John Lund
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Great morning shows sound spontaneous, conversational, fun, and occasionally a little dangerous. But behind the scenes, the best ones are highly organized. “Winging it” is not a strategic plan. It’s what chickens do. Here are the essentials for building a morning show that listeners want to make part of their daily routine.
The best personalities bring something to the microphone: a life. They notice things, collect stories, have opinions, stay curious, and understand the people listening. Here are some ways to become more interesting before the ON AIR light comes on.
Technology should remove the mechanical work so personalities have more time to do the human work. The more artificial the world becomes, the more human our stations must become. Radio's competitive advantage may be something technology can't duplicate.
Country remains one of radio’s great success stories. You’ll find Country stations in major metros, small towns, the South, Midwest, West—and plenty of places where the nearest cowboy is selling insurance. Why does the format travel so well? Because Country isn’t merely a collection of songs. It’s a relationship with a lifestyle and the people living it.
A data center can contain thousands of sophisticated servers, but those servers need software, information, instructions, and intelligence to produce something useful. Radio is no different. You can have a 100,000-watt signal, a beautiful studio, excellent audio processing, sophisticated automation, and 2,000 songs sitting in a music library. Congratulations. You have infrastructure.
Tony Romo burst into the CBS NFL broadcast booth in 2017 and immediately sounded different. He was enthusiastic, spontaneous, and knowledgeable. And, remarkably, he could sometimes tell viewers what was about to happen before it happened.
Enthusiasm isn’t volume. It’s preparation + passion + personality. The best talents make listeners feel good about the music, the station—and spending another quarter-hour with both.
Great radio rarely happens by accident. The best stations sweat the small stuff—because listeners notice the sound of a station even when they can’t explain why they like it. This fall, sharpen these ten formatics.
Good research goes beyond ratings to determine why listeners choose you, why others reject you, what they love, what they’d change, and what could persuade them to listen more. Ratings measure listening. Research helps explain it.
Successful radio stations rarely have a secret formula locked in the PD's desk. They simply execute the fundamentals better, more consistently and more relentlessly than the competition. As you prepare for Fall, listen to your station for these ten trademarks of a winner.
