A Loyal Reader Writes:
“My morning show partner is asking me to keep personal events/situations out of our on-air conversations because she’s tired of people asking questions about her private life. I told her this kind of personal detail is what makes the listener identify with us.
“I’m not saying we should be like Howard Stern and tell EVERYTHING, but embarrassing stories, going to the dentist or doctor, all that kind of stuff (as long as it’s entertaining and we know where it’s going) should be in play, don’t you think?”
It all depends upon what you want to accomplish.
I get the impression that your goal is to maximize your ratings, while your partner’s goal is to do her job and then live her life without the two ever intersecting.
If listeners frequently ask about her personal life, that means they’re interested in her as a person.
If they’re interested in her as a person, her on-air presence is making some sort of personal impact on the audience. Apparently your listeners think of her not as an “announcer” but as a human being.
Everything else being equal, an interesting human being will garner a larger audience than an impersonal announcer. It’s a simple fact: People relate to people, not to announcers.
Your partner needs to ask herself, “Why am I part of a morning team? Why are there two of us instead of just one?”
If all you do is identify the songs and read the liner cards, one of you is superfluous.
The fact that your station has installed a 2-person team as its morning show suggests the station’s strategy is not to limit the program to time & temp. Two people should equal two sets of life experiences.
But there’s no away around it: A successful radio personality is a celebrity, and with celebrityhood comes a certain loss of privacy and a presumed intimacy between you and some of your fans.
life experiences.
There’s nothing wrong with your partner wanting to keep her private life private. But if she restricts herself to being just a voice on the radio, she’s putting an artificially low ceiling on your show’s potential ratings.
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Dan, I married the best morning-show partner I ever had. Because our listeners were interested in us as people, they listened closely enough to cause many to speculate that we were more than just colleagues. We let them into our personal lives to the point that I proposed to her on the air. And we got so many requests for it, we had to air the proposal again the next day.
The partner of your Loyal Reader needs to get over herself and be glad she has listeners who relate to her. A key component of good radio is intimacy; if that doesn’t work for her, she needs to get out of the business and go be Greta Garbo on her own time.
One question this conversation begs is, “How do morning show partners develop their own proper relationship boundaries?” Most guy/gal teams do not end up married, but the day-in, day-out close relationship can lead to more than it should relationally. Co-hosts who are married (to someone else) can become too open and compromise their marriage commitment when they are emotionally attached. I have never seen or heard this topic addressed.
I’m an open book. Lots of morning experience, 12 years of it in major markets. Sharing everything creates a bond and it also creates trust. How can you open the phones and ask listeners to share with you if you are closed off?