Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

• A woman personality as the main entertainer and not the sidekick.
• Less emphasis on outrageous and funny.  Humor will work with the emerging in-demo audience as long as it is not at the expense of another.
• Commercials that are delivered in a more authentic way.  Not easy because it will require stations to win the confidence of local advertisers to allow their top personality to also show the blemishes on their products or services.  Sponsors may fight it but for the first adopters who trust you with this plan, their response rate to advertising will rise dramatically.
• No traffic reports.  Research shows more than 50% of morning show audiences do not listen to radio for traffic choosing Waze, Google Traffic and emerging services like TrafficCarma instead.  We know why stations run traffic – compensation.  But audiences are turned off.  Do deals with Uber and Lyft.
• A consumer feature that helps listeners deal with their problems.  A place for them to turn when they have been ripped off or misled.  This feature can build strong loyalty – a station that will fight for them.
• A contest that is fun to play because it bridges some listeners with other listeners – dare I say, radio returns to being the original social media.  And we’ve been looking in the wrong place to Facebook all these years!
• Weather like real people actually do it:  “cold outside”, “a blizzard is coming”.  Most people have weather apps on their phones and the importance of weather as a major ingredient in morning shows for in-demo audiences has moved down their list of priorities.  Change the way you do it.
• Music, maybe.  Conversation, definitely.  In-demo audiences now want conversations.  They know where to get music (and often it’s not on the radio).  Howard Stern has had a million careers morphing into many different people – talking all the way without music.  But if music is included, wake up to discovery not repetition.

Let’s get into this and complete the list of what the morning show of the future looks like at my next executive briefing.

2017 Radio Solutions Conference