What Programming Basics should be consistently executed by talents on your station?
- Present interesting content with enthusiasm. Sizzling and authenticity are tantamount. Talents should sound like they genuinely believe in what they are delivering. You love the music, and you sound like you love being on the air.
- All DJ content is relevant. It’s what the listener is feeling or what’s on their mind. Deliver topical and relevant content to the target audience and your local community.
- Focus your prep content on local relatables. Commit to sounding local to cater to your audience’s interests to keep listeners connected and engaged. Take your national show prep and make it sound local. Share things that are fun or interesting to see or do in the area.
- Forward momentum is evergreen. Always tease before every stopset. Tag benchmarks with the time they will be heard again. Recycle the audience horizontally with the time a bit will be heard on tomorrow’s show.
- Make eye contact with the listener one-on-one. Use the word “You” in the opening sentence. Engage them and then entertain them.
- Practice brevity. Leave listeners wanting more, not less. Practice limiting content to what’s important, editing out details, and avoiding lists that do not resonate.
- Don’t stop the music in a sweep for a promo, contest, or idle chatter. Keep the music flowing until the next content and commercial break.
- Plan and execute perfect Content Breaks! On a music station, you stop for commercials several times an hour, and you deliver your “content” in that break. Whether you are live or voice-tracked, consider following this sequence out of music into a stopset:
+ Say the station name and positioning slogan.
+ Back-announce of the last song.
+ Deliver the “content” portion of the break – a planned benchmark, observation, or a localization. This is the heart of the break, a result of thorough prep work.
+ After your content, promote the next artist coming up after the commercials. Tease a factoid discovered in show prep from sources like Songfacts.com, Wikipedia, or the artist’s website.
+ Say the station name (without the positioning statement) again.
+ Play the first commercial. If there’s a produced promo, play it first.
+ After the last spot, deliver a live liner and song intro or play a produced imaging liner promoting the music sweep, and the song plays.
Pic designed by BrianAJackson for Envato Elements.
John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming consulting firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats. Did you find this article useful? You can leave a comment below or email John at John@Lundradio.com.