Here is a guest blog from Jacobs Media’s Keith Cunningham, morning show & talent development specialist, with thoughts on generating buzz:
What did the home pages for the Drudge Report, CNN, Fox News, Google, AOL, The Huffington Post and virtually every other news source have in common yesterday?
If you guessed the Iowa Caucus, you’d be right, but that’s too easy. The other answer is they’re all covering the return of the late night talk show hosts to television. Sure, this is predictable. Everyone has TV in common, those guys are big stars who create great content and have a wide reach, and the writers’ strike is big news.
But everyone (locally and nationally) can also have radio in common. And that begs the question: Why can’t radio create more great content, stars, and headlines?
This is just a friendly reminder that being a part of the larger conversation – or being the subject of the larger conversation – is vitally important for morning shows, personalities, and radio stations. And for the executives who read this blog, think about your company’s talent and content philosophy. Are you investing in talent and programming or cutting every corner possible? Are you doing more than simply re-signing your existing (aging) talent or are you developing the big names of the future?
Here are two questions to jump-start some thinking.
1. In the smaller picture, how did your morning show cover the return of TV’s late night hosts? Did they do it in a unique and compelling way? Was it buzzworthy or memorable, or rip-and-read and predictable? (Hopefully, it wasn’t ignored altogether.)
2. And the bigger picture, when was the last time the market was “buzzing” about something your morning show did? Has your morning show been the subject of water cooler talk lately? (And no, this doesn’t have to be “stunt” driven.)
As cliché as it may sound, whether it’s TV, print, online, gaming or radio, it’s all about the content. And today in radio, that means personality. Unfortunately, radio has become a “me-too brand” in the world of music, and we know how that story ends up over time.
But thanks to radio’s history and reach, it can grow, it can improve, and it can capture buzz once again. However, the new pecking order has to be talent and content first, followed by great music. How many stations still have these priorities reversed?
How about when consultants say things like “was it buzzworthy” they provide an example? Most morning shows (and even quite a few newscasters) plugged audio from Late Night and Tonight Show into their content, but how would you have talked about the Leno/Letterman returns in a “compelling way?”
Too many in radio like to throw around the words “compelling” and “buzzworthy” when what we need are examples.
So???
One more thing (relating to point #2). Any time I suggest doing something “buzzworthy” at my station I run into two problems: One, sales won’t get behind it and help me get what I need to pull it off, or two, I have to worry that the manager’s going to can my butt for violating some sort of piece of paper agreement that corporate told him I and the rest of the air staff had to sign. (Why do you think that the most buzzworthy-ready day for radio, April Fool’s Day, has become the lamest? Imus is an extreme example, but a good one none the less: in the current radio climate we’re told to be buzzworthy, but not upset anyone — especially advertisers. Once we do upset someone our rear is shown the door.)
So, again, what would you be doing that’s buzzworthy?
Thanks, Hal. We appreciate those who take the time to post comments about our blogs. Send me your call letters and email address and I’ll be happy to send you an idea or two on how the late night concept could have been done, other than predictably playing back clips.