Great morning shows don’t just fill time. They create appointments.
Personality benchmarks—recurring features, games, contests, comedy bits, listener calls, or signature segments—give listeners something to anticipate and remember. They become familiar landmarks in the morning.
Think of your best benchmark like a power song. You wouldn’t hide your biggest hit at 5:12 AM and never play it again. Treat your best personality content the same way.
Have at least one strong benchmark every hour and spread your best features throughout the show so different listening groups get a taste. The person listening at 6:20 may be gone by 7:20—and an entirely new audience may have arrived.
Benchmarks also create timing guideposts: “Impossible Trivia at 7:20.” “The Nearly Impossible Question at 8:10.” That’s more powerful than the ever-popular radio promise, “We’ve got more great stuff coming up.” Great. When?
The strongest benchmarks involve listeners. Participation adds unpredictability, personality, names, voices, laughter, and occasionally someone who has absolutely no idea what’s going on. In other words, radio.
Build every benchmark around these five elements:
The Hook – You have about eight seconds to capture attention. Start with the most interesting part—not the instruction manual. Give listeners a reason to stop thinking about traffic, coffee, kids, or the idiot driving 42 in the fast lane.
The Set-Up – Quickly explain what’s happening and why the listener should care. Support the hook without slowing the momentum.
The Dress-Up – Add personality. Caller interaction, audio, conflict, surprise, humor, or suspense should pull the audience deeper into the bit.
The Payoff – Deliver what you promised. A great setup with a weak payoff is like opening a beautifully wrapped birthday present and finding socks.
The Blackout – Once you hit the payoff, GET OUT. Don’t explain the joke, recap the bit, or perform an autopsy. The laugh is your exit sign.
The Lund Lesson
Benchmarks turn random listening into habitual listening. Done consistently, they help listeners know not only what they like about your morning show, but when to hear it.
The Lund Challenge
Listen to tomorrow’s morning show and identify the strongest piece of content in every hour. Is it memorable? Is it promotable? Does it involve listeners? And most importantly, would anyone deliberately come back tomorrow to hear it again? If not, you don’t have a benchmark. You have a break.
Pic designed by pvproductions for Magnific.
John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming, broadcast consulting, and research firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats.