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Author:	Hollywood Henderson
Published:	May, 2000

 

How many times have you snapped off the mic at the end of your shift and thought, "THAT was a great show!" only to be disappointed when you listen back to the air check? Or, conversely, how many times have you thought, "that was a HORRIBLE show!" and then when you listen back to it, you think, "Hmmm, that wasn't that bad after all!" Obviously our perceptions "in the heat of the battle" can be mistaken. That's why it's good to set some concrete objectives against which we can compare our performance. That way, we don't have to rely on our "feelings," which are not great indicators of radio reality! Let me say at the outset that my idea of what makes a great show may be different from yours, and that doesn't make your idea wrong. There's plenty of room for people to do things differently. This article simply gives my view, based on my twenty some-odd years in the biz. So here we go, my top five elements of a great personality radio show! Let's do it like Letterman (or Casey Kasem) and count down from number five to number one... 5. Solid Board Work This is a given, I know. But you'd be amazed at how many jocks slip up here. Scott Shannon used to say "Before you can be a great jock, you gotta be a great board op." So true. It's easy to dismiss bad board work, especially when it doesn't show up on the air check. That dead air between spots or the too long fadeout, or the ugly sounding jingle seg sometimes almost seem like they don't count, because the skimmer didn't record them! Take pride in your board work! It's the foundation to a great show! 4. Consistent Delivery Your delivery should be solid and consistent. This does not mean "flawless," although there was a time in my radio career that I felt that it HAD to be flawless in order to be considered "great." I would get into a show, and the minute I flubbed one syllable, I wanted to turn off the skimmer and bulk the tape, thinking "well, there goes THAT show!" I have since learned that perfection is not a healthy or reasonable goal. But you should still, obviously, keep the flubs to a minimum. There should be a consistency to your show, hour to hour, day to day, week to week. Listeners should know what to expect, so that they can develop a "comfort zone" with you. There are few better factors in your favor than familiarity. This means avoiding wild swings in pacing and energy level. A lot of PDs will tell you that they are looking for a talent that sounds clear and confident on the air. I agree that confidence and clarity are important, desirable qualities. However, I think you can still be a great personality, even WITHOUT these qualities, IF you are compelling and engaging. Think of the many well-known personalities, Bob Newhart, for one, who have carved out a niche for themselves by sounding NOT confident! The key to their success is being consistent. Audiences know what to expect from these people, and they love them for it. 3. No Throw-Aways You should take the approach that every break counts. Don't coast. That's pretty basic advice, but it doesn't hurt to hear it again. Now, most of us work in formats where there are some formatics that must be executed. Liners that must be read, backsells and front sells, positioning statements that have to be delivered. It's sometimes easy to "throw these away," so you can get to the "good stuff" that you are about to talk about. Don't. Sell the call letters and format elements as best you can, and THEN do your bit. If you don't have a "bit," then try to deliver the formatic elements in a fresh way. Naturally, some PDs won't WANT you to deviate from their set liners and positioning statements, or deliver them in a fresh way. We talked about that in the last article (Announcer VS Personality). These PDs really don't WANT you to be a personality, regardless of what they might say in the staff meeting. Working in a format like that, you are of necessity more an announcer than a personality. But if your PD really DOES want to develop you as a personality, he will WANT you to "push the envelope." I've been lucky to work for PDs who allowed me the luxury of trying to do something fresh and different, even if it didn't work every time. But even the hard-line PDs, the good ones anyway, WANT you to challenge their formatics, and are pleased when you pull off something great. (Of course, with these guys, the hotline rings when you DON'T!) So, go for great radio! If it flops, so what? At least you tried! One of Ann Landers most-read columns about success contains these wise words, "It is better to aim high and miss the mark than to aim low and make it." Hey, bad "train wreck" radio is sometimes pretty compelling, too! 2. Relevant Content What is relevant? Hard to say for sure, but you know it when you hear it, and when you DON'T!. Certainly it varies from format to format, audience to audience. My definition of "relevant," in the context of doing a personality radio show, would involve passion. Specifically, anything that triggers a passionate response from both you and a majority of your listeners can be considered to be relevant. (It stands to reason that YOU have to care about the content as well as your listener. For a refresher on how absolutely necessary passion is to being a personality, please refer back to the preceding article, Announcer VS Personality.) By "passionate," I don't mean that everything you say has to have earth-shattering implications. What I do mean is that your content should elicit at least some amount of passion or emotion in a significant percentage of the people in your audience. Your content should be evocative. People should care about what you're talking about. Or, if they DON'T care, whatever it is you say should MAKE them care, or at least respond. As a CHR personality I try to take the same approach with my content as my program director takes with the music. Just as the PD wants to choose records that will appeal to the widest possible audience, I want to choose my topics to be of interest to the most possible people. That doesn't mean that I can ONLY talk about items that have a broad interest. It only means that if I DO choose to talk about something of limited interest, I had better be sure that (A) I'm passionate about it, and (B) my passion can evoke a response. My general rule is that the broader the interest in a topic or subject, the less evocative my content may be. And conversely, the more limited the appeal, the more evocative my content has to be. For example, if a tornado has just ripped through my town, just about anything I say about it is going to have relevance to just about any listener. So I don't HAVE to come up with something terribly clever or imaginative. However, if I have a passionate interest in playing croquet, or bridge, then if I am going to use this as content for my show, I had better have something darn interesting to say about it! I would toss in a word of caution here that, generally, if you don't have anything to say about something, then don't bring it up! I'll never forget a Kidd Kraddick morning show seminar, where he had put together a bogus aircheck of a hack jock (played by himself!) demonstrating how NOT to do radio! In one of the breaks, he made mention of some interesting factoid, you know, the kind of thing you get on your everyday radio prep sheet, "did you know that such and such", then there was a pause, and then he simply said, "How about THAT!?" As if that were enough to make anybody care! 1. Frequent Listener Payoffs What is a "listener payoff?" From a personality jock's viewpoint, it's saying something relevant, interesting, entertaining, memorable or engaging. (That's not an all-inclusive list!) It's like scoring a point in tennis, or hitting the target with another arrow. From the listener's viewpoint, it's a feeling of satisfaction, of having needs met, of "completeness" they get from listening to your station. Or SHOULD get, or they won't hang around very long! Yes, the music provides "listener payoffs." (except for talk hosts!). But this article is for jocks, so we'll ignore the music element for now. Focus on your content, and making it hit the mark, repeatedly, and regularly, for the entire length of your show. My guideline is that you should "hit the target" at least every twenty seconds when you've got the mike open. (Less frequent is okay in morning drive, I'd say a "payoff" maybe every minute or so would be sufficient.) That means that if you're going to talk for forty seconds, you better have two "payoffs" in there. That is, two "punch lines", interesting "twists", or "points." For example, when I'm running a phone bit, I always, as a matter of form, try to have the "punch line" or "kicker" as the very END of the bit. Thus, if I'm going to run a forty second phone bit, I need to have TWO "payoffs" in the bit, one in the first half somewhere, and the other at the end. Without that, the phone bit will seem "too long" both to your listener and to your PD! This is not a hard and fast rule, but I firmly believe in this ratio of one payoff every twenty seconds. It has been my experience that if your payoffs are much less frequent than this, your listeners are probably wishing you would just shut up and play the music, like they always tell the radio research guys. A word on evaluating a break. It is helpful to evaluate BEFORE you actually DO the break. Over the years, I've developed a couple of strategies to help me decide whether or not to do a particular break that I've planned out but perhaps am unsure about. One strategy is to try to imagine the PD you admire most sitting in his office listening to that break on an aircheck you sent him. If you get a squeamish feeling, then don't run the break. Another idea: imagine your response if the jock on your main competition was doing the break. Would you ridicule it? If so, don't do it! So there you have my five elements of a great show! When I want to decide whether a show was good or not, instead of relying on my feelings, I have some concrete parameters to which I can compare my performance. You may or may not agree with the order, or even with some of the elements that I have included. That's fine. Probably the more important idea here is to think about what DOES make for a successful show, for YOU, and then come up with your OWN list that you can use as a benchmark.