While flipping around You Tube the other night, I rewatched the “Inside the Actors Studio” episode with the great Robert Redford. I hadn’t seen it in a long time.
At one point, host James Lipton asked Redford what he looked for in a movie that he might want to act in or direct. Redford noted three things, to which I’ve added my thoughts as it applies to Content on the radio: Continue reading
I coach show prep and Content constantly. One of the questions I get asked about most is, “How do I make a subject work on the air?” Sometimes it’s a good idea, but that air talent just can’t seem to find the “connective tissue” that really clicks with the audience.
So, a couple of simple guidelines about Content: Continue reading
Years ago at a radio gathering in Nashville, a dear friend and outstanding morning show talent and I did a Content seminar.
My friend had himself drifted a bit himself, doing old creaky bits like “This Day in History” and “Stupid Criminal Stories.”
…until I started coaching him.
It’s hard to understand why an air talent thinks that reading social media posts on the air can somehow be inherently interesting in itself.
Sure, some postings are good, cool, funny, sweet. And we can certainly use those. But we all know that most “normal” people – who aren’t trained in how to communicate or entertain – are pretty boring. Bless their hearts, they use too many words and include insignificant details. The first sentence we hear can make you not want to hear the second one.
At the start of his career, *Steve Martin’s standup routine included a “Ramblin’ Guy” parody folk song that started well and then just kind of drifted off into the ozone layer for a while.
Sadly, we’ve all heard this (or done it ourselves), but it wasn’t funny. It was just someone starting something, then losing the center of it, then trying to steer it back onto the road, but adding too many words, using too many examples – all things I’ve written about in recent tips.
My dear friend Beau Weaver, Voice Actor extraordinaire, recently expressed some interesting thoughts about today’s radio.
One of the things he said was that most young people he talks to think of a deejay as that person who mixes music at a club. Younger demos don’t care much about radio; they care more about podcasts and YouTube influencers. Radio, as usual, gets little respect.
Your station’s Imaging is on 24/7/365. More, by FAR, than any individual air talent is on.
It sends out your message to the listener; how you want to be thought of. Or as everyone says today, “Your Brand.” (Ick. What a stupid label.)
So, let me help you with two related thoughts:
Right at the end of 2023, an amazing thing happened. The great movie director Peter Jackson got with Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ producer George Martin, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, and using ‘computer learning,’ salvaged a John Lennon demo of a song called “Now and Then.”
It became a massive hit (#1 in England, 54 years after their last #1, and the same type of reception all over the world). And the video Jackson created was remarkable.
Radio personalities tend to think only of what works in the Control Room, not necessarily what works better on the OTHER side of the radio – you know, the Listener’s side.
My brilliant friend John Frost and I had a challenge once in Orlando. Together, we ran five stations, one of which was a rather dormant AM station that we wanted to resurrect as a Sports Talk station.
But we didn’t have a budget to make a splash and get people to sample this new baby that was one of the very first Sports Talk stations in that day to really open up the so-called rules. We wanted big personalities, parody commercials, a station Imaging voice (Jeff Lawrence) who was crazy inventive. But that was all just on the air. How to get noticed was the challenge.
So… Continue reading
In the last tip, I said, “Your show really is a movie without the camera.”
After you get past learning “the basics,” then develop a real Personality on the air, you’ll hopefully reach a stage in your career where the ego disappears and you actually just get in a zone where it’s almost impossible to have a bad show.
But I believe it requires getting outside of radio, mentally, and seeing each “Content” break you do as a little movie (without the camera).
What do I, as a listener, FEEL when you talk about something? Continue reading