Here’s a question for you: When’s the last time you did something nonsensical on the air?

I love radio, but most stations I hear nowadays are SO BORING.  A bunch of people reading crap off a computer screen.  Where’s the creativity in that?

Continue reading →

It’s absolutely stunning to see how few people listen to their own air work.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, we had “skimmer” cassettes that started recording when the mic went on, and then stopped recording when the mic went off.  It was a ‘given’ that I’d take the cassette of that day’s show and listen to it as I drove home from work.

It’s even easier now.  You can do it on your phone by just logging into the system. Continue reading →

Each coaching session I do gets a short written recap afterward.  I keep it simple, and often include an example from that person’s air work.

Recently, a talent talked about the dreary weather forecast, and noted that it made some people crabby.  Then she paused…and added, “Okay, it makes me crabby.”

I sent this in her recap:

Very nice, Sarah.

Opening up and sharing your quirks and foibles will always work.  Even if people don’t feel the same way you do, they’ll weigh your feelings against theirs, and that in itself is connection.

Feel free to keep that up.

Hopefully this tip will serve two purposes: (1) it shows how easy it is to pull someone a step closer to you when you’re on the air, and (2) it should take away any fear you have of coaching.

That small, but highly connective moment might have gone unnoticed.  But to me, it’s the germ of the whole purpose of being on the air – to CONNECT with the Listener.

The promise was that this tip would be about how to put a story together.  But my wife watches a lot of cooking shows, so that’s why it has that title.

Here’s how you do it… three steps to lay out. Continue reading →

In the last tip, I wrote about getting away from Information and concentrating on Storytelling.  That tip and this one grew out of an email conversation my associate John Frost and I had with the PD of a station we both work with.  Let me share it with you…

It’s kind of like John Lennon wrote in “With a Little Help From My Friends” – “What do you see when you turn out the light?” was his question.  For our purposes, it’s simply, “What do you see?”

Information and Stories are totally different.  Yes, we use information in the telling of a story, but in coaching talent on storytelling,  I’ve often found that they often do one or more of these three things:

1. overshoot, trying to dress up so-called stories from Facebook or the internet that the listener may not care about at all,
2. choose “stories” that are too full of factoids and details, or
3. invent not-quite-plausible scenarios as a way to get in a line they thought of and were determined to use.

So here’s the deal:

Everything you and the listener have in common has a story behind it, and new stories get added to that memory pile every day – if you’re smart enough to capitalize on them.

“Just the facts, ma’am” is a police report.  What happened, and the emotion(s) generated by that = a story.

This tip was birthed by a comment from Randy Fox of KSBJ in Houston.  (If you’re not familiar with them, suffice it to say that it’s easily one of the Top 3 stations in the Contemporary Christian Music format, with a huge, devoted audience.)

During a recent session, Randy pinpointed a real strength of Morgan Smith, who does afternoons, saying “She makes the microphone invisible.”

What a nice compliment.  That intimacy, where it just feels like a friend is talking to you, is – to me – essential, if you want to be a great talent.

Share something, sure, and if you’re excited, show that.  But don’t try to be “bigger” or louder than a normal, animated conversation.  Make the mic disappear.

Let’s make this easy, and get to the real core of how to be a terrific air talent.

Your job is to share what you see about, and what you feel about the things you have in common with the listener.

Everything else is just nuts and bolts.  If you don’t have the ability to zero in on what matters most to the listener, then you need to run, not walk, to your PD and find out who your target listener is.

Continue reading →

Radio has changed quite a bit over the last 20 years.  Social media, instant access to information through your cell phone, nine thousand channels and video streaming sources have changed subject matter and how it’s delivered.

But radio is still capable of being the most personal medium there is.  However, if I had to choose one thing to tell you, it would be “Jokes aren’t funny anymore.” Continue reading →

To a degree, acting is part of what we do.  I talk a lot about this in coaching sessions, and give an example of a bad actor versus a good actor:

The bad actor “shades” toward the desk as he talks, knowing that the phone is going to ring.
The good actor just says what he has to say, and the stupid phone interrupts him.

When you’re on the radio, the “visual” is created by the listener.  But what you say and the way you sound paints the picture, too.  Be more than just “a voice saying words” or reading something off a computer screen.  Give me something genuine.