One of the stops along the radio career was a disaster of a cluster up in Missoula Montana. I’ll leave it there. Mountain FM was the place my morning show was going to perform next along with a programming title for some reason. No, leave it there. Anyway… if you have never thought about what it takes to create a morning show in radio, or at least what it used to take, then this rather carnival-ish pie chart proves why that was a good idea.
Each ‘segment’ is a specific time duration and the trick of the trade is actually hitting each and every ‘post’ or marker on the clock as close to its programmed time allotment as possible.
Even so much as a minute out of whack in the first quarter hour tends to turn that last overly stuff quarter hour into a squeeze vise and makes it un-listenable.
One of the biggest differences with this recent crop of visually thinking radio ‘personalities’ turned programmers is the failure to grasp the difference between a specific segment and the result of all of those segments. In other words: today the forest is lost for the trees.
That turns into a massive reduction in time spent listening. Which strangely enough changes when that time becomes -0- and sales trained station managers think that means there is more time spent listening because they cannot see what multiplying by -0- does. Seriously.
I used one of these clocks for each station I programmed and each program I performed.
Today, stations don’t care about format and tout mixing it up. They also seem to have lost the concept of continuity. ANY change out of order.. ANY sound improperly placed.. ANY interruption in the background status of a well programmed radio station: will result in INSTANT loss of ears as that continuity is no longer coherent. Once a person remembers they are actively listening to a radio station is the moment that person wonders what other radio stations have to offer. Every single time.
In what was one of my favorite interactions with a program director years ago, a guy i greatly admired (off making web sites I think): I was asked what I thought could benefit the station to increase ratings and I responded ‘personality’. His response, too quick to not chuckle over, was ‘oh no we tried that’. ok! But my reaction then was not very break applied so the outburst of ‘ obviously you tried the wrong personality’… was considered a bit arrogant. It was true but it was more to my state of mind back then a pretty much a jerk.
Thank G-D I dropped the jerk part.
But I digress:
Each element in the morning clock represents a package of its own.
Weather consisted of a musical introduction, a music ‘bed’, a verbal introduction, a weather report with as much in the window as possible, a verbal close and a musical out with a jingle escape. ALL exactly timed to fit the slot. A weather event destroys the clock. Same with breaking news but there are elements in the clock that cannot be missed due to anything. The commercials. There is no reason on the planet for a person to be present in a radio station except to play the commercials. What goes between commercials is not sales it is pure unadulterated marketing.
Jingles are denoted separately as each one is different and the right one has to play at the right time.
Wake Up elements are packaged musical and montage collections to convert between events or musical transitions.. and they fall at people times. When people do specific things in the morning. It is how brand awareness and loyalty is built. Match the listener’s habits and fulfill the missing sound track to their lives.
But it doesn’t appear to be that way today. Oh well.
Radio was fun when it was cool.