Believe it or not, there are some instances when a really good talent will foul the ball off his own shin.  It happens to baseball players, and it most assuredly happens to air talent.

Case in point, recently a wonderful talent spent time (a setup, followed by two phone calls) setting up a little factoid about how we really only use about 13% of the things we learned in school.

Right at the outset, there are several things wrong with this:

1. It’s not particularly timely, which means it’s largely irrelevant, because it’s not top-of-mind TODAY.  (Where does this rank on the list of the things that are most important to your listener today, 150^th? 250^th?)
     
2. It relies on using a percentage, which automatically makes it sound “left-brain” driven, as opposed to something more “right-brain” and visual and creative, and…

Continue reading →

Here’s a little something that happened in a recent session with a great morning team in Austin.  I always try to do video sessions, and during this one, they were on location somewhere.

As we talked, I could see people behind them looking in the window.  The people were just curious, wonder what they were doing, and what the two of them were like.

And that’s what happens every time someone tunes in, too.

It’s kind of like a remark that Garry Shandling made to Jerry Seinfeld in a “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” episode when they talked about seeing Robin Williams for the first time: “You don’t remember what he SAID so much as you remember what he WAS.”

So think about who YOU are, to the listener.  Are you just another person “broad stroke” over-performing, larger than life – but not in a good way?  Or are you someone I can identify with, who’s entertaining, but also surprisingly down to earth and someone I’d like to hang out with?

What you project is a choice.  Choose wisely, because Shandling was right.

One of the prime ingredients in all truly great talents is that they connect with the listener on a daily basis.

And one of the keys in getting to that place is:

Stop TRYING to be noticed.

Instead of constantly trying for punch lines, or “talking points” that just get the same five people to call in with the same types of reactions we always hear, the ‘Real Deal’ is to just be part of the listener’s life each day.  Talk about things that we all have in common, then put your individual spin on it.

Think about this… the more you try to be noticed, the more it’s just about YOU.  But the more you just try to be part of something that we share together, the more it’s about US.

And that’s what gets ratings.  If you build your show around having something going on that I can relate to each day, I’ll come back – over and over again.

Here’s a short, but really powerful tip.

Give a subject two segments (in Talk radio), MAX.  If it doesn’t “catch fire” by then, give up and move along to something else.

The same principle is true in Music Radio – give a subject two tries, and if there’s no usable reaction, punt.  If it hasn’t “happened” by then, you’re just firing bullets into a dead body.  This is both boring and desperate-sounding.

This is why I always over-prepped each day.  Just having “enough” to cover a show might not actually BE enough on a given day.  And as you know, it’s impossible to predict when something might inexplicably fail to connect with the listener.  (Although, now that I think about it, this could simply be because there’s not an Emotion at its core.  Might want to think about that, too.)