How We Incorporate Digital Into Our Show

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Our special Country Radio Seminar issue of Radio Ink Magazine is a few days from being released and it will be available at The Omni Hotel in Nashville when CRS kicks off Monday. In the issue, we rank Country Radio’s top program directors, and on Tuesday night, with the help of SONY, we’ll be handing out awards to those top PD’s. Also, in this issue is a special interview we did with syndicated morning hosts, Big D and Bubba who have been together now since starting out at WTGE-FM in Baton Rouge back in 1996.

After being syndicated by Premiere for about a decade (they now have a deal with Compass Media Networks), they went out on their own, launching Silverfish Media. Today they are heard on about 70 stations and they control all of their own content. In our interview we asked them how they incorporate digital and social media into their show.

RI: How has digital and social media changed the way you guys do a show?
Bubba: It hasn’t changed the way the show is done, it has given us another voice, another way to be heard even when we’re off the air. We use it to accent what we’re doing, while we’re on. But obviously, off the air, it allows us to stay in touch and in contact and keep people clued into what we’re doing around the clock. It allows people to become more connected, to become a super fan. If somebody digs the show and they think it’s cool and they follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat they feel like they’re getting a little more than the other person who’s not.

RI: So you guys are regular users of social media?
Bubba: Yes. Absolutely. We would be idiots not to be. It’s another tool in the bag. If we don’t use it, we are shortchanging ourselves

Big D: We were asked to be on a scripted comedy series for CMT, called “Still the King” which comes out in the summer, and so we had three days of shooting. We are on the set, in the trailer, and we’re like “Oh my god, we have a trailer? This is ridiculous. We taped our podcast on location from the trailer. We had the actors come on the podcast with us. Video, pictures, all of that. Listeners were having that experience with us. We’re sharing things and it’s like having a 24 hour, seven day a week show, because it’s constantly on, we are constantly doing stuff.

Patrick (Big D and Bubba Executive Producer): But it has to be something that is natural to your show or your station. When we first got websites fifteen years ago, it was great to have something that when you were talking about something on the air, you had a place to send people to see a picture you were talking about, or the link to whatever you were just talking about. But then it became about using your radio station to promote your website so we can make revenue off the website and it became forced. Then we are doing bits on the air, or doing whole segments of the show or even a radio station that revolved around sending people to the website to create web traffic. That’s backwards. That’s not why you have a website. Sure, the website can generate revenue, but the radio show should be about the radio show.

Bubba: The radio show should come first. Believe it or not, you’re a radio station. 99% of your income comes from the big monsters. Why would you go and spend all that effort, take away from the monster and put it on something that has such little return right now. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s not to say that there’s not a place for it.

Big D: You had program directors whose bonuses were built around web hits—not ratings, not revenue, but web hits. Now, it’s the same thing with social, but with social, it should be about continuing to do what you’re comfortable with and involve your audience, not we’ve got to get x number of people so that we can meet our quota.

Bubba: People are very savvy now online. They can smell a set-up. They can smell a commercial. If you go off doing that, it’s going to backfire. In the end, you still have to have good content on your show or on your radio station. If you don’t, then all that other stuff doesn’t matter anyway.

Big D: You can supplement your income with digital, 100%. You totally can. We believe in that. However, you have to decide which one you are first. Are you a digital company? Or are you a radio company? If you’re going to be a digital company, be the best one, but get out of radio. If you’re going to be a radio company, be the best one.

To read the entire Big D and Bubba interview and get your own copy of the CRS issue that includes the Top 30 Country Program Directors in America GO HERE. For more information on the show visit www.compassmedianetworks.com

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