1. Give jocks picture business cards with their time slot. Encourage them to introduce themselves when buying gas and groceries.

2. Give away your countdown show on Monday morning! Morning show produces a recycle promo during the countdown, and gives away the Top 40 songs to the person who knows the Top 10 songs on the Countdown.

3. Does your station look larger than life? Make sure talent has a uniformly classy look at station events. Are banners hung in strategic places so that it appears that you own the event? Is the signage first class?

4. Prep your jocks before they go on stage to welcome an artist. If you want them to promote your big contest, rehearse it ahead of time. You might have a “cume” of 15,000 people in the audience.

5. Have at least one major outdoor event per year! Get labels and or local sponsors to help. Make money on it!

6. Make sure the word “radio” is apparent in your outside marketing.

7. Run the audio from your TV spot as a promo.

8. Does your receptionist know the details of the contest when listeners call?

9. File away for December: Super Bowl party. Rent an entire bowling alley open to just your listeners!

10. White Christmas Guaranteed. Bring in man made snow to a central location in your market.

11. Call back winners. How was the concert, trip, dinner, etc.? Even if you leave it on an answering machine, you have solidified the relationship between station and the listener.

12. When it’s a major artist’s birthday, give away his/her CD’s; catalogue to grand prize winner at the end of the day. Take it a step further, and ask listeners to call in to have their name on a big old station birthday card.

13. What we might take for granted is perceived as larger than life to listeners. Backstage passes, limo rides, dinner with your morning show are a very big deal. Record testimonials after the winner has been backstage. Make sure you’re getting credit for all the great things you are doing.

14. Celebrate superstars’ birthdays. “It’s George Strait’s birthday…and you get the presents!”

15. Make prizes special. Something as simple to obtain as an autographed album or guitar is a prize money can’t buy and will go a long way toward endearing your listeners to your station.

Morning Shows:

16. E-mail your morning show every night what you think they need to be talking about…hot topics, stations promotions, etc.

17. Teach your morning show to “take the first out.” Don’t keep trying to top a great line, no matter where it comes from.

18. Get artists to sing happy birthday for your birthday list.

19. More production values on morning shows help hold listener’s attention.

20. Do celebrity birthdays before local birthdays.

21. Re-set your morning show in and out of breaks with a produced bumper.

22. Have your morning show spend a morning out of the radio station; driving in traffic, seeing the sunrise, etc. Great exercise for both new and established shows!

23. Have local celebrities fill in for your morning show hosts when they are on vacation. You’ll get press and sound larger-than- life.

24. Recycle promos: Use best bits, not necessarily from that particular morning’s show. Three great bits from one morning makes for three different days’ morning show promos!

25. When artists from your format are on Leno or other TV shows, record highlights and play back on your morning show.

26. Play back highlights from nighttime radio specials on your morning show.

27. Must Read: Morning Radio, A Guide to Developing On-Air Superstars by Tracy Johnson and Alan Burns.

Stationality:

28. “Target” your audience. Do your jocks know the qualities of your typical listener? Put a picture of “the listener” up in the control room.

29. Run live versions of hit songs for spice. They’ll separate you from the competition.

30. Have several clock grids ready to go for different spotloads, or when the current music is stronger, or weaker.

31. Re-order all songs in all categories once per week. The reason: Songs in the same category can wind up playing in the same hours, or within a few positions of each other, giving the impression of repetition.

32. Best material for listener drops are recorded after contest event is over. Listeners are more relaxed.

33. Have guest dee jays instead of boring artist interviews.

34. On contest playbacks, avoid saying what number caller. The first thing should be to tell the listener that he/she has won! You’ll get much more excited winners!

35. Record major award shows for your format; play back highlights the next day leading into songs from the award-winning artists.

36. String artists together. Hi this is…this is…(artist)…this is (artist) and I’m (jock)…with more of (i.e. “Today’s Best Music”) on (position/calls)!

37. Quality in imaging is more important than quantity of music.

38. Bring a DAT to big station events and get listener’s reactions. Play them back the next day!

39. Have jocks record daily, updated promos for their shows to run over song intros. It challenges them and makes for great stationality.

40. “Float” clocks, so that spotsets don’t always come at the same times. Keeps competition off balance. Allows you to have bigger music imaging.

41. Artist testimonials may seem like an obvious way to sound larger than life, but they are usually mishandled. Make sure the testimonials are creative, fun and serve a purpose.

42. Update imaging every month. Stale promos and sweepers make for a badly rated radio station. MJI and Radio Today have image kits that are updated monthly to assist you in the process.

43. Internally, change the paradigms. The control room is really the “stage”; the jock lounge is the “green room”; and jocks are “entertainers”.

44. Have two station voices. A male/female voice combo works well. Find image voices that don’t sound like radio voices.

45. Think out of the box on jingles. Have you listened to packages from other formats that can be adopted for Country? Have you thought about NOT using jingles to sound different?

46. Cut clutter. Have talent, weather and traffic voices intro themselves.

47. Does your audio processing sound big? Work with your engineer to get the most out of your equipment. FYI: A Digital Optimod will give you a loud, clear sound.

Getting More Out Of Concerts:

48. Show us your WAAA/Call Letters. Encourage concert goers/listeners to bring a sign or wear something with your station’s call letters. Have jocks in attendance to giveaway prizes, including seat upgrades to those spotted with your calls. The bigger and more outrageous the better!

49. The “Concert after the Concert”. When the show ends, play an hour of music on your station from the artists who preformed in the order they were performed. Have listeners who were at the show call in and give their reviews in between songs.

50. Have a pre-concert party with the stars. Every winner is a grand prizewinner if you can get the act to make an appearance.

51. Summer Pass. Make it a grand prize to all concerts your station is involved with this summer. You can do it for the year, too.

52. Sales Opportunity: WAAA Party Bus. Tie-in with a restaurant or fast food place. Winners meet there. They have dinner before the show. Bus rides to the show and back to their cars.

53. Best Seat in the House. Grand Prize winner gets to sit in a Lazy Boy or recliner on the side of the stage. You might even award the chair to the winner.

54. Star/Roadie for A Day. Winner gets to hang out backstage for soundcheck. Gets his/her own dressing room. Has dinner with the road crew or the artist.

Research:

55. Put Listener Advisory Groups Together: You’ll get lots of good ideas from your best customers, your most loyal listeners.

56. If the research results don’t look right, they’re probably not. Make sure screening and testing was properly done.

57. Don’t use research to put off making a decision you know you need to make.

Make Consolidation Work For You:

58. Your news and other information elements on your FM station can come from the WAAA-AM newsroom. To be fair WAAA-AM should run promos for your FM music stations to say, “when you’re in the mode for Light Rock…tune to WBBB…”

59. Have the Marketing Director or Promotion Person list all your clusters’ stations’ activities for that week so that everyone is in the know! Better interstation communication makes everyone happier in the group.

60. The future is here. Don’t whine about change – embrace it and you’ll be more successful than ever.

Joel Raab is a nationally known radio programming consultant specializing in the Country format. He has 25 years of programming and consulting experience. Clients include stations owned by most of the major broadcast groups. He can be reached at 215-750-6868 or at joelraab@aol.com