Before You Go To Radio Row

We're about a week away from a Trap Week. You know about trap games in sports, right? The games your team should win, expects to win, puts in the win column before it's played, usually while looking ahead to a tougher opponent in the following game? We're coming up on a week like that for radio, a week that should be an easy win but produces a lot of sub-par radio, namely the Super Bowl Radio Row week.

On paper, a Radio Row seems to be ideal. You go to a big event, the guests come to you, you get some big names you might not otherwise get, and it's all tied into the Topic Of The Moment. Plus, it gets your shows out of the studio and maybe you'll convey some of the excitement of the scene. Perfect.

Except, that is, when it's a lot less than perfect, which is most of the time. There is a sharp difference between what's good to you, the host or producer, and the listener. Here are some of the things that constitute traps, and what you should do about them:

Guests being sent into the room to do the rounds may sound like a great idea -- no booking necessary, you just flag 'em down -- but there are several down sides to this. One is that the guests themselves go flat pretty quickly, because, well, YOU try to answer the same questions over and over and over for however long you're there. By the third of fourth station on the route, it has to be fatiguing, and it shows. Another is that many of the biggest names are there not to really talk about what listeners want to hear them talk about, but are there to flog a product or sponsor or cause, and there is nothing more tedious and awkward than to have to devote a few minutes to a retired football star promoting brake fluid. (They are not there for you. They are not your friends, not unless you're paying them.) And it's especially awful when you have a show and a routine and characters and you drop an unsuspecting celebrity into the mix without preparation, left to wonder what the heck he's gotten into and when he can escape to the hotel bar.

Speaking of preparation, when you flag down a guest at a Radio Row, it doesn't really give you time to prepare. You'd better damn sure know everything there is to know about that guest so you can ask good questions. Nothing exposes a host's weaknesses quite like an unprepared interview. Wikipedia is not enough. If you wouldn't put a guest on the air under normal circumstances without significant prep, you shouldn't do it at Radio Row, either.

Let's expand that last thought. If you wouldn't put a particular guest on the air under normal circumstances, like at your own studio, why would you think it's okay to do so because you're at radio row? If it's a C-list or D-list guest, you'd better have a great idea about what to do with them to make it A-list radio. If not, pass.

Now, for the scene. First, radio has always wrongly assumed that the mere fact that your show is "on the road" or outdoors or at an event makes for good radio. In and of itself, a remote isn't a predictor of good radio. It IS a safe bet that the sound will be sub-par, the room noise will make the show harder to listen to, and the activity around you will be distracting. Oh, and the chatter about where you are and what parties you're going to is meaningless to the listener unless you have some great stories to tell. If you can put it in terms of a regular person (you) encountering a celebrity or witnessing something weird at a Super Bowl party, fine, that's good -- that's storytelling. Previewing your busy schedule and dropping the names of all the celebs you're going to see and the parties you're planning to attend just separates you further from your audience and makes you and your show less relatable. Honestly, nobody wants to hear you talk about how you're going to the Maxim party.

Not that there's no value in being at a big event or even at a Radio Row. But Radio Rows by nature devalue who you are; unless you're from an instantly recognizable national brand radio operation (ESPN, Fox Sports, maybe WFAN), to the guest parade, you're one of a bunch of interchangeable generic radio shows. So what you need to do is to find things there that your listeners want and you could not possibly get by staying home. The guests need to be A++. You need to have someone looking for stories you can't get elsewhere. You need to set the scene way beyond the Radio Row room; you need to tell stories about what it's like in town, from the fans milling about to the NFL Experience queues to the zip line across the Mississippi. If you can do that, and you can avoid endless interviews with Obscure Retired Tight End Now Representing The Skin Tag Foundation Of America or Hall of Famer Only Interested In Talking About The Razor Company That Paid Him To Be Here, you CAN make Radio Row work for you.

It's simple. Put yourself in your listeners' place. Whatever you do, ask yourself if your listeners care, if they'd want to hear this. If the answer is no, move on. That's the rule for talk radio, and radio, in general, but at Radio Row, shows tend to forget that. Being at Radio Row, or any remote, is not an excuse to do lousy radio.

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For the times you're NOT in a big room in Minneapolis with a bunch of other stations interviewing random celebrities, Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, is where you'll find plenty to talk about. Get it by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. There's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts. And "10 Questions With..." Brett Holcomb, OM of the University of Florida's commercial radio cluster, including WRUF-AM-W251CG (ESPN 98.1/850)/Gainesville, is a great read for his take on sports radio in a college football stronghold, radio's place in students' minds, and more.

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Once again, I'll mention the panel I'll be hosting at the Worldwide Radio Summit in Hollywood May 2-4, a look at what you in radio may be doing in the future, with four people who are already doing just that: Tom Leykis doing subscription streaming, Steve Goldstein consulting podcasts and working on Alexa skills, Rob Greenlee running a podcast empire and podcasting himself, Gina Juliano in the world of apps. It will help your career. Register here. Also, I think I might be on a panel at Don Anthony and Gabe Hobbs' Talk Show Boot Camp 9 in Dallas March 8th and 9th, and I WILL be on a panel at the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Convention attached to the NAB Show in Las Vegas in April; more on that as we get closer. See you at one of those, I hope....

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
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