14 Nov Wednesday, November 14, 2018
This Week in The Lund Letter:
> What’s trending with listeners
> Storytelling
> Weather forecasts
> Ratings in your car and the latest media trends
Lund Management Memo: Listen To Your Audience
In the aftermath of the election this past week, winning candidates credited canvassing their constituents and addressing the issues they are concerned with. Your air talents should use this same approach in deciding how to prep for show content.
The “National Day” mentality means you hear talents say it’s “National Pizza with the Works Except for Anchovies Day” or “National Deviled Egg Day.” These talents use syndicated show prep services and typical “calendar” source material. This is not interesting content. The audience is simply not thinking about most “National Days.” You have more of an opportunity to engage them with topics they are already thinking about.
Winning political candidates found out from their constituents that the issues were health care, Social Security, immigration, the environment, the economy, etc. Each area of the country had a different priority of issues and each winning candidate addressed the priorities of their own constituents, not necessarily their party’s national priorities.
Local air talents need to mine their audience on what their priorities are first, and then conduct show prep to find content addressing these priorities. Find out what’s trending among your audience. Observation and listening are the keys to show prep. From reviewing social media to surveying listeners at promotions to listener advisory panels to online research, constantly seek out the priorities of your audience. Create a daily Top 3 list of the three most important issues facing the local audience. Weather may be one. Focus content on these priorities and you will win the election! This is what being “local” is about – finding out what’s on the mind of listeners and developing entertaining content around those key issues.
It’s more difficult to engage the audience with content that is not on their mind than it is by creating content that is already on their mind. You cannot assume they are thinking about guacamole on National Guacamole Day.
Have Fun
…with your listeners. Add more humor to the morning show with a humorous commercial like no other! Or, if your station plays network spots and you’re tired of hearing the same network PSAs, cover them with a funny, fake commercial.
These humorous spots are 30-60 seconds and fully produced. The spots include adopting a lion from Africa, US Army barge repair, buying a Boeing 747, owning an island in the Pacific, vacationing in Throop PA, becoming a rock and roll DJ, Tom Brady’s miracle diet, and many more fake topics and products.
Brighten your morning show…and your station with these funny commercials!
Volume A – 17 fake commercials
Volume B – 17 more fake commercials
Buy Volume A for $27.50; or get both Volumes A & B for $52.50.
Fully produced spots will be sent via Dropbox for easy downloading.
Lund Programming Clinic: Storytelling Basics
Last week we covered the importance of connecting with listeners with your content and using storytelling to do it. Whether you do mornings or any other daypart, you will benefit from the following 10 basics of storytelling:
1. Know your target: Does your story appeal to their interests?
2. What’s your purpose in telling your story? The Lund PIE principle says toPrepare, be Interesting, and be Engaging. Providing a takeaway for your audience is your goal.
3. Preparation from show prep or online sources requires you to be believable by knowing your subject matter.
4. Sound interesting. How do you personally feel about your story? You have to be interested to be interesting. If you don’t care about the story, why will anyone else?
5. Engagement is vital by having strong content that may resolve a dilemma with opposing views and sound entertaining.
6. Edit the details. You want to move forward with your story to maintain interest. Avoid unnecessary tangents and details. Some of the most memorable stories are relatively simple and straightforward. “Less is more.”
7. Practice: Rehearse and play around with it. The best told stories are told well and have a point.
8. Provide conflict: Highlight a struggle. A story without a challenge may not be interesting. Good storytellers understand that a story needs conflict.
9. Provide resolution: You want to reach a clear ending.
10. Don’t make yourself the hero: You can be the central figure, but the ultimate focus should be on people you know, lessons you’ve learned, or events you’ve witnessed.
Sharing a great story is like giving your audience a gift, because it will stay with them. This is what great talent breaks are made of. Brenda Wong Aoki, an acclaimed playwright, storyteller and performer once said, “The best way to reach all people is to go to a personal story. Everybody is a human being and everybody can relate on that level.”
Amp Up Your Morning Show
Where do you find benchmarks and bits that work great in the morning – and all dayparts? The Lund Morning Show Guide lists the top 50 benchmarks and how to execute them. This guide has all the tools your star talents need to grow and sound better. It’s great for morning personality and all talents looking for content ideas for their breaks. To improve the sound and execution of your shows, order the LundMorning Show Guide.
Lund Programming Basics: Weather is Desired…
Especially in AM Drive. Provide brief weather every 6-10 minutes in the morning, and less often throughout the day.
Keep weather short on music FMs. In fact, very short – usually just a sentence is all that’s needed, along with the current temperature. In morning shows, say what it will be today in a few words. Expand only if a major change is coming. On a Friday, say today and tomorrow.
People get their weather from their smart phone (“there’s an app for that”) and most people have two weather apps which they check often. Leave long weather for News-Talk radio and TV stations.
Lund’s Top 3: Creating Stationality in Imaging
Great promos and exciting production get the audience involved and listening more carefully. They have a catalytic effect on the audience in that they super-charge the station and make it stand out in the listener’s mind.
1. Shuts down the casual listener’s brain and cause him/her to take notice. Touch listeners in their minds and hearts, and create a highly produced radio image.
2. Increases station name recognition with a Simonizing effect resulting in a sound that sparkles and stands out.
3. Helps the station sound more interesting by creating a new sense of mission with a commitment to imagination.
Next week – a new Top 3. Visit www.lundradio.com for more Top 3’s!
Brighten Your On-Air Sound
Your imaging liners should be creative and fun, and they need to reinforce the station image. Refresh your imaging liners today – Order 100 creative imaging liner scripts today. For music stations order here, and News-Talk order here.
Promotion of the Week: 99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall
As a precursor to New Years, all of the station’s DJs attempt to drink 99 (or a number relating to dial position) bottles of beer (collectively), and show the negative effects of alcohol. Local/state police and a health professional monitor the event. “If that’s what they’re like behind a microphone… can you imagine them behind the wheel?”
Are you marketing to General Managers or Program Directors and want to reach the 10,000 readers of the Lund Letter? Email John Lund.
Lund Trend Watch:
Your Car As PPM
In a recent proof of concept study, GM collected data from 90,000 of its internet-connected vehicles. The goal is for GM to become a paid media consultant to advertisers to help them better target the in-car audience. GM would be able to provide a much larger sample than current diary, phone or PPM ratings methods. The info available would include geo-location data, minute-by-minute listening data for AM/FM and satellite radio, station selection (including exactly when listeners switch stations) and volume. One potential issue is getting car buyers’ permission to track in-car behavior, though they should be used to it with every other internet-connected device!
Tech Saturation
According to Pew Research (and an analysis of their study by DEFcom Advisors’ Doug Ferber), Americans seem to have reached a level of tech and media saturation with the most common devices and services. 99% of adults 18-49 own a cell phone, 97% use the internet, 91% have a smartphone, 82% use social media and 77% have a desktop or laptop computer. These year-end 2017 numbers are nearly identical to those found in a year-end 2016 survey. Those who want or need these, have them.
Other Tech Still Playing Catch-Up
Smart speakers are still at the “beginning of the adoption curve.” Advertising Week says that 18% of Americans own a smart speaker… and they’re all listening to more audio because of it. In fact, 30% say the time they spend with their smart speaker is time they would have spent watching TV. 38% bought one to spend less time in front of a screen (TV, computer, tablet, smartphone, etc.).
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Programmer’s Planner:
Today: 52nd Annual CMA Awards air (ABC)
Nov 22: Thanksgiving Day
Nov 23: Black Friday
Dec 3: first day of Chanukah/Hanukkah
Dec 5: last day of the Nielsen fall diary sweep (and the Dec PPM)
Dec 7: Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
Dec 21: First day of Winter
Thanks for reading
The Lund Letter
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About the Lund Media Group:
For over 20 years, the Lund Media Group has provided programming, music consulting, operational guidance, and research to commercial and public broadcaststations throughout North America and overseas. Whether you program all sports, all
talk, or all music, the Lund Goal is to help stations get more listeners and keep them listening longer. The Lund Consultants are a multi-format custom programming and management consultancy.
Call John Lund for more information about how the Lund Media Group can help your stations achieve more listeners, higher ratings, and more revenue.
Phone: 650-692-7777.
Email john@lundradio.com.