I am part of a large national Christian teach talk format station in Miami Fl. We are a brokered format. I have no problem selling spots and or programming to clients, the issue is that it seems the response/ call activity has greatly declined. I study with Roy Williams the Wizard of Ads so I have some knowledge of how long it should take for radio commercials to start to work, and I explain that to the advertisers, but when we open the lines for calls and comments and only one or two people call, should I be concerned?
Any ideas or tips on how to start driving up the audience?
Thanks
PS-we are not subscribed to Neilson
Mike
I am interested in anyone with an answer to this as well. Same issue - brokered station, Christian talk format, no listener interaction.
I guarantee that if you opened up the phone lines to hand out $50 bills to the first 100 callers, your switchboard would explode! Your listeners are there...they just need to be Activated.
In a word, your answer is likely Show-Prep.
I would try a focused strategy to engaging the listeners. By telling listeners: "if you want to chime in call now", they won't. What you are basically asking them to do is to come up with their own content...in other words, you are asking the listener to do the show prep that is the job of the host.
Valerie Geller writes extensively about the "Topic Focused Question"...and it works! Every Topic your hosts intend to discuss MUST BE DEFINED IN THE FORM OF A VERY FOCUSED QUESTION.
Take Johah & the Whale as an example. A BAD topic would be: "Today we're talking about Jonah". Zzzz.
A topic defined by a question would be: "Do you believe Jonah really survived for 3 days in the belly of a whale? Call me and tell me how..."...or "Do you think Jonah & the Whale should be taken literally? I've always been baffled by this one, help me out...". (You are probably mulling over my questions about Jonah right now!)
Both of these examples are very specific questions and the listener automatically begins processing the question in their own mind. Once you infiltrated in their head-space, they are more likely to have something to contribute.
Put another way, your Topic Focused Question must tell the listener what you want them to say. It's not enough to throw the question "out there" once or twice either. They need to repeat it, rearrange the wording and repeat it again and again.
Here's the thing. People want to feel engaged. They want to feel as though their opinions really matter and they really do want to contribute by calling in. The trouble is, there are many distractions they are dealing with as they listen and their mind wanders. The Topic Focused Question is so specific that it reels them back in.
Every single time you hear your host say "if you want to chime in, call me", ask out loud: "Why? What do you want me to say?".
We are an unrated station too and we live in the shadows of the CC giants. One of my hosts was struggling for callers and he was talking about 'disposable income'. He came up with the simple question: "How much money do you have in your pocket right now?". The phones lasted for the entire hour!
In general, my hosts have a hard time with this exercise - they get lazy. I have to stay on them and beat this drum all the time.
Randy, sorry for the delayed response but I am SUPER grateful that you took the time to write such an amazing answer. I am applying everything you have said and its already making a big difference, I have to say, you are spot on (pun intened) lol.
Thanks again brother!!!!
I am always happy share what I pretend to know!
