Doing It For The Kids

It’s that time of year in Country radio. As we approach the holidays, we also enter the radiothon season. Whether it be for St. Jude, the Children’s Miracle Network, Toys For Tots or any local children’s hospital, there are some definite preparations and programming principles to keep in mind as you move forward to raise some money in your community.

1. You have a talented airstaff, but not all of them have the emotional makeup to host a radiothon for any length of time. It’s just a fact. Find the ones on your staff who have that attribute and designate them as your hosts for the length of the radiothon. This is not to say that you should eliminate the remainder of your air talent. You can have one host the phone bank, and one or several out in the market doing offsite reports from various “collection” points. Everyone still should be involved.
2. Get your Market Manager to meet with the airstaff a day or two prior to the start of the radiothon to add some motivation. Let them know that ratings take a back seat for the next couple of days, and helping the kids becomes the top priority. A GM at one station I programmed did this every year, and really relaxed us all knowing we had one, and only one, objective and the absolute support of management.
3. Don’t pre-promote. Just start the radiothon and go. Research shows that listeners, if they know something like this is coming, will be prepared for an alternative. They’ll come back, but you would rather minimize that as much as possible.
4. Decorate the studio with as much about the patients and children as possible. One Promotion Director I worked with put together a collage of every air staff member’s child or a child close to them and had it on display facing each personality. Another way to add emotion to the event.
5. Save all your promotion for after your radiothon Make sure to spend four days to a week in heavy post-promotion. It’s a great way to add value for your event sponsors. Let the listeners know that they were the reason for the success. This is where thank you liners from artists and any local patients and patient’s families really hit home.
6. Utilize your RDS feed throughout the radiothon, promoting the call-in donation number repeatedly. This is the one time song information should take a back seat.
7. Be uber vigilant with your music scheduling. Make sure the music outside of your story songs fits the mood of the event. Avoid those drinking, partying or breakup songs. Go off the rotational page a bit and create a radiothon playlist of positive hits that can play around all the live talk. If you’d like a sample playlist, just email me at jshomby@countrysradiocoach.com.
8. It’s important that air talent LISTEN to every story song/patient interview as it plays on air. This will help each of them stay in the mood of the event and react to what they just heard naturally. Let them know not to be afraid of a short pause after they air. The story gets to sink in with your listeners and can motivate them to donate.
9. Always come out of a story song or patient interview with your donation number at least twice before going to anything else. The story songs and interviews usually create the most response, so you want your listeners to react with a donation.
10. Speaking of story songs or patient interviews, if there is one or several that get strong reaction from listeners, make those your “hot rotation” items to play every hour or two. Remember that the TSL for any radiothon is very low with lots of short tune-in. The more you play the strongest material the better.
11. Instruct those working the phone bank to pass on any callers who have stories of their own. Get their numbers and have a personality call them back so the rest of the audience can hear their story. In my years of doing radiothons, some of the most powerful moments came from callers into the donation line. Pay attention.
12. Finally, let your airstaff know to not be afraid to show emotion. Listeners will react to the station’s personalities’ feelings, and the phones will ring. If there were any time to be REAL, this would be it.

This is one of the reasons why we all entered this business – to make a difference in the community. Good luck with your upcoming radiothon/event.

“Taking Your Radio Presence To The Next Level. Be it an artist, radio programmer or on-air talent. Coaching and mentoring down to your foundational level”

Contact me:
John Shomby
Owner/CEO Country’s Radio Coach
jshomby@countrysradiocoach.com
757-323-1460
https://countrysradiocoach.com