A Conversation about Storytelling

My brilliant friend and associate John Frost and I talk to our stations about one thing all the time: Storytelling. Here’s part of an email conversation we had with a Programmer recently:

Here’s part of what John wrote…

No one in our format seems to openly doubt the power of a story, but I’m surprised how few talent tell stories on the air…..much less do it well. It seems that we give lip service to story and then go about our business sharing data or talking about something on Facebook, the ultimate lazy man’s show prep.

Just for clarification…..

Saying we’ll pray for people is not storytelling.

Telling people to go to our website is not storytelling.

Giving traffic reports is not storytelling.

Saying partly cloudy tomorrow with a high of 85 is not storytelling.

Giving the title and artist is not storytelling.

No, in stories something has to HAPPEN. There is a situation before, there is an action, and then there is a transformation.

Then I weighed in…

I would add that everything you and the listener have in common has a story behind it, and new stories get added to that memory pile every day....if you're smart enough to capitalize on them. "Just the facts, ma'am" is a police report. What happened, and the emotion(s) generated by that = a story.

Example: "It's gonna rain a LOT today. If you really love sitting in an uncomfortable chair at your car dealership's repair shop, reading a nine-year old copy of Field & Stream and eating a Zagnut that's sat in the candy machine since 1992, then go ahead and drive through six inches of water."

(That actually happened to a friend of mine last year.)

The point is that even in something as simple as the weather forecast, you can just give data, or you can tell a story. Does your station work on this? And if not, why not?