(By John Shomby) It’s that time of year in radio. Holiday season means radiothon season, so to speak. Whether it be for St Jude, the Children’s’ Miracle Network, Toys for Tots, or any local cause, there are some definite preparations and programming principles to keep in mind as you work to raise some money in your community.
- You have a talented airstaff but not all of them have the emotional makeup to host a radiothon for any length of time. Find the ones on your staff who have that attribute and designate them as your hosts for the length of the radiothon. Don’t eliminate the remainder of your air talent. You can have them host the phone bank or do offsite reports from various “collection” points. Assign specific roles according to talents.
- Have your Market Manager meet with the air staff, a day or two before the start of the radiothon, to add some motivation. Tell them that ratings take a backseat for the next couple of days and that helping the charity is the top priority. One of my GMs did this every year and really relaxed us knowing we had one, and only one, objective and the absolute support of management.
- Don’t pre-promote. Just start the radiothon and go. Research shows that listeners, if they know something like this is coming, will be prepared for an alternative. They’ll come back but you would rather minimize that as much as possible.
- Decorate the studio with as much about the charity as possible. One of our promotion directors assembled a collage of every air staff member’s child or a child close to them and had it displayed in the control room facing each personality. Adds emotion to the cause.
- Utilize your RDS feed throughout the radiothon promoting the call-in donation number repeatedly. This is the one-time song information should take a back seat.
- Be uber-vigilant with your music scheduling. Make sure the music outside of any story songs fits the mood of the event. Avoid drinking, partying, or sad breakup songs. Go off the rotational page a bit and create a radiothon playlist of positive hits that can play around all the live talk.
- Talent must LISTEN to every vignette/story song as it plays on air. This will help them stay in the mood and react to what was heard, naturally. Urge them not to be afraid of a short pause either. The story sinks in with your listeners and can motivate them to donate.
- Always come out of a story song/vignette with your donation number, at least, twice before moving on. The story songs and interviews usually create the most response, so you want your listeners to react with a donation.
- Speaking of story songs/vignettes, if there is one or several that get strong reactions from listeners, make those your “hot rotation” items to play every hour or two. Remember that the TSL for any radiothon is very low with lots of short tune-in. The more you play the strongest material, the better.
- Instruct those working the phone bank to pass on any callers who have stories of their own. Get their numbers and have a personality call them back and the rest of the audience can hear their story. In my years of doing radiothons, some of the most powerful moments came from callers into the donation line. Pay attention.
- Let your air staff know it’s okay to show emotion. Listeners will react to the station’s personalities’ feelings and the phones will ring. If there were any time to be REAL, this would be it.
- Finally, your afterglow of the event is important. Make sure to spend 4 days to a week in heavy post-promotion. It also adds value for your event sponsors. Let the listeners know that they were the reason for the success. This is where thank-you liners from artists and any local participants really help.
This is one of the reasons why we all entered this business – to make a difference in the community. Good luck with your upcoming radiothon/event and make that difference.
Make sure your station’s charitable holiday giving is added to Radio Ink’s Season of Giving Tally. Send your good news to our Online Editor Cameron Coats. To see every story and contribution from this year’s Tally click here. Subscribe to our daily headlines email and follow Radio Ink on Instagram for updates.
Based in Nashville, TN, John Shomby is the owner and CEO of Country’s Radio Coach. He is focused on coaching and mentoring artists, radio programmers, and on-air talent to help them grow and develop inside the radio station and the industry. Reach John at [email protected] and 757-323-1460. Read John’s Radio Ink archives here.
