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Most of us have had moments where we thought a break, interview, or call topic was going to be an absolute hit, totally relevant and interesting to everyone only to find out that we were wrong. It’s a horrible feeling to be wrong as most husbands know.

Mostly, the reason that we can get it so wrong is just that we are not harsh enough on our evaluation of quality and relevance. We will prep a show and often can get more focussed on having ‘something’ and lost focus on the ‘best’ thing.

This will always leave you as an announcer and a show that has potential but that will never take you to and higher levels. Be willing to be wrong before something goes to air rather than after and more times than not you will get it right.

Simply ask yourself, “Who Cares” and make sure that you aren’t defensive about answering your own question. I have asked this question to many announcers over the years and out of a desire not to be wrong they have defended some of the worst ideas.

Let’s say you are a female focussed Hot AC station. You are thinking about an interview with AFL player Scott Pendulbury ahead of the Queens Birthday clash with Melbourne. In evaluating whether this is a good idea you ask yourself, “Who Cares?”

This is a game that always pulls 70000+ even when Melbourne has been a bottom of the table clash. Scott Pendulbury is one of the premier players of the AFL and a Brownlow favourite. It taps into the long weekend and the Monday public holiday and is another big celebrity to add to the list of people I have had on the show.

But Who Cares? An AFL fan cares, which despite the AFL’s persistent selling of it’s female fan base lends itself predominantly to men. As a Hot AC female station that equation does not add up, unless of course something has happened with Scott Pendulbury that makes him relevant to your audience.

For example, if he was a contestant on TV show Dancing With The Stars, or there has been a news story about how the payer has now taken his fame and fortune and bought his mum a house and hired her a housemaid to thank her for everything she did for him when he was growing up.

Even on these ‘angles of relevance’ you need to err on the side of harsh with your evaluation because if you get it wrong, an interview with a star footballer could be the most arbitrary thing to your female audience. If you keep making calls like that, your female listeners will be gone and may never come back.

A short break about a newspaper article suggesting that research shows that eating chocolate everyday is the best way to lose weight in the long term (research fabricated to make my point…settle down choc-a-holics) with carry significantly more relevance and success in connecting and credibility than an AFL interview with a star.

Be honest, and take every break you have planned and ask “Who Cares?” You will probably drop some ideas pretty quickly and others you will keep but take a completely different angle on.

Is a federal budget relevant to your audience? It’s always relevant to our ‘needs’ but is it relevant to interest? A younger, rebellious, hit music station would often not bother about the budget because you would have to explain to your teenage listeners what a budget was. A talk station with a 55+ audience would unpack every last detail it can get. Yet our previously mentioned female Hot AC station might find a couple of things about Family Tax Benefit, the Baby Bonus, or Paternity Leave to talk about if there is something new there.

Not only does the format dictate the answer to the “Who Cares?” question but also your stations personality and your shows time slot and personality.

Many announcers will regurgitate the positioning statement of the station without conviction but rather with an air of lacklustre cynicism. The problem is that a good, believable, and well delivered positioning statement could be the major contributing factor as to whether or not a casual listener will ever come back.

A positioning statement is forming what the listener thinks of you and your radio station. There are some cliché and common statements that we all know but they carry a very clear message and will tell the listener who has a deep seeded need to be current, cool, and fashionable where to find their ‘Hit Music’. Or perhaps the listener thinks that things were better when they were younger, life was simpler, and people had manners and respect, music had soul and everything just seemed to be filled with ‘Good Times, Classic Hits”.

The statement can really tap right into the core of those you are trying to get to listen to your station.

A well strategised statement can not only change behaviour but it can totally adjust the way someone thinks and processes the information they gather.

When I first hosted a breakfast show the total amount of songs went from ten an hour down to eight songs an hour as we increased the talking content. We also added the positioning statement, “Most Music In The Mornings”. We had calculated the other stations songs per hour to be anywhere from four to six, and so at eight we still had the most.

The beauty of this was that we got considerable feedback about how great it was that we had decided to play more music in breakfast. We had chopped 2 songs an hour which means we had an extra six to eight minutes of talk each hour and the perception was the exact opposite because five little words.

As an announcer it is your job to deliver the positioning statements. You need to believe it, and deliver it with absolute passion and in a highlight it in a context that can accentuate it.

If you are a “Hot Music Station” then highlight the hot music your station plays in hooks, when you talk in or out of the big songs.

If you’re the “Classic Hits” station then build up the legendary station and good memories associated with these songs to really tap into the ‘classic’.

Working on a station that is the “Positive Alternative” I will try and find the opportunities where we might talk about a big news story differently from other stations and say something like, “as a positive alternative we obviously respond to what’s happening a little differently than most”.

Brag about how good you are!

You can choose to be the under achiever who does everything right but never really gets noticed doing it or you can be noticed for every little thing that you do right by telling everybody all about it.

Believe the positioning statement, fulfill it, highlight that fulfilment, and deliver it.

I have spoken to a few different PD’s about this one and many will disagree on the answer. On the one extreme is the thought that you should say your name every single break you do, give the listener a ‘real’ person to connect with. You can’t claim to have a friendship when both parties are nameless.

The other extreme is that while you should keep it regular you should also be kept minimal because overstating your name will get irritating and irrelevant for any listener but especially the core who already know who you are.

Well, I think that both of those arguments are correct and important. For true connection to happen the listener needs to know your name and to really feel like they can start to get to know you.

It doesn’t matter whether we are referring to a business, a work colleague, a neighbour, a romantic interest, or a radio announcer, the relationship quickly changes from the point of ‘name unknown’ to ‘name known’.

You simply don’t want to lose an opportunity to turn your relationship with your listener from an acquaintance -or worse yet, a voice- to a friend.

So to avoid annoyance yet maximise familiarity with your listener here are some tools you can use:

• Depending on your show and your PD’s thoughts imaging can carry your name so even when the mic is closed
• Naturally weave it into some breaks. For example, if you’re telling a story about how someone said, “What? Are you crazy?” Instead say, “What? Luke, are you crazy?” (this method can only be used sparingly)
• Use phoners: When you talk to a listener (or even the news person for that matter) on-air make sure you coach them to say your name. “What are you up to today Bill?”, “I’m just hanging with the family Luke”. You can do this one all day, multiples times every hour and there will be absolutely no annoyance level whatsoever.