(By Loyd Ford) What questions can you ask about your morning show to help improve your value, increase your opportunities and craft new levels of performance (ratings, revenue) so that your show grows? We take a quick look at seven (7) questions that any morning show can use to explore improvement or review growth opportunities.
- Has your morning show created an environment every morning where listeners can hear the smiles? It’s not what you do. It’s how you make people feel. You’ve heard this. Great morning shows have a lean into fun, a lean into currency. Call it chemistry. Call it planned positivity. Call it whatever you want, but it is an important unspoken ingredient that can be powerful and certainly important in making your morning show a place where listeners want to hover.
- Do you know the core audience of your morning show (and especially listeners with heavier access to radio) well enough to provide them with quick-fire information they are most interested in from overnight? I am amazed at how many morning shows don’t invest themselves in getting to know their audience, learn lifestyle experiences and how listeners “use them.” It’s not prep; it’s knowing what information is important to the heavy users of your show and how to connect your audience rapidly with the information they most care about in the morning that makes you a winner.
- What if it isn’t about being better than your competitor? You’ve heard people in our business say this a lot: “Our morning show is so much better than them. They suck!” What if you shifted your problem-solving to something other than ‘better?’ What if your focus became creating unique and comforting experiences for core listeners? What if your show was about putting your passions that match your audience in action in a way that takes competitors out at the kneecaps?
- Are there memorable benchmarks that listeners look forward to hearing on your show? There is often a lot of focus placed on benchmarks in a morning show, but I don’t hear about balancing benchmarks and using strategy to figure out which of your benchmarks are most memorable. If you don’t have a strategy for doing this, you certainly should. This can be more important than having benchmarks in the first place. Today we have a lot of tools to figure out what is working and what is most memorable.
- Is your show perfectly balanced and do you pivot early enough toward the audience when talking? Like programmers working to balance music categories in a sound hour, you should put in the work on your morning show architecture to balance experiences, emotions and surprises for the audience. You are like a chef making a dish that is totally unique (or it should be). Make certain that you have balanced sonic experiences that tempt and engage listeners and make your show unique and special for their ride to work. And morning shows should always focus on pivoting earlier to audience opinion. No, sooner than that. In a business of ‘talkers,’ pivot more and listen.
- Does your morning show, programmer and everyone involved with the show work on elements of contagion for the show? It’s just not enough anymore to do your show. This is 2020. Listeners are pushed and pulled by short attention span and more and more choices. You better bring something regularly to your “A Game” that includes elements of contagion. Invest in creativity and strategy to develop contagion within the show for local listeners.
- Does your morning show have unpredictable change that is balanced enough so it’s not discomforting but fresh enough where the audience doesn’t ‘drift?’ This is a question about planned disruption. Nightclubs and fast food restaurants do this all the time so they stay in business and grow customer base. Think McDonald’s McRib. Facebook also changes regularly just to keep people thinking, learning and on their toes. It’s how we stay ‘current.’ When done correctly, it keeps audience engaged in the moving, living, breathing concept that “you keep up with what’s happening” with your morning show. You literally don’t become stale if you do this and that is where you want to be: Fresh.
In the ‘old days,’ we all may have tried to retool our morning show in an image we had in our mind. Today it’s most successful to hire people for who they are, their talents and growth potential and to work to stimulate their creativity while giving them freedom to be themselves. Part of doing that successfully is asking questions, getting to know the talent deeply and giving them the support they deserve to become truly famous in your market and on your station brand so amazing things can happen.
Loyd Ford consults radio stations, coaches personalities, and provides behavioral and strategic programming to radio with RPC. Reach him anytime. 864.448.4169 or [email protected].