I’ve written about this before, but recent listening to stations in three different formats, it begs being revisited.

Here’s the magic key to becoming someone out of the ordinary on the air:  Avoid the Obvious.

Example:  Years ago, doing a morning team show in Dallas with my wonderful partner Rick “The Beamer” Robertson, there was a massive wreck on I-35, one of the city’s main arteries.  It turned out that a huge truck full of books was involved, and we knew we needed to talk about it.  Immediately upon seeing the story, Rick said “set it up, then throw it to me.”

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Talking to a PD the other day about “the clock” on his station, I heard this vague explanation of how he didn’t want his jocks to talk over song intros because that’s not Content.  Instead, he wanted Imaging pieces – some of them “dry” voice – to always play between songs because “you can’t do Content over these short intros today” and he wanted his air talent to stop down for Content.

But here’s the problem with that: to a large degree, Content is CONTACT.

In the heyday of Top 40 and Hot A/C, we knew that most of the time we could do SOMETHING besides just intro a song (like promote a contest opportunity coming up, or a station feature, promote another person on the air, give some sort of information, or do a quick quip), or that even if we WERE “just” introing a song, we could at least give the listener some sort of vibe about being engaged with the music.

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Maybe you haven’t thought about this in a while, but in moving back from five and a half years in Hawaii to my home town of Shreveport, Louisiana, I’m resetting the stations on my car radio.  As a result, I’ve been listening to a lot of different stations recently.  And I’m hearing a lot of things on music stations that I thought had been killed off a long time ago…

The “first in, last out” (FILO) thing where every break mandatorily starts with the name of the station, then also ends with the name of the station.  (This was always ridiculous.  Why do you want to sound like you somehow forgot that you said your name a few seconds ago?  And why would you EVER put the name of your station right next to a commercial break?  Think about it:  You = commercials is not a good impression to lock into the listener’s brain.)

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A lot of shows struggle with getting any really viable phone call feedback from listeners.  They tap into a subject, maybe offer an opinion, do a solicitation for feedback, give the phone number, then… nothing.

Waves of silence.  No phone lines lighting up.  Or if there is a call, it’s pretty much the same type of call they got last time (often from the same tiny pool of callers) with pretty much the same type of comment they always get.

The safe, predictable, no-new-ground-broken feedback loop.

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Whatever you do well, congratulations on that. I mean that sincerely. The good things that you do each day make a great impression.

Similarly, when you say things more than once (as radio continues to do, trying to beat a thought into the listener’s head), or you do “the moral of the story” obligatory recap at the end of something, or say radio clichés (like “on your Monday morning,” “Hump day”), or do something silly and outdated (like “The Mindbender Question of the Day” or “This Day in History”), those make an impression, too. As my friend and partner Alan Mason says, “Everything counts.”

So, weed the garden regularly.  Listen to your own show at least once a week.  Add new ideas all the time. Consistency = Good. Predictability = Bad.

Think of your show as a demo tape. Because to the listener, it actually IS.