Inauguration Week is wrapping up and many news/talk radio stations spent the early part of the week covering the return of President Donald Trump to the White House.
The historic nature of the non-consecutive terms is a fascinating storyline in itself, and that’s before even factoring in what President Trump went through legally — and physically — with multiple assassination attempts in recent months.
For the first time in 20 years, a Republican Presidential candidate won the popular vote, while Trump also had the largest electoral college victory for a Republican since 1988. There’s no doubt there’s plenty of enthusiasm for Trump, but it was a harder week for talk radio hosts than one might initially believe.
It’s easy to wave the pom-poms with your audience, which is going to lean right-of-center, but how long can the celebration go on from a listener’s perspective before it’s repetitive and boring? And for those listeners who voted, but aren’t die-hard MAGA, what are you giving them that makes them think differently? Informs them? Makes them laugh? How are you standing out when the cheerleaders are a dime a dozen on every platform imaginable?
And then, of course, the ultimate question for local shows: How are you localizing it?
When the job is to “play the hit”, as Cumulus SVP Bruce Gilbert noted in this video from a BSM Summit with Barrett Media’s Jason Barrett, and the hit is the most obvious story in the country, it might sound like a show where you can coast, but those shows are arguably harder.
That’s because a host needs to think of different, relatable angles to re-engage and recycle with the audience, while not coming off as repetitive and stale. And unless there was a huge local story (i.e. Wildfires in LA), there was only one topic to play off of earlier this week.
The next layer is what are the topics/angles that will have broad appeal on the air, and ideally appeal to your in-demo listener, who may be just as likely to listen to sports talk or a rock station. The P1 is going to be there this week, but broadening to the P2s and P3s is where the audience growth has a chance to explode in a week like this. What unique topics and angles can you hit on that appeals to a casual listener, who tunes in because it’s Inauguration week, hears an awesome and creative segment, and says to themselves, “I’m coming back to this station for more.”
Meantime, there’s the conversation about how to best localize this week. Many stations had shows and staff on the ground in Washington D.C., which is an awesome way to bring your audience behind the scenes of the inauguration. There are stations who did watch parties, traveled with listeners and were creative in other ways to engage their audiences during the monumental moment in American history.
While some argued Trump fatigue based on TV ratings from Nielsen, which showed a peak audience of 34.4 million viewers tuned in live on major TV networks, down from Joe Biden’s 40 million in 2021, that’s more a sign of the way we consume media. First off, 34 million viewers is still likely to be more than any event in this country this year, other than the Super Bowl, and maybe the AFC and NFC Championship Games this weekend.
Last year, the Oscars drew 19.9 million viewers, while the Grammys got 16.9 million. Earlier this month, under 10 million tuned into the Golden Globes.
Now, as the week progressed, the story of the inauguration faded by mid-week, and this allowed stations to revert back to heavy local news coverage, while sprinkling in the top national stories happening during the first week of the Trump administration.
But these weeks are basically auditions for new audiences. People are tuning in to hear you “play the hit”. I hope you took advantage in the most creative and fun way possible, and then you can get this new audience back for that next occasion and quarter hour.
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Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
