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Awful to Awesome in 7 days - The Morning Show Makeover
July 3, 2012
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Each member of the team needs to contribute, and relevance is key - if the listener cant relate to the experience, you lose.
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QUESTION: How can the worst rating morning show deliver the best show in the market within 7 days?
Here's how!
Just add great content and ....go out to lunch to celebrate - seriously - it's not that hard, yet so many seem to fail with ease.
Use the phones more.
- Listeners are one of your best resources, and they're free!
- Too many morning shows just don't do phones - they get lazy - preferring to read out text messages - phones give emotion - a talent reading text does not!
- Daily phone topics generate great content and they're easy to come by .... set up a story based on your life experiences - tell it well (this is vital), and open the lines for comment .... Grab 4 listener stories over 2 breaks.
- Drive it further via social media for even more impact.
- This immediately gives you at least 3 great links.
Bring two slices of your life to the show each day.
- Each member of the team needs to contribute, and relevance is key - if the listener can't relate to the experience, you lose.
- You're after the "I've done that" or "me too" reaction.
- There's 2 more great links.
Celebrity Gossip.
- By far the no. 1 testing feature for 25 plus females.
- It's free.
- It's so easy to get.
- It doesn't have to be funny.
- It can be repeated...in fact many great stations run celebrity gossip every hour across the workday either crediting the morning show, or have it read by the morning show team.
- Another great link.
One or more talk pieces about last night's TV
- Pick the hottest rating shows for your audience.
- Talk about them.
- Have an opinion - both good and bad.
- Play cuts.
- Get listeners thoughts.
- Broaden the conversation on social media.
This generates easy conversation material for your listeners to utilize across the workday. Think of TV talk as workplace conversation currency that they get from you and spend after 9am ... 1 or 2 more great links.
Use kids on the air (old folk with blue hair work well also)
- Have a regular segment.
- Make the segment fun for the kids (or oldies) but relatable to your audience .
- Record a week of stuff in one go.
- Huge listener hot button ... Another great link
Benchmarks....you must have one or two regular features that you add at a specific time and keep - you can add a twist to some classic benchmark promos and make them truly your own
- The Name game
- Windup calls
- Birthday game
- Rumour file
- $1000 Minute
Select a few, but get famous for one.
Hooking and teasing
Get every listener to listen to one extra quarter hour....the station has a big win.
Preparation
Preparation is everything - once the show is prepared - or you think it is... add a highly focused fifteen minutes pre show
Design a daily prep sheet.
If you are a programmer, grab 10 minutes with your morning show team before they leave the station.....review the prep and count the potential great moments. 8 is your target across the key two hours of the show. If they haven't got them they don't leave the building!
Know your listener - sounds basic - often missed!
Hit his/her hot buttons frequently. Great moments and touch points are what you are after.
- Build a profile of your listener.
- You must draw from experience. If your target is a 30 yr old female with kids and you're a 40 year old single male - find that 30 year old mum and study her.
Use Facebook.
Pick a heap of 'friends' in your target demo and turn them into your "Advisory Board." There are some stations that even use these friends for music testing.
- Connect with the audience. Allow listeners into your lives.....only then will they connect emotionally with you.
- Ensure your facebook content is engaging
Think soap opera
......the next installment in the lives of your morning team.
Take a planned risk....give your team 'permission to fail'
Try one new thing per day to expand your bag of tricks
Seize the moment every day
Don't token gesture this - really thing about how you can do it.
- What's hot TODAY.
- What's happening in your market soon that you can plan for now?
- Always work hard at reflecting your listeners world.
This can be as simple as weaving a topical element into a regular feature - turning topical into primal.
In Australia and the UK this is called "sense of the day"
There you go - count up the number of great links/pieces of radio you can now count on every day.
You should now be at least 25% better
Enjoy lunch!
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