Last Friday, I wrote about the critical need for news/talk radio stations to reduce on-air clutter and give audiences a reason to listen more often and for longer periods. We arrived at the best solution, the only solution really: drastically cut the spot load. I mean cut it in half or more.
Now that we’ve agreed to give your listeners and clients a premium product with greater personal service by reducing your content-killing spot and promo load from 24 minutes to 12, what will you do with all that extra time? This is the perfect opportunity to reexamine your program content in detail with a mind toward cutting out anything that’s not an audience grabber. Without putting too fine a point on it, let the dog wag the tail again.
I did my first news anchor shift in 1976 and nearly nothing has changed in the 48 years since. We had network news straight up at the top of the hour, traffic reports every ten minutes, weather at scheduled times, and sports and business news reports also at specific times. Radio programming was managed by the hour, minutes, and seconds.
In 50+ years, the only thing that has changed in all-news radio is the size of the spot load. It’s the radio equivalent of the fabled Great Pacific garbage patch.
No, I’m not saying your clients are garbage but asking your listeners to wait through five or six-minute commercial breaks four or five times an hour is unrealistic, trashy radio and frankly, you’re ripping off your paying customers.
The problem is the clock, the 60-minute hour. That’s what causes the trouble, isn’t it? Everything we do has to fit into 60 minutes.
Why?
Let’s dump the clock. I’m serious. Let’s stop thinking in terms of sound hours illustrated by analog clocks, circles with pie charts, dots, and numbers. Except when you need to be someplace or do something at a specific time what difference does it make? Clocks are just tools but in radio, the clock is a prison. We still do everything in circles, starting at the top and returning there sixty minutes later so that we can start all over again.
Technology has advanced. We can program our very specific personal needs each day. Why can’t radio people jump into the 21st Century and realize that listeners no longer need us to pack their lunches and make sure they catch the school bus on time?
When’s the last time you as a listener punched a station preset in time to catch Traffic on the Fives? And when was the last time the shotgun approach to radio traffic reports gave you any useful information that Google Maps or Waze couldn’t deliver instantly, with real-time details on traffic conditions at your precise location and the best current route to your destination? Never. Radio has never been able to do that.
Back in the good old days traffic reporters were personalities, part of the show. In the best major and medium market stations they flew in airplanes and helicopters, able to describe the tie-ups, alternate routes, crash sites, fires, police activity, and everything else they were seeing. It didn’t usually pertain to your personal location but it was descriptive theater of the mind from a friendly, familiar voice.
Now we have voices from a Los Angeles studio reporting traffic in Salt Lake City, though the reporter has never even been there and can’t pronounce some of the street names correctly.
As a news anchor or talk host preparing for your on-air toss to traffic you know that your L.A.-based reporter has no time to listen and chat with you on the air. She/he is also filing for three other stations in drastically different markets. They don’t even hear your show and may not know your name.
Besides, most of those traffic reports were recorded ten minutes ago. We don’t tell listeners that, of course.
Dump scheduled traffic. Seriously, you’re trying to maintain a useless old-school illusion for your audience. You’re being the Great Oz behind the curtain.
When the big traffic-related stuff happens your newsroom editor or producer can interrupt with the breaking information: “A big rig has crashed at the Hollywood split, 101 to the 134 interchange. Check the News 1280 traffic map for exits and alternates.”
The News 1280 traffic map? Sure, why not? Link your live stream to a real-time traffic map provider. It’s right there on the commuter’s in-dash screen and won’t interrupt the radio show for listeners miles away.
So, that gets rid of another six minutes of tedious, unnecessary, and largely useless information clogging up your content. What else?
Ah, yes. Business and sports reports.
I’ve never understood the point of doing business reports that sound to most people like yodeling cattle auctioneers. People who want that information have far better sources than your radio station. And, sports? If you’re in a market that has its own local or regional sports station, leave the details to them. When there’s big sports or money news that you can’t ignore, stick it in a newscast or make it a segment.
That goes for weather, too, depending on your market and the time of year. Here in North Texas, we get tornados and baseball-sized hail in spring and autumn. That’s worth talking about in detail but usually, “sunny and hot through the weekend” says it all.
Now, we get to the fun part. What do we do with all this newly created extra air time? More news? Maybe, if it’s a busy news day. Longer stories? On less busy news days you can take a little more time with those fascinating, complicated tales now that you don’t have to break for traffic and six minutes of spots. But longer stories in general? Nope. The point is, extra time is extra. You shouldn’t stretch news to get to the next formatted break. Nothing should be predetermined in length.
Why do we still draw pictures of “sound hours” that map out three and five-minute newscasts, spot breaks, and whatnot, specifically down to the minute? That’s exactly what we’re trying to get away from. Somedays your air talents need seven minutes to tell compelling stories, other times 30 seconds works. You’re paying them to have the judgment, talent, and craft to deliver the goods, not to watch the clock.
Do what radio does better than any other medium: Entertain me. Help me like you. Don’t BS me.
I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard a million times. People want a human connection with radio. We want the company of other real people we can relate to, laugh with, and who share our annoyances. We have countless varied and questionable sources of news and information. You only have one morning team and I really like them. I trust them. Give me more of that, people talking about the news and life itself. Give me something to think about and a reason to smile.
Technology is taking us to a new level of creative efficiency but it will never – trust me on this – it will never replace us. It will never have a heart and a soul.
For God’s sake, give me people radio again.
How about more ‘actual’ news and less entertainment oriented nonsense. Also ‘Traffic and Weather together’… another radio anachronism. Give the weather basics in brief, it does not to be it’s own feature, but because those features are sponsored, we have to endure them. And more news of more relevance to the local listenership . Same with sports. If you can get it NOW on your phone or PC, minimize it on the air. And don’t be TOO conversational in the presentation. And you have to be relatively old to recall ‘world news’… it’s infortainment over news. No wonder we the people are so dumbed down. And give stories that deserve more time, more time.