A Loyal Reader Asks:
What do you think about talking about television and popular websites on your show? I had been talking about American Idol on my midday show, and my PD hotlined me about it because he says that’s telling them to turn the radio off and watch the TV.
I see where he’s coming from, but it’s pop culture and everybody is talking about it, and I don’t want to sound out of touch. What do you think?
Some PDs Follow This Programming Philosophy
I wouldn’t recommend talking about a TV show that’s on during your air shift…or even during the shift that follows you.
But….
Does your PD let you talk about the local college football game?
Does he let you talk about the new song by one of your core artists?
Are you allowed to refer to the current big movie hit?
If so, doesn’t he realize that every person who attends that game is a person who will not be listening to his radio station?
Doesn’t he understand that every person who listens to that new song on an iPod or a CD is a person who is not at that moment listening to the radio?
Has he somehow missed the fact that every person sitting in a darkened movie theater for two hours is a person who cannot listen to the radio?
A radio station chooses whether to be relevant or irrelevant to its listeners’ lives. It achieves relevancy by talking about things that the listeners care about.
One added irony: Visiting a website (which your PD doesn’t like you to talk about) is an activity that can be done while listening to your station.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Of course if the PD is very wise he won’t let you talk about websites on-air unless you’ve added links to it from the radio station website!
hey, while we’re at it, don’t give a temperature that sounds like a competitors fm frequency, otherwise your listener may realize that the other guys relate better to them than your hot lining pd and go listen to them…. dj: it’s sunny and 98 degrees listener: 98 degrees, wow I could be listening to jack 98! And whatever happens, don’t mention the name of your town, or this could happen… dj: it’s 98 degrees here in Cleveland, Listener: wow, i need to turn off my radio and read the ‘Cleveland Plain Dealer’! Logic?
Don’t even mention FM…you’ll remind people that there is a whole dial full of other stations they could be listening to…or worse, they could realize that FM isn’t all there is, and they may run out and buy a Sirius/XM receiver or a CD player!”
Sirius/XM is a better jukebox than local radio. While bean counters and pseudo-programmers make local radio as inane as a nickle Wurlitzer. I take that back…there was more programming savvy in a nickle Wurlitzer.”
Love the photograph !! It says so much about some PD’s I’m sure
Why not talk about television and popular websites on your show and use it to drive listeners to your websites to leave comments, which you can in turn use on-air.
People are going to watch American Idol- lets get as much mileage out of it as possible