Radio: A World Of Extremes

At Audience Development Group, we review well over 100 airchecks every month. We hear some very good material along the way -- and some not so good. One thing we have noticed is that today's radio product can often lack authentic emotion. Most of what many would call emotion is simply inflated hype that most listeners don't believe. We often hear these types emotional extremes:

• Laughing too hard at something to make it sound funnier than it really is.
• Laughing for no reason at all.
• Over-hyping a promotion as "The Most Incredible" instead of selling the listener benefits.
• Under-emphasizing your vital statistics by racing through them like you are bored or don't care.
• Crying at the slightest touching moment.
• Getting angry too fast to make a point; sounding contrived.
• Racing through feature sponsorships; making them sound boring.
• Underselling your station name.
• Overselling your station name.
• Covering a laundry list of "Great Deals" at remotes instead of selling the benefits of just one in each break.
• Rehashing a punch line or key point over and over again in the same break.
• Having one topic turn into another and into another in one break, missing several places to get out.
• Being overly sarcastic/rude with your callers, and always making the call about YOU instead of them.
• Asking people to call you multiple times in one break.

The one and only way to eliminate these useless extremes is to simply be genuine. If you come up with genuinely funny material, your audience will laugh and you won't even have to go beyond a subtle snicker. If you are interesting, you won't have to ask people to call so often; people will simply feel compelled to call. Don't tell people you are the best; just convince them to believe it on their own ... by what you do for them. Once you connect emotionally with your audience you have them -- as long as you stay genuine.