing-by-curation platform that allows you to curate content based on keywords and sources you provide. It will suggest stories, articles, videos, news for you to scoop. You can also use the bookmarklet to scoop anything you see on the web to your Scoop.It page.
You can curate on your page and on the web, saving interesting content for your show in one place. You choose the keywords and the sources you like. Instead of searching a million websites individually, you add them here. It’s a Producer’s dream.
When was the last time you were truly recognized by your GM, PD or co-hosts?
Unbelievably, a lot of GMs, PDs, and coworkers worry that the act of praising will lose meaning. Well, how often do you tell your partner you love them? What would happen if instead of every day, you just said it once or twice a year?
Facebook will make the new Timeline design mandatory for Pages March 30. This means you need to get busy this week setting up your Timeline before it goes public.
If you haven’t done your homework yet on the changes Timeline will bring to your Facebook Page, Scott Sands has a comprehensive list of the changes and what they mean for radio here.
The main focus of apprehension is the Cover Photo, which is the huge banner visible at the top of each Timeline. The rest of the Timeline changes involve Facebook taking the (hopefully brilliant) information you already have on your Page and displaying it in, you guessed it, a timeline.
COVER PHOTO EXAMPLES
While many stations and shows haven’t made the switch yet, there are some who have jumped the gun and made Timeline public. The radio cover photos I’ve seen have a visual focus on one of the following themes:
- The station’s core artists
- The Morning Show air talent
- The station or show logo
- Promotional copy for either a station promotion or a current on-air contest
- The city skyline
Before you design your cover photo, here are some examples you should check out to get your creative juices flowing. Click the links in each category to view live examples of what other stations and shows are doing with their Timeline design:
It’s All About the Morning Show
Both stations and Morning Shows themselves are using the cover photo to promote morning air talent.
We’re Focused on the Music
Stations are using the cover photo to promote the music, similar to station website mastheads. If you have the file used to create your station's masthead, you can use some of the same images to design your cover photo.
Love for the Logo
Integrating your logo in the design is a great idea, but get creative instead of stretching the logo to fit the dimensions.
We’re Promoting Something
Use your cover photo to promote an on-air contest or to support the station's branding efforts.
Unique Designs
Get creative! The sky is the limit. Spend some time brainstorming before you get started. Ask yourself, "what are we known for? what do we want to promote?" and let the answers guide your design.
- Click 101.5 Dayton
- Biggs and Barr
- WTOP Washington, DC
- Big 105.9/Miami
- The Big 98/Nashville
- KROQ/Los Angeles
- Kevin and Bean
- 92.1 WROU/Dayton
- 92.3 Now/New York
- 107.5 The River/Nashville
Show Me the Money
These stations are using their cover photos to advertise a sponsor or sponsored promotions. Before you follow suit, read these guidelines to ensure you’re in compliance with Facebook’s rules! If you decide to go this route and include a sponsor in your cover photo, integrate the logo into your design so the cover photo still looks like one for YOUR station.
HOW TO DESIGN YOUR COVER PHOTO
Ideally, you should custom design your cover photo using a program like Adobe Photoshop. If someone on your team has graphic design skills, use these dimensions to ensure your cover photo looks great on your Timeline:
- Cover Photo: 851 pixels wide x 315 pixels tall
- Profile Picture: 180 pixels wide x 180 pixels tall (Make sure your logo fits within the square for a more professional look. Remember that this profile picture is the thumbnail that appears on each post you make, so it should be easy to identify.)
If graphic design isn’t in your skill set, don’t panic. Try one of these apps to create a sharp design for free:
-written by Stephanie Winans
Leave a comment below with a link to your Timeline so I can check it out. Learn anything when designing yours? Share your tips, too. While you're on Facebook, check out my cover photo and The Randy Lane Company's, too.
You’ve heard the advice, “Be yourself” on the radio, but that’s not the whole story. For most people, if you’re totally being yourself, you will lack presence and energy and fade into the background.
Think about the intern, off-air producer or co-worker that is brought on the air for a break. Often even if they’re funny off the air, once they get on the show, they may sound a little low volume and/or low energy. They are being themselves…what happened?
Friday Night Lights Author and Daily Beast Contributor Buzz Bissinger penned a wonderful article about the classy way Peyton Manning handled Wednesday’s press conference:
I was so powerfully moved by Peyton Manning… I was moved when he said, “Times change, circumstances change, and that’s the reality of playing in the NFL.” I was moved when he said, “I’ll always be a Colt. I always will be. That’ll never change.” I was moved when he talked about all the members of the Colts organization he would miss, even the equipment guys. I was not simply moved, but impressed, when he acknowledged the difficult decision owner Jim Irsay faced…
There may be a changing of the guard this season when it comes to the highest rated “singing talent” show of 2012, as noted by buddytv.com. What is it that makes the 2nd year NBC show The Voice more appealing than the ratings powerhouse American Idol? America’s Got Talent, X Factor, and all the other talent competition shows on TV haven’t had the success of The Voice.
In the recent Content Ideas article, 7 Reasons Twitter Should Be Part of Your Strategy, I say that Twitter is a resource for show prep. After reading that, Steve Kramer of That Guy Kramer, Play 98.7/Tampa, made a request that I send out a list of accounts jocks should follow on Twitter.
So I treated him the same way you treat your requests. I said “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get that on for you.” And then I did.
With radio and television hosts, even online producers, being fired or suspended over questionable comments made on-air and online, there’s been a lot of talk lately as to “where is the line?”
What is considered acceptable, edgy, or controversial commentary? This debate has come into question as hosts and producers are under greater scrutiny for what they say on-air and post on the station's website.
By Randy Lane
The sale of WABB-FM/Mobile not only represents the end of a 50 year era for a legendary Top 40 radio station. In many ways, it symbolizes the end of radio’s golden age.
Bernie Dittman, WABB’s colorful owner who passed in 2006, is surely wearing both a sad and happy face today. Sad that the station he built with unmatched passion is disappearing. Happy that it was never sold to a major commercial company. WABB started and ended as a local, family owned station. WABB has been acquired by EMF and will become a Pop Christian station March 1st.
With new social networks popping up daily, it’s easy to tune them out. However, there is one newbie you can’t ignore, and that’s Pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
It’s a virtual pinboard that allows you to organize and share (or “pin”) things you find on the web. Common uses for Pinterest include wedding planning, home decorating, fashion, and cooking. It’s social because other pinners can comment, like, or repin your pins.
by Randy Lane, Stan Main, Angela Perelli and Stephanie Winans
Did you know that in order for your morning show podcast to get credit with Arbitron, the podcast (if you post a whole hour or whole show) has to contain 100% of the broadcast audio including commercials? We didn’t either.
Not only are you not getting any ratings value if you’re posting your entire show online; you could potentially be losing ratings by providing your morning show on-demand, commercial free.
Why might you still want to do a full podcast even without ratings credit?
- To please the P1s who can’t listen to the entire show live by providing it on demand
- To drive traffic and increase page views and hits to your website
- To sell ads and/or sponsorships of the podcast page on the website
Here are five things you can do to get ratings credit for podcasts:
1. Take short excerpts of content (at least five minutes; less than 10 minutes) from the encoded broadcast (not from the stream). You can have a great segment of the show that leads up to or follows commercials (minus the commercials) as your podcast.
Ratings Tip: The podcast has to be at least five minutes long to get credit for a quarter-hour in Arbitron.
Tech Tip: Cut the podcast down to mono to reduce the file size by 50%. Since these segments will likely be talk, there is no need for them to be in stereo.
Upside: Short podcasts enable listeners to download and forward them to friends as part of your viral marketing strategy.
2. Share exceptional segments with your fan base via social networks and loyal listener email. Since P1 listeners tend to be active on station online platforms, the podcast will likely get some click-throughs, and we can only hope that a few of those listeners will have a meter.
3. Stress the urgency of listening to the podcast within 24 hours, because Arbitron tallies the data daily. If someone listens to that A-list interview or compelling segment next week, you do not get credit. Eric Rowe, from the Roula & Ryan Show, KRBE/Houston, swears that their strategy of posting the daily War of the Roses segment “only until midnight” has increased ratings. Check out more on this strategy here.
4. Your podcast must be encoded with the broadcast encoder. Arbitron provides a separate encoder for your radio station’s stream and the station’s broadcast. If your podcast is coded with your station’s stream encoder or no encoder, you won’t get credit.
5. Be careful about airing an excerpt from another radio show. For example, If Rush Limbaugh goes on a controversial rant and you rebroadcast it, a PPM panelist’s meter will likely pick up two codes and you are likely to lose credit for listening.
If you are in a diary market, here’s what you need to know:
- If a listener writes in their diary they listened to your station without noting it was a podcast or stream, you will get credit in Arbitron. At present, the diary only has a time entry and does not ask the diary keeper to specify if the listening took place on the station broadcast, internet stream or from a podcast.
- If the diary keeper writes down your website, e.g. “wabb.com,” or the name of your podcast, “QTip and Nick’s podcast” for example, you will not get credit for the listening.
KEEP IN MIND: Streaming and podcasting continue to comprise less than 1% of listening according to the latest study by Arbitron.
If you have questions about any of this information, read Arbitron’s PPM Policy Brief on Time-Shifted Listening here or contact us.
If you're in radio in Canada, stay tuned for an article on podcasting and BBM.
You have probably seen this viral video of Kristen Bell on Ellen from earlier this week. (If not, read no farther. Watch it here. We’ll wait…)
At first glance, you might think she’s cute and a little odd with that sloth obsession of hers. But break down the segment and it’s a brilliant example of character and storytelling.
Sometimes listeners amaze me.
I know sometimes we radio people tend to think of our listeners as a singular, loyal, salivating throng that only exists to listen to our show and hang on our every word. Turns out that's really not true at all. Surprise! Our listeners are made up of a bunch of unique people with varying degrees of education, attractiveness, happiness and how much they really give a blank about our show.
“When guys say ‘I’m not a role model’. Well, yes you are. You’re just a bad one.”-Tim Tebow
Tim Tebow is a true HD character. He's authentic, real and honest. He's passionate, principled and inspiring. He has heart. He’s vulnerable. He’s the boy next door and an underdog.
You can’t dispute the undeniable wisdom of School House Rock; feel free to sing along:
Three is a magic number,
Yes it is, it's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number.
Why Three? Because it resonates, it sticks, it’s memorable. We’ve been programmed from childhood to respond to patterns of three in the stories we grew up with; The Three Musketeers, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Wise Men.
We have all gotten caught up in someone’s quest for transformation. In fact, most television competition shows rely on the concept of personal transformation – the X Factor’s Chris Rene (overcoming addiction!), Dancing with the Stars’ Chaz Bono (overcoming a sex change!), and just about any pairing on The Amazing Race (people in relationships coming to a new understanding about each other! All while digging through ox manure on a farm in Sri Lanka!). Audiences like stories. We like to be inspired.
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